Solitude and Silence

The Tuamotus Diaries #23, Day 47 – July 14^th 2016

 

We have been at the same place for such a long time. As I write this, it’s been almost two months already, interspersed with three short stints to the village – some 15 miles away – for provisioning and services.

In the beginning it was often windy, and the anchorage was always populated by a “floating” population of cruisers (pun intended), some of them friends from other times.

But as time went by, the “floating” population dwindled and for the last 10 or 20 days we have been here almost always by ourselves (more to this on another story).

At the same time, the weather also got more stable – with long stints of calm, sunny days.

And our existence here became very basic. Our surroundings are simple: to one side, the single-featured skyline of the atoll’s rim – the white sandy beach of Punakura with the nearly continuous background of palm trees. To the other side, the vast expanse of flat waters of the atoll, broken up at the horizon by the occasional breaker on the atoll’s SW rim, 5 miles away.

We live off the provisions we have onboard.

There’s no contact with the outside world other than the 134-character messages I post on Facebook daily, and the occasional message we receive from someone on the Satphone – which we cherish.

Pesto floats softly on these crystalline waters.

And the only sounds we hear are the ripples on the water from the slight breeze, a distant rumble of the ocean waves crashing on the outside of the atoll. When a stronger gust approaches, we can hear the ruffles on the palm trees’ leaves on the beach. And that’s all.

Long moments of intense solitude and quiet that neither of us have ever had the opportunity to enjoy. One very precious moment of our lives.

This time we are having here is the exact expression of the tagline I chose for our blog two years ago: “… because there’s SO MUCH discovery in the Journey”

It’s indeed the Journey that matters. Not the final destination.

 

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POST SCRIPTUM: While there, I shot a video of still images on that beach, in hopes to capture at least a tiny bit of the elation we felt during tose times. Follows the links to it: