I'm sad to say that we cannot leave this lovely island. Was it anything to do with the picture that I put up showing Nuku Hiva as one of the 50 worst places to visit?!
This morning, once the torrential rain had cleared, and we'd emptied the dinghy, we went ashore for fresh vegetables before heading off to another bay. I headed to the Post Office for stamps and to post my Custom declaration to Papeete. One has to take a number and wait on benches, which I did serenely for the best part of an hour. It being French, people kiss each other on both cheeks as a greeting. I got included at the end of the line, when Sabine, the equestrian lady came in, as she had given me a lift to the plateau yesterday when Anne and Emily went riding.
That was a good expedition because Justin and I were almost 3000' above sea level and had a delightful walk back down the road amongst ancient acacia forest wreathed in mists. At the lip of the cliff we had extraordinary views of the bay far below and then set off down the hairpin bends to the port. On the way I sat to sketch, sheltering under my new Chinese rainbow umbrella, first from the roasting sun and then from the torrential rain.
So back to our unfortunate detention on the island. As we raised anchor to leave there was an awful clunk as the chain locked solid around something. We tried circling it, pulling pushing - everything! But we are stuck fast with 45 of our 65 metres of chain out in 11-12 metres of frothy cappuccino river spate.
Luckily Nuku Hiva has a yacht services company and by the end of the day it looked as though they had found at least one diver who could try to get us free tomorrow morning! Whilst I spent the day on that and other issues the rest of the crew went off to explore.
I was pleased to find that Kevin of Nuku Hiva Yacht Services is also able to deal with freezers, so tomorrow we will tackle that issue as well.
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