Week #15: busy week !

Back in Huahine, we wanted to make the most of our last week with our friends and say a proper goodbye before going away for a few months. Busy week !

Busy week...

In between exploring islands, we love to drop our anchor in Huahine and spend time with our friends around Parea village. If you wonder what we do while we are there, here is a run down of a busy week in Avea bay.

We always try to arrive on the weekend, so we can enjoy pétanque sessions (see Week #10) which pretty much take the entire Sunday afternoon, sometimes well into the evening. First day gone.

On Monday, we helped our friend Will setup the social media platform for his new local tour business (Huahine Secret Tours) and did a full photo shoot with him and his boat on the lagoon. In the evening, he took me fishing on the reef, we came back around midnight with quite a few fish caught in the net and a bucket full of lobsters.

On Tuesday, we were invited to a birthday lunch at a local restaurant and then decided to go for a 10k run to digest our food… On Wednesday, we rented bikes for a full island tour which is so beautiful, we stopped in the main town to pick up vegetables and continued on a full 60k round trip with a few steep climbs. Early night.

On Thursday, we had lunch with neighbours who live on the boat anchored next to ours. And then had to get ready for the major event of the week… The local school end of year celebration (see other post). Our friends picked us up around 17h30 and dropped us back just before midnight. A very social day! Friday was a chill day, we looked after the boat and ourselves and wrapped up the day with a Bollywood movie night watching Kunal marry Kalki in Udaipur :)

Saturday was a special day as our local friends decided to throw a farewell party for us. We spent most of the day preparing a huge barbecue and enjoying a long lunch with the entire family, Yamini got a beautiful flower crown as a farewell present. Today is Sunday and we are enjoying a quiet morning, writing this blog, before going for lunch with some other friends on the other side of the bay. If the wind picks up, there should be a Wing Foil session in the afternoon. Otherwise, there will always be pétanque…

Spectacle de fin d'année

Is there a better way to spend Thursday night than watching a kids school end of year celebration (Spectacle de fin d’année)? It was the place to be in Parea, Huahine as all the parents of the village were present to see their kids (age group 2.5 - 12 years) dance and perform! In true Polynesian style, the event space was decorated with coconut tree leaves and flowers. Some parents were given the task to barbecue meat and the others were selling cakes. Sugar and Meat diet - very local! There were kids running everywhere, so cutely dressed up in their traditional dancing outfits, with the flower crowns and hip bands.

French Polynesian culture has many different dance styles, such as the 'ote'a, 'aparima, and haka with kids training from a very young age!

Ote'a is the energetic style of dance characterised by fast hip movements, vigorous gestures, and footwork. The music is lively and rhythmic, performed by drummers using drums called to'ere, and other instruments like pahu (drums) and fa'atete (bamboo sticks). So impressive to see the all-kids band perform. You instantly feel like moving, but it is impossible to move your hips like the Polynesians!

Aparima is a slower and more graceful style of dance, focused on hand movements and storytelling through gestures, expressing various aspects of nature, legends, or daily life, accompanied by melodic songs. The Haka, which people generally associate with the Māoris from New Zealand, was also performed and proudly led by our friends son. All in all a fantastic evening and the smallest kids were just to adorable and hilarious at the same time!

Boat life vs. Home life

As we near the end of our first official season on Wallis, we have gotten so used to life on water that we can’t seem to remember how life on land feels. Though the oceans are part of the same planet, yet we feel like we live in a totally different world, maybe because we are just a tiny spec in the vast ocean - a feeling that is hard to comprehend on land?

Living on water, we are totally exposed to nature and we need to adapt to living with its cyclic patterns. On land you can adjust the room temperature, close curtains and windows to block yourself from sunlight or rain. On water, you live with the sun, you feel the calmness of quiet days, you wake up with the storms and you get wet when it rains!

Living on water means that your home is either floating with just an anchor protecting it from the winds and currents or it is sailing through oceans. In new anchorages you need to be vigilant and careful and while sailing you need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. This is not a feeling that we are used to in our modern world. No two days are the same, just like everything in nature! Living on land you can plan your routine and meetings. On water you need to go with the flow…You need to plan for the weather and yet be flexible with weather changes.

In some way, living on water makes you live a yogic lifestyle - one that is all about the present, being connected with nature, simple and sattvic...