Pitufa.at

Yesterday it was sunny, so we kicked ourselves to some activity even though we were still tired from the passage–you never know how long the nice weather will last in the Australs…
We went to the mayor’s office, didn’t get a map, but some vague advice about hiking tracks. We hitched a ride along the cross-island road–after friendly Rurutu we were surprised how many cars passed by before one stopped for us. The women set us off at the beginning of the dirtroad to Taitaa, the highest mountain.
It turned out that the trail was well-marked, because there will be a sports event in about two weeks here: the Lychee run criss-crosses all over the island and we only had to follow the red arrows up the ridge. At some point we heard a noisy engine behind us and prepared to hop into the ditch next to the narrow trail. When the source of the noise eventually turned up slowly it turned out to be a community tractor with a mowing trailer making the trail even smother for the runners. The driver invited us up, we hopped on the mud guard wings, jiggled and joggled slowly up the mountain holding on for dear life.

The driver set us off where the trail becomes a footpath and we hiked up another steep slope to the highest peak of Tubuai where large boulders are piled up precariously–looking along the ridge we were more than grateful for the ride. We descended according to the instructions of the community worker down the other side of the mountain where the trail leads down almost vertically–those runners will have to be incredible athletes to make it up there…

We got back to Pitufa after more than 4 hours of hiking. This morning it was overcast, the peak invisible in a cloud and we were happy we had done the hike with blue skies. Carpe diem!

The past three days it was still blowing hard, so we stayed in Avera bay where it was bouncy, but at least safe. The sun was out again and we explored the last few corners of the island we had not seen yet: we walked along the beach to a spectacular cave just north of Avera, hiked along the ridge southwards and today we made a last visit to the main village Moerai. The harbour still looks frightening, so we’re glad we made it to the other side in time.

There are two dogs who usually hang out in the harbour and walked along with us when we were still located there. Today they were thrilled to see us again and hiked all the way up to a lookout above the cliffs north of Moerai where we had a picnic. Fortunately we always carry some catfood our spoiled princess refused, so the dogs had a picknick, too

Tomorrow the wind will turn to the northeast and then north again, so we can make another hop eastwards to Tubuai, the next island of the Australs.

We’ve been confined to the boat for 5 days during nasty weather with lots of rain, sustained winds of 30 knots (54 km/h) and gusts howling down the mountains with up to 50 knots (90 km/h). We were feeling a bit sorry for ourselves until we read on the news that Europe has been hit by far worse weather with horrible floodings, mudslides and snow chaos in Austria and Italy…

There’s a front moving by just north of us and we get grey, rainy and very windy weather here. The wind’s howling over the montain and gusts up to 40 knots push Pitufa from one side to the other. Fortunately the sea’s are (still??) rather calm, so we’re having productive indoor-project days.

I got the jewellery workshop out, Christian’s working on the computer and Leeloo is concentrating on growing a thick winterfur. You’d think that a European cat might follow the European seasons in fur-thickness, but watching Leeloo we see that she grows fur according to changes in the temperature and adjusts surprisingly quickly. At the moment she looks as fluffy as a polar-rabbit

The more we see of Rurutu, the more we fall in love with it. We’ve had a few sunny days and used them to explore all around the island. All along the shores we’ve found white beaches with rugged cliffs behind them. There are lots of caves, but no signs to lead tourists there (the locals know where they are anyway, so why bother with signs?) and we only have a rather sketchy map. We have found most of them anyway and stumbling over a cathedral-like grotto hidden in the forest or the cliffs we feel like real discoverers

The interior of the island is criss-crossed with trails and dirt tracks and you can spend days walking along the ridges and up the peaks. The three highest peaks lie conveniently along one caldera and we climbed them within 2 hours (they are all between 360 and 390 m high), but then we got lost for another 3 hours on the way down–many trails but no signs are a perfect recipe for adventurous hikes

First we planned to rent a car, but hitch-hiking is so easy here that we didn’t bother getting our own vehicle in the end. By now everyone on the island seems to know that we’re the ‘sailboatpeople’ and they take us directly to the dock without even asking. Even the gendarmerie car gave us a ride once

We had little info about Rurutu before we got here, but the island is a pleasant surprise for us. In the Lonely Planet Rurutu is described as a raised atoll, but then it should be just a flat plateau surrounded by coral cliffs like Niue, instead it has cliffs divided by flat coastal regions and high mountains inland, so we think that it must have been a lagoon with volcanic islands and a fringing reef before it was raised by tectonic movements.

The road around the island is 36 km long and it’s dotted with look-outs from steep cliffs and caves. So far we’ve seen three of those caves that were once coral and are now covered in stalactites and stalagmites. There is just very little tourism on Rurutu so the sights have no signs, but friendly locals have directed us there. We’re only the third boat(!) here this year, so people are genuinely interested and hospitable. Hitching rides we’ve found that every car stops for a raised thumb, so today we hitchhiked to the southern end of the island where we found endless white beaches with a thundering 3 m swell breaking spectacularly and makatea cliffs just next to volcanic black rocks.

Rurutu has a surprisingly well developed infrastructure, there are well-stocked supermarkets, a bank with an ATM(!), a petrol station, a hospital and a daily veg and fruit market just next to the little harbour where we are located. The harbour itself is well protected (even though it’s been blowing from the southeast since we got here there are hardly any waves in here) and we share it only with a few small local boats.

If it wasn’t for the weather we’d move in here . Unfortunately the Australs are very unlucky weatherwise: in winter it gets seriously cold and the rest of the year the convergence zone usually sits somewhere between Samoa and here and lows and troughs travel along that zone. Since we’ve got here we’ve only had 2 sunny days, the rest of the time it’s been rainy, grey and rather chilly (18 degrees at night, low 20s during the day).