Solar Tech, Tuamotu's Style

In blog below, I griped a bit about cold water. In fact, the water from the tap and shower was cold, and salty. And a cold salty shower, after a cold salty dive, leaves you kind of cold, and salty.

But a bit of engineering gave us a warm (if salty) rinse! Our drinking water was all bottled, and we went through a lot of it. By refilling the empty bottles with cold salty water and leaving them in our "Solar Energy Collection Center" (eg, on some black rocks), we ended up with HOT salty water! A wonderful rinse.

Did have freshwater rinse a couple of days... When it rained, we stood under the run-off from the roof. Freezing, but fresh!

Life in a postcard

Fakarava was rough. It rained on us, and that was cold. We had no hot water for showers. In fact, our running water from the tap... was cold and salty. We were diving with sharks. The coffee was only so-so. And there was something else to complain about, but I forget...

Still, can't get away from the fact that it was pretty much "life in a postcard". Between dives, we sat like zombies and watched the horizon until the sun set. Then we watched the stars. (And a couple of episodes of Lost on our iPad.)

As always, photos tell the story better than words...

Two views taken from our cabin, and one picture of the cabin.

Pace of life on Fakarava...

A rusty bike. A hen. A few chicks. Afternoon on Fakarava.

Why dive Fakarava?

Fakarava is way way away from anywhere. So why make the long trip there to go diving? If a picture is worth a thousand words, this five-minute YouTube clip is a book of reasons. (For best image, choose 360p from YouTube menu bar after starting the video. And mute the music... you don't hear it underwater.)

How does an atoll come into being?

Picture here isn't Fakarava, but sure is a nice example of atoll structure. All reef, no island. Coral reefs generally offer great diving. Normally, you find them in the water ringing tropical islands. But an atoll... is reef, without island. What happened? Where did the island go?

Pacific tropical islands generally start their lives as volcanoes. If the volcano erupts under water long enough, it builds an enormous subsurface mountain... that may eventually break the surface. Voila, a volcanic island. (Actually, volcanic mountaintop.)

Over aeons, that volcanic mountaintop will stop erupting, start eroding and forming soil, be colonized by bugs, birds, plants, etc and become a tropical island.

In the clear, warm water offshore, coral reefs begin to form and eventually build a ring around the island. The ring will usually be broken where rivers flow off the island into the ocean... because the silt involved retards coral growth in that area. If you are a human who wants to colonize the island with your friends in your canoe, you look for that break in the reef and paddle like crazy through it for the calm water inside.

So, all seems well. Tropical paradise, etc. But give it another few million years... and the central volcanic mass may have both eroded dramatically and sunken downwards into the crust of the earth under its own weight. One day, the island disappears again below the surface... and keeps sinking slowly.

The coral reef though is a living thing, and it continues growing. That fringing reef now sits atop the sunken volcanic island, and keeps building towards the sun while the island keeps sinking. If reef growth and island subsidence hit an equilibrium point -- known as the Darwin Point, after guess who -- an atoll results.

Et qu'est-ce qu'un Fakarava? (And what is Fakarava?)

Paddle south from Hawaii for a month or so, and you'll find the world's most poetically named island family: les Îles Sous-le-vent, or the Islands under the Wind. In English they are called the Society Islands, and of them Tahiti is perhaps the best known.

Turn left and paddle north-east from Tahiti for another week, and you'll be in the Tuamotu Archipelago. The Tuamotus comprise 76 coral atolls, scattered across an area larger than Europe. If you are lucky, you might make landfall on an atoll called Fakarava. At last count Fakarava had a population of 701. You, tired paddler, would be number 702. Treat yourself to a coconut!

What is an atoll? This definition perfectly captures the facts while utterly missing the magic: "... a ring-shaped ribbon reef enclosing a lagoon." Really, an atoll is the coral ghost of an extinct and vanished volcanic island... and also often a very fine place for diving.

You can skip the months of paddling and choose to go by air, if you prefer. That's our plan.

Here are photos of Fakarava, from satellite and from airplane.

Fietser et femme a Fakarava

Cycling in the Netherlands was wonderful, but the diving... nope. Too long since I've been underwater.

To remedy the situation, Katie and I propose a trip to Fakarava in early 2011.

(Photos courtesy Fakarava cyclists)

Below this point ..."6 very unstructured weeks, on a bike, in Europe, this spring"

Below this point, my chronicle of 6 very unstructured weeks, on a bike, in the Netherlands, spring of 2010.

Above this point, something else.

The Magic of Metric

I used kilometers to track distances on this trip for a couple of reasons. The supposed reason: because that is how they measure distance in the Netherlands. The real reason: distances sound so much further in kilometers. In any case, you get way more exercise when you cycle in kilometers since you cycle so many more of them, right?

A Metric-to-Miles Tutorial
A kilometer is kind of a mini-mile, while a mile is sort of a super-sized kilometer. The kilometer was developed by the French, as a solution to the problem of things being so much closer together in Europe. By using kilometers, Europeans get more elbow room on their crowded continent. It is still unclear why Canada adopted the kilometer when they have large North American distances to cover.

Here is some more or less useless scientific info on the kilometer: "The kilometre (American spelling: kilometer), symbol km^[1] is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one thousand metres and is therefore exactly equal to the distance travelled by light in free space in ¹⁄ _299,792.458 of a second."

That description suggests some questions to inquisitive minds. For example, who really cares how far light travels in one bazillionth of second? And what is this "free space" thing? Does light travel slower when it leaves "free space" and has to go through a Construction or School Zone? Finally, if the kilometer is based on how far light travels... can we really be certain about kilometer distances after dark?

Here is more practical info, brought to you by Footloose Fietser:

• If a kilometer was this long: __________

• Then a mile would be this long: ________________

For this trip, here's the count in miles:

• By bike... 527 miles
• By train... 819 miles
• By foot... 124 miles
• By boat... 38 miles
• The grand total... 1508 miles

Bike / train / foot / boat trip : 2428 kilometers

For many reasons, I bounced around by train quite a bit -- weather, joining Katie at airport, moving from biking spot to biking spot, returning to origin point by train some days when I didn't want to do entire round trip by bike, etc.

Based on time-in-the-saddle versus time-on-the-train-seat, this was clearly a bike trip! Trains go a lot faster than bikes, so I spent many more hours on the bike. Based on distance covered, it was another story: 848 kilometers by bike, 1319 kilometers by train. Makes it a bike / train trip.

Based on a sore-feet measure, it was another story! There were four or five days that had lots of walking, especially in Amsterdam and in Maastricht, but also shorter hikes in Haarlem, Leiden, Roermond, Otterlo, etc. It's a guess, but I figure 200+ kilometers total walking distance, with seriously tired feet a couple days. So, a bike / train / foot trip.

And based on a sheer this-is-a-lovely-way-to-travel measure, the boat distance of 61 kilometers was some of the very nicest distance. So, bike / train / foot / boat trip!

All in distance number: 2428 kilometers.

My friend Kelly just pointed out to me that the very first Tour de France in 1903 was exactly 2428 kilometers long. Interesting coincidence!