January 2008 2008

Hello everyone,

The Gambier archipelago is located nearly 2000 km away from Tahiti, and Onemea Bay is the most distant bay to the Southwest of this archipelago. We have come back here to spend the winter (here, in fact, it's summer) and we have found again the place wonderful, despite the excessive number of pearl farms that add to the list of actions that threaten the life of coral reefs. We have stocked up for two or three months, and will meet almost nobody during the coming months.

It's quite a change from the activity at the Paris Boat show ( I thank all those who have come to visit me there) and the busy days of December before I took my flight back to Tahiti. This fall, I've been so often on French television that President Sarkozy, who appears on it very often, is becoming jealous of me!

The Gambier remain very peaceful, Rikitea's Cathedral is closed because its roof is threatening to fall; it has not been repainted for a long time, too bad, I was hoping to film it again, in HD this time. The gardens are brimming over with beautiful or strange flowers, fruits grow abundantly, and the other day, a fisherman has come back from the open ocean with a 300 kg swordfish; We ate a piece of it as "poisson cru", raw fish Tahitian style... delicious!
After a few problems, our second Blu-Ray disc, dedicated to New Zealand, is finally available...How wonderful ar ethe HD pictures ! We are already working at two of our next films: Austral Africa (from Capetown to Botswana) and new Caledonia