A Few Hours in Fakarava

Since my last blog entry, we made the big turn at Bora Bora and started sailing east.  Over 36 hours we had traveled about 400 nautical miles and this morning we anchored off Fakarava, French Polynesia.

Fakarava differs from the other islands that we have seen so far on this trip. Tahiti, Hauhine and Bora Bora have very obvious volcanic building blocks. In the case of Fakarava, the volcanic core of the island has subsided and all that is left is the coral that now forms the basis of the fringing islets. Fakarava is actually a rectangular atoll. It has a very large lagoon that is surrounded by almost continuous reef, with multiple islands on the outer edges of the rectangle. The atoll is 60 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide. There are two big cuts or passes in the atoll where the lagoon opens to the sea and our ship came through the biggest pass in the northwestern part of the atoll. It is interesting to note that some of the beaches here are pink because the sand is partially made up of powdered pink coral that has eroded off the reef.

Rotoava from the ship, with the lagoon in the foreground and open
ocean in the background. The building in the picture is the school.
Note the narrow strip of land the village sits on.

Main street in Rotoava

Rotoava again and you can not really see it but we are cycling down a dedicated bike lane

This is the beach facing open Ocean. It is rough surf on this side.

This is a beacon tower by the airport that also doubles as a lighthouse

A foreign boat in French Polynesia

Our stop here was only scheduled for about 8 hours in total and we wanted to get to a beach but decided to rent some bikes and explore a little bit of the island first. We ended up riding about 10 kilometers in the 33-degree heat and high humidity and just ran out of gas before we ever got to the beach. However, we did take a dip in the lagoon and were able to explore much of the area around the village of Rotoava which is the main village on the atoll.

Before dinner tonight we will leave Fakarava and make our way out of French Polynesia. Our next stop will be in the Pitcairn Islands, some 1000 nautical miles west. 

I hope the snows have melted my amigos.