Pearls and mantas

Cruising life is slow paced and most of the time, the clock is irrelevant. We joke about getting one thing accomplished each day and that's about all we can handle. Sometimes it's a boat chore, sometimes a sight to see and sometimes an activity. Today we managed two things. We came over to the village yesterday in the hopes of getting some black pearls. The only two industries here are coconut and pearls. From the anchorage we can see huts built on stilts over the water where they harvest and seed the oysters. After getting our nerve up and figuring out a few phrases in French, we dinghied over to one of the huts and asked if they had pearls to sell. They invited us in and it was a huge success. The farm is family owned, one patriarch, his son, his daughter and their spouses and the children. When we arrived, the father was harvesting pearls and re-seeding them with small white balls. The oysters can be used twice for pearl making and then they eat them. Dental type tools are used to pry open the shells, extract the finished pearl and insert a new form. A small incision is made in the flesh to accomplish that. If the oyster is sick it is culled into one bin, if it's not productive it's put in the "dinner" bin and if it's successful, it's re-seeded for next year. Each pearl takes 10-14 months to make. There is no guarantee as to how the pearl will turn out. Perfect ones are round, smooth and dark green or black. Imperfect ones are misshapen, light in color or have dimples in the enamel. We asked to buy some and he dumped out the bowl that he had just harvested and we picked through. The perfect ones were about $120 and the imperfect ones were as low as $10. We let the kids each pick a $10 one and I got one in the middle. It's quite pretty, tear dropped shaped and has a dark color. It'll be nice to have it mounted into a necklace when we get home. We had a bunch of lemons given to us in the Marquesas to use for trading here. When we brought those out of the backpack, his prices came down and he gave Ellie 6 seed pearls to make a bracelet out of. I gave his grandkids a jar of bubble solution and I think everyone came away happy. To our benefit, he spoke good English, so we learned a good amount.

Yesterday, when we arrived here, we were greeted by manta rays. We have been seeing them around the boats all day. After pearl shopping we dinghied closer to them and hopped in the water with our snorkel gear. The mantas are about 5-8' across, white on the belly and black on the top. They swim in graceful loops with huge gaping mouths swallowing plankton. I found it quite unnerving at first, as they come very close. Pete actually touched a few. Ellie expressed how lucky she was to be swimming with mantas instead of home at school. Carter felt frightened and didn't last long. There were 5 in the group we watched and as long as we didn't chase them, they were happy to do their underwater dance all around us. It's an experience we'll never forget. Now Pete is all jazzed up to buy an underwater housing for our digital camera.

All in all, I think we had a great cruising day. They do exist and boy are they fabulous. When chore time and sailing time rolls around I question what were doing out here, but the fun is getting more fun and the scenery is getting more spectacular. This is what we came all this way for!!

-kellie

Oh yeah, and when we dinghied in to the town wharf this morning, I hopped out (about 12� of water) to move the dinghy alongside, looked down and about 2� away was a stonefish nestled in between two chunks of mossy coral. I didn�t expect to ever see one, as they�re incredibly well camouflaged. It�s one of the ugliest, grumpiest looking fish on the planet... and also one that�ll really ruin your day if you step on one (sometimes fatally). We�ll definitly post pictures of it and the manta rays next time we get web access (in about a month in Tahiti).

-Pete