We visited this cultural and archeological site, while we used the repaired dinghy for the first time.

It’s a walk of about 3.5 km from the dinghy dock.

When we reached the street, going up into the mountains to cross over to the other side of the island, we decided to hitch hike up to the point where we needed to continue on a dirt road.

Luckily we got a lift by a friendly guy who lives close the site. So he just dropped us at his home.

After another 10 min of walking we found the site.

The site is old but still looks pretty good maintained.

To get a sufficient large flat area, for dancing and other performances, a lot of very big stones were needed. What a hard labor it must have been to get such big stones to the site and then set them up to built was as needed. Additional a lot of soil was needed to fill up volume made by the stones. I estimated 3000 m3 meters.

The tribunes are covered with asymmetric roofs. Sides are open. On the front side, the roof is short and has about a 45 deg angle. At the back side the roof almost goes down to the ground and has an angle of about 70 deg. Covered are the roofs with palm tree leaves, the natural material. Several other buildings of the same type are scattered over the area. Their purpose I could not get but I thought about mythological figures and deities

I sat down at a stone of one of the tribunes to absorb what I see and feel. I imagined a group of maybe 50 people dancing to the rythm given by the drummers. I could see qthe soft and peaceful movements of the female dancers in a strong contrast to powerful dancing of the men. All male dances I saw so far reminded me to stimulation for fight and war.

Then I looked at several very old trees in the area. They were kept were they grew. The builders of the site respected these old trees. One is supposed to be 800 years old.

On the way back, I wanted to go down a dirt road not the concrete street we came. It was interesting to see how many houses are built pretty far away from the main part of village. Again, all properties are well maintained.

Then we saw suddenly, just bedside the street, a bigger box with 2 bags filled with mangos.
No price written on but I got the feeling that someone sells these very delicious fruits. Looking around we found the people living on the other side of the street to be the fruit sellers.

500 CPF (or XPF) about 5 Euros for 6 mangos looked alright. (Nevertheless I should have negotiated.)

Then we kept walking. Inge wanted to see what she can get in the grocery store. We ended up with 2 ice creams.

On the way back to the dinghy, Inge saw the Austrian sailors and when I looked at them I recognized Adrian & Dagmar from SV Kobel, walking with them. Last time we saw each other was in August (?) 2022 in Shelter Bay Marina. Such a small world.

Arriving at the dinghy dock I was happy to see that MaRe’s tender (or dinghy) was well inflated.

What a joy!