July 15 - Uturoa activities

We returned to town in the early morning and went to the Bastille Day parade. It was a two hour affair, with floats, dancing, the judges booth, sports teams (with soccer, rugby, volleyball, basketball, tennis, and even step aerobics (!) ), a Chinese dragon doing its dance down the street, and then an odd ending - a series of off road Jeep vehicles with souped up engines, all sporting American flags! It seemed like most of the town participated in the parade and everybody was having a grand old time. After the parade we did a bit of provisioning and then went to Happy Hour aboard sv Lardo. The next morning we hiked up to Mount Tapioi with Rich & Jan (Slip Away) and Jason (Yolo). In the evening we went to a Heiva dance and drum competition, where solo male and female dancers from 4 different villages performed, and 10-12 member percussion groups performed all the background music. The audience got involved with cheering and clapping, and Sue took (as usual) many photos of the event. At 0500 a squall with 35 knot gusts rolled thru and we dragged anchor. We were awake, but I hadn't had my cup of coffee yet. Not good. We jigged around about 45 min in the dark, reanchored off the reef in the dawn, and departed for Hurepiti Bay in Tahaa about 0730. We had a wonderful sail over, squalls (again, 35 knots) not withstanding. We're anchored in 35-40' of mud, and the wind is howling. Gusts are 25, but we're holding fine, so we're planning a walking hike later, after lunch.