September 2013

Hello everyone,

Happy months have no history

I hope that this August has allowed all of you to discover or rediscover places made according to your heart ; to take beautiful trips ... or, conversely, to take advantage of the august rush (also the title of a wonderful musical movie we just watched again - with delight - aboard Banana Split), to take advantage of the city dwellers? summer escape and enjoy all the benefits of your own city when it is almost empty, no traffic jams and you can park without a problem, allowing you to discover the beauty of the monuments, the friendliness of the people, finally less rushed , and the diversity of visitors who come to discover it.

For us there were small joys : noting that at least one of the papaya trees we had grown from selected seeds and planted in the garden of our friend Jacques , in Fakarava, has grown up, and the fruit it produces are truly delicious ; and thzt the bush of basil planted in a desert island has survived drought and periods of strong winds ; also, picking up our daily green coconut with a long stick (6m 10, a little less since it broke and I repaired it with bits of string), and always , the morning picking of tafano flowers .

The novelty of this month is that we have for the first time landed in a mysterious place, where once stood the vital center of the atoll of Fakarava and probably the whole Tuamotu archipelago : one finds there the ruins of many buildings, a small church, beautifully decorated with hundreds of joined mother-of-pearl plates, and large coconut lined paths covered with vegetation .. But on the shore of this island , called Tetamanu , now stand a couple of small guest-houses and two very active diving centers : Fakarava has become one of the most popular diving spots in the Pacific , and divers come here to give themselves fears swimming among thousands of fish and hundreds of sharks who placidly watch them pass , carried away by the current. My son Teiki and his girlfriend Ophelia have dived and brought some beautiful pictures of fish and sharks tht swarm in Ttamanu?s southern pass .