Fatu Hiva

The little picture doesn't begin to do justice to this setting, but maybe it gives you some idea. We're looking east and the island rises 3,000 ft with the top half pretty much constantly shrouded in clouds. Everything is dripping green from the intermittent showers and drizzle. You can just see the small village at the bottom left of the picture below the rock spires.

The real magic is in the late afternoon when the last few hours of sunlight play across the the rocks and vegetation with patches of sun and shadow creating incredibly subtle graduations of green. In this shot you can also see a portion of a rainbow.

Today was rain on and off with the wind spinning all the anchored boat a full 360 degrees several times during the course of the day. But we were mustered some motivation, inflated the dinghy and took the trip ashore. The residents were very friendly and the village totally clean, not a scrap of litter or debris. While we stood under a tree to wait out a period of intense rain we were invited to stand on a woman's porch and then she gave us some bananas to snack on and made small talk in our pathetic French while we waited. A nice introduction to French Polynesia.