Fakarava & South Sea Tales

The atoll of Fakarava offered us a lovely place to sit and enjoy the view at La Paillote, which served Breton galettes and Breton cidre on the Sandy shore of the lagoon. Their little dock made it easy to come ashore in the dinghy and wi-fi meant that we could catch up on communications.

We also dropped in at a little art atelier, where the bearded man in nothing but colourful Hawaiian surf shorts showed us his creations of driftwood and shells. His paints glowed on the shelf backlit by the sunshine with the blue of the lagoon bright through the split-cane sunshades. Nearby Stephanie at Fakarava Yacht Services took in our laundry and rented us bikes for the morning. We cycled out 12km to the end of the atoll by the pass into the lagoon and had a look at the old lighthouse built like a skinny Mayan temple out of coral blocks and concrete.

It's great to be able to read books that relate to the places I am in. Fakarava features in several of Jack London's gripping South Sea short stories, of which I've downloaded 138 onto the Kindle free of charge! He had a huge amount of experience in South Seas trading, the great Klondike Gold Rush, and writes very vividly of the challenges of life in those times. I first came across him in a book of biographies of sea faring authors. His best known book is The Call of The Wild. By chance I then found his name branding a faded antique Hawaiian surf board in a Galician sea-side house where Anne and I stayed with my sister Sarah and Antony in 2016!