As we were biking a few days ago we saw something which seemed a little unusual:\u00c2\u00a0 crab roadkill, a crab which had been perfectly smashed by a car on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 As the day wore on, we saw hundreds of crabs burrowing into the dirt next to the road, on the far side from the lagoon.\u00c2\u00a0 Our host informed us that the road gets quite covered with them just after the sun goes down. \u00c2\u00a0Ray was walking his bike along this road after the flat tire incident and noticed that at every step, a couple of crabs would dart into their holes.\u00c2\u00a0 They respond to footsteps I think.\u00c2\u00a0 Cars and bicycles don’t trigger the same reaction to hide.\u00c2\u00a0 They are everywhere, at all times of day.\u00c2\u00a0 The ground is covered with crab holes, at least anywhere near the ocean.<\/p>\n
We had the opportunity to consume two of these crabs yesterday, in wild ginger cream sauce, at a restaurant on Huahine Iti, the smaller of the two islands which make up Huahine.\u00c2\u00a0 The bike renter had just gotten ten brand new bikes, and we gave two of them a 25-mile maiden voyage, riding down to the bridge, riding all the way around the small island, stopping for lunch, and riding back.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no problems with flat tires or broken brakes, but the indexed shifters needed some adjustment — the gears kept popping back and forth.\u00c2\u00a0 the bikes cost him 26000 Pacific Francs, which is actually not bad for a bike that will last him two years and rent for 1500 XPF per day.<\/p>\n
Huahine Iti is gorgeous.\u00c2\u00a0 We passed many houses on rather large lots with really beautiful landscaping.\u00c2\u00a0 Much of the beach wasn’t developed at all.\u00c2\u00a0 And on the east side there was a wide swath of the the most beautiful shade of aquamarine blue water just inside the reef, separated from the shore by some darker deeper water.\u00c2\u00a0 As we biked we got a whiff of someone drying large quantities of vanilla beans.<\/p>\n
The other part of lunch was a ceviche sandwich, which the French call “poisson cru”.\u00c2\u00a0 It apparently is the Tahitian breakfast of choice.\u00c2\u00a0 The French eat croissants and bread and jam, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 The confiture at the restaurant “Mahi Mahi” is a demonstration of resourcefulness.\u00c2\u00a0 We asked the lady what was in it, and she said it was the pulp of all the fruits that she squeezed for the juice.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile, that same juice reduced and with vanilla added was the puree for the fish the night before.<\/p>\n
Today we’re being kicked out of our room at 10:00, and later in the afternoon we’ll leave this small-island paradise for a night in Papeete before we go find the boat we’ll be seeing the eclipse from (we hope) and living on for six days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we were biking a few days ago we saw something which seemed a little unusual:\u00c2\u00a0 crab roadkill, a crab which had been perfectly smashed by a car on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 As the day wore on, we saw hundreds of crabs burrowing into the dirt next to the road, on the far side from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}