Back on the Sea Dragon

I'm lying on my bunk, hoping that we don't have to close the hatches anytime soon because it's roasting down here. Jess has to sleep under the hatch so she gets none of the benefits of the trickle of fresh air breezing through our cabin. But we'll sleep two feet apart from each other, and on the bunk above Jeff for the next 20/- days hatch open or not.

Garen and I are back on board getting to know a new crew. I imagine that it must be hard for Dale and Clive to have a constant turnover of friends leaving the boat. Getting to know one another is accelerated here and most of the time there is a working respect for your fellow crew mates regardless of whether or not full fledged friendship results from your time together.

We're in good hands with these two. Dale is from New Zealand, has been with the Sea Dragon for all of its cruises over the last year, and is a dive master. Clive raced a boat identical to the Sea Dragon around the world against the winds. He's from England and was made to live at sea.

If we keep following the path of the setting sun, we will get to Tahiti. I know it is only the first day back, but part of me feels like the stereotypical little kid saying to myself, "Are we there yet?" I remember what 20 nights on the boat feels like. A lot can, and does happen in three short weeks out on the water.

But Toby is right to take a moment and shoot a photo of this first night's sunset. This is the time of day when I would like to freeze time, or at least burn this memory into my head as we all wait to see if tonight will be the night that we see the elusive green flash shoot across the Pacific just as the sun slips behind the horizon for the day.

This place defies imagination.

A rough translation - "Look at the vistas of this crater that is 1600 meters (approx. 5600 feet) in diameter, and 200 (approx. 700 feet) meters deep." It sounds impressive, but in person this volcanic crater blows your mind.

Here we are just seconds after our minds have been blown. 

Mats of native vegetation grow across the basin.

On the drive up to this crater we passed groves of eucalyptus trees. They seemed out of place although we have come across them a few times before. I'll find out later that the native palm trees that have gone extinct, and are now being reintroduced to the island, will not take root because the eucalyptus trees have changed the Ph of the soil. 

Nature bounces back if you leave it alone, but there are unforeseen consequences along the way to righting an environmental wrong.

Down the hill from this crater lies the remains of a village that hosted an annual contest. You were crowned bird man of the year if you could swim to one of the two closest islands, or motus, retrieve one of the first laid tern eggs of the season, and swim home with it intact. 

To get into the water though, you started from the top of the island and slid down the face of the cliffs on a reed mat. Any takers? I'd rather body surf the pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu.

But I am enchanted with this part of the island, like all of the rest of Rapa Nui that I have seen.

Down another hill, the kind that you can drive down safely, is Taku Vave - the restaurant that serves the BEST ceviche I've ever tasted. 

It's the day before we depart Rapa Nui, and I am already planning on returning. But I'm told that an influx of tourism is partly to blame for the massive extinction of 500 native Flora and Fauna that have been wiped off of this island in the last five years. 

Can this really be? 

Dale, our first mate, says so. This new information stuns me, bringing to mind a very legitimate question.

 What is the true impact of traveling to far away places? Does the impact of what you bring, and the insights that you take away, equal the toll your physical presence and transport exact on the environment along the way?

This is the last restaurant where I will be eating raw fish since Garen and I are planning on starting a family soon. Toxins like mercury and various other persistent organic pollutants that my body will store as a result of enjoying some fish are too big of a price to pay knowing that when I am pregnant, I will transmit these chemicals to my child. 

There are many things that need to happen between now and the day that I may become a parent. Not least of which is crossing the rest of the freakin' Pacific Ocean starting tomorrow. 


We'll sail around to this side of the island once we have all boarded the Sea Dragon. From here, we will set out across the roughly 3,000 miles to the west that lie between Rapa Nui and Tahiti. 


But first there are ten new members of the crew to meet, thousands of miles to steer, and a few thousand steps to take back and forth across our floating 72 foot island before we arriving at the port of Papeete.

A beach in the middle of the Pacific is still a modern beach...

We went to the beach today, bringing our fins, snorkels and masks with us.

On our way down...

We got our first good luck at the trash waiting for us....

It could be the currents that bring this high level of concentration of plastics to Ovahe beach just like the way the currents push plastic trash into the cove at Palos Verde peninsula back home...

The results are the same. Synthetic debris broken down into colorful toxic bits scattered amongst the sand...

Here was the reason that we had traveled all of this way, scooped into the palm of my hand. 

I've seen this brand hanging from the trees on the side of a remote Himalayan trail, and now ten years later, degrading this remote beach.

We're supposed to change our toothbrush every 4 months of our lives.

Just disturbing...

It seems fitting that we should collect some of this mess in a Chico Bag hat that Andy Keller gave Garen after I threw up in Garen's the very first day on the Sea Dragon.

Ovahe, we were told by the locals, was a beach to get away from it all. A beach where you could be left basically undisturbed for the day, body-surfing in a safe cove. The beauty of the beach is stunning. The solitude and isolation is there to soak up like the sun's rays. But the undeniable scourge of plastics littering the beach is equally as breathtaking. 

I think Garen's expression says it all.  

Needless to say that we didn't go in the water that day.

Another day in a place far, far away...

Maybe it's a matter of scale, but I find that a photograph, or at least my photographs, seem to be underwhelming when it comes to representing the magnitude of the waves waves that pounded along the coast that day. 

Here I am in my red hat that screams, "TOURIST!" A little crimson dot within the green and blue landscape of sea and sky. 

As I mentioned in my last post, these figures are called Maoi. A Maoi took many men, and natural resources to erect. Not to mention that instead of being some mythical pantheon of some nature based mysticism, these Maoi are representations of the men in the tribes that built them. Simply put, they are status symbols that absorbed the attention of their builders to the point of famine, war and the almost complete degradation of their natural environment. They had a Maoi making obsession.

There are parallel threads happening today in the western civilization that I come from. I only have to go to the movies this afternoon and watch the pre-preview advertisements for the new G4 phone, or (insert your favorite new toy or shiny car here) to see the modern day Maoi's that we have become obsessed with. 

I could be grossly oversimplifying things. And I mean no offense if I have stripped down this ancient Polynesian culture into a cautionary tale of power and environmental hazard, but I can't help thinking about how distracted their culture, and now our own, is by our respective versions of bigger, better, more. 

These bystanders seem to take no notice of their stone overseers or the gawking tourists strolling through their fields. They carry on grazing in the sun, swatting away the stray fly. But I notice them. I have been fascinated, and in love with, horses since I was a very little girl. 

I haven't counted, but it is entirely possible that I have more horse photos than Maoi shots in my iphoto library. 

So you'll just have to bear with me while I share one more with you.

But to get back to the reason why we took this hike up the coast...here is something to really gawk at. 

Whatever the reason for their existence, it is an impressive feat of engineering, collaboration, and artistic  expression that stands here along the edge of the island. 

I meant one more.....

The coast was lined with mist from waves like this on the day that we arrived. The waves left a vale around the entire island that heightened our feeling of impending adventure and the mysteries that awaited us on this remote wonderland. Day two, and I am not disappointed.

RAPA NUI (aka Easter Island)

"YOU ARE HERE," the map says. But where here is, I couldn't really say. I know that we are about 1,000 miles off of the coast of Chile. And that Rapa Nui is part of a number of Polynesian Islands that share a bond of history and common descent dating back...well dating back longer than we may ever be able to securely pinpoint. And beyond that, I feel as if I have stepped into another dimension as we start our day by walking around town.

This is the first sight that greats us on we stroll down to the harbor. 

Everyone has one of these guys outside of their grocery store, right?

Turns out that the variety of stone, figurine sculptures that you encounter across this island's landscape are called Maoi (MO-EYE). One interesting fact about them is that they represent the people of the time that they were made, and not some mystical god. And that they face inland to keep an eye on the people. A stone overlord watching you work? Not that unromantic, but not far from it. The people of Rapa Nui were interested in building bigger, better, Maoi to represent cultural status. My Maoi is bigger than you Maoi kind of a thing...

They took most of their native forests down to build them too.

The harbor doesn't even remotely resemble the massive waves that closed it out the other day when we got here. But out where you see six sailboats bobbing at anchor is where we were when we got a good look at the island for the first time. 

The harbor. Safe to say that the fish here is NOT caught by Long Lining practices. And by the way, never had better Ceviche ANYWHERE! If you like that sort of a thing...

A modern Rapa Nui sculpture's interpretation of their ancient art. I know that the bird-man figure is a representation of one of their gods and I particularly like the dark and light, yin-yang suggestion leading along the back of this figure that sits on a hill looking OUT to sea. 

A soccer pitch for the locals with ancient Maois in the distance along one of their coastal parks. 

Yes, I was actually here. Although at the time, it felt like a walking daydream. 

LAND-HO!! or A Sight for Sore Eyes

It's true what they say about being able to smell land before you see it. The sweet, pungent earthy smell of dirt and grass drifted out to our boat around dawn well before we made it to the back side of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. 

We were unable to anchor off of town because of a heavy swell that had already closed the harbor off for days when we arrived. I am glad that the weather pushed us around to the other side because our first taste of land was here at Anakena Beach. 

Turns out that Anakena is also where a Polynesian king landed a few hundred years ago. I am also guessing that this gradual, sandy cove proved less dangerous than the pounding surf whittling away the other side of the island when he arrived as well.

An oasis comes to mind when I look back over these pictures. And aren't all islands the same?

 It certainly felt like one to Garen and I as we packed only a few bags, stored the rest under our bunks, and readied ourselves for a soft bed, stable footed shower, and perhaps dinner at a table rather than on our knees. Don't get me wrong, dinner on deck gives you a hell of a view. 

And how about this view? I could hardly believe it!

But what I really couldn't wait for was a chance to get into water that looked like this. I imagined sea turtles cruising through the corals, colorful reef fish darting in and out as I drifted over them, and patches of soft, pale sand dotting through it all.  

One of the great benefits of taking photographs, and then being able to look back on them, is that you see aspects of the places where you traveled that you missed with your naked eye, or that you missed even when you were looking through the frame to set up your shot. 

I hadn't noticed that the sky had been reflecting off of the sea water coating the sand at the water's edge with such an iridescent blue that  can't keep my eyes off of now when I look at the photo. 

Do you spot the lone Moai between the palms? He is facing inland, like most of the carved figures that are scattered over this island. 

The belly-button in the hill.

 Or so I named it.

Garen and I stood with the bags, chatting to a friend of one of our crew mates that had come to meet us at the dock. 

Jeff took dingy trips back and forth between the shore and the Sea Dragon several times, ferrying off all of the luggage and passengers that were eagerly awaiting land. 

Can you spot the fish in the above photograph? 

No? 

Neither can I. 

In fact, when we went snorkeling off of this beach a couple of days later we saw two fish. 

That's right. 

TWO. FISH.

The Sea Dragon is the ship anchored to the right.

We said goodbye to her for a few days and headed across the beach to wait for the car coming back for us that never came until.....two hours later we managed to hire a couple of taxis to drive us the 8 miles of road between us and a bed for the night. And the many adventures that awaited us on our three day stay before the crew turned over, and we climbed back on board for part two.