Wednesday 12 May Don't you just love the French?

It's 1½ miles of hot and dusty road in to town. Or 10 minutes of wind in your hair if you take your bicycle.


We found the Gendarmerie easily, filled in a quick form, got our passports stamped with an entry visa for 90 days and that was it. Fast. Efficient and almost free. We had to pay 50p for a postage stamp to send our form in to the Government official. After the Spanish speaking countries of South America who've turned customs and immigration into a farce of bureaucracy it was a pleasant experience.

Our speedy cycling brought us into Atuona which is the prettiest town, more village sized, but important enough to be a town. There's no rubbish on the streets, gardens are manicured, cars never locked and the people handsome and friendly. I read it was the Marquesians who first travelled to and settle on Hawaii (1000 miles north west). The peoples certainly look similar and the language is similar too with lots of vowels. Atuona has a town hall, shops, bakery for the very important government subsidised baguettes, a cemetery with the grave of Paul Gauguin, ice creams and a delightful post office.

Gaugin's grave

Returning to the harbour on our bicyclettes we had French sticks poking out of our panniers with two large rustique loaves underneath, pate, a dozen fresh eggs, more fish lures to replace the ones we've been feeding to the fish and three French plugs to put on our English kettle, food processor and toothbrush so we don't have to hunt for adaptors on our French boat