My cup spill'eth over (Fare, Huahine)

I really don't have enough words to describe today. My fingers can't type fast enough, my brain can't process the information with enough speed. I wish I did, because those last two sentences suck.

This post has been trapped for a couple of days, as I want to to do it justice. I unfortunately am going to have to resort to a description of the "headlines" so that I can get this, the most important local description of what I have experienced so far, into the books.

Stephan
I don't really know how to spell his name, and I apologize in advance for masculine/feminine or other errata (I am still reeling from the Michelle / Michel debacle that my Frenchie French friend Liz pointed out to me). Stephan is German. I met him in the communal kitchen of the guest house playing Texas hold'em with trivial pursuit cards as chips. This was just before I slaughtered my new Swedish friends with a higher than thou strait. We have a fair bit in common, he's a 30 something burn-out too. After finishing his PHD in artificial intelligence, he sold his "tiny" stake in the company he was working with and is off to figure it all out. He also lost 20 pounds of geek fat. He also was on the brink and got a wake up call, although his is much more severe. His 28 year old workaholic friend died of a massive heart attack. Stephan had met Ingrid the previous day and that's when things get interesting.

Ingrid
Ingrid is hard to explain. She is a 60 year old woman who took us under her wing, for no real reason that I can ascertain. She has the biggest pearl I have ever seen hanging off her neck, which is apparently smallish for her. To me it looks like a Superball. She always wears a hat with a fresh floral arrangement from her huge garden and somehow, without anyone seeing her, she magically appears with a different flower behind her ear 10 times a day. She knows everyone and everything in this place. She took Stephan and I on a tour of the island with her friend Aimé (Anna's husband).

Aimé and Anna
They run the guesthouse. They also took me under their wing for no reason that I can readily figure out.

Tour
The four of us piled into Aimé's car and laughed our way around the island. I finally learned how that damn vanilla is grown! We went to Anna's parents house to stock up on mangoes and papaya, bananas (reason #1 why I will always be alone is that the only reason I know how to spell bananas is from that song "Holler Back Girl" and have to sing it every time I need the word on paper. How lame is that?), and frozen fish heads to feed the eels (yes). I left as a beast of burden, with my pockets stuffed with vanilla pods to boot. What does someone actually do with 6 huge vanilla pods while living out of a gym bag?

62 acres
The size of prime beach front land that Ingrid's mother owns that we passed along the way. BEAUTIFUL.

Fresh water moray eels
I didn't know these existed. The Morays that I have seen in salt water are lime green. These ones were more of a black and had eyes of a very deep, pale blue colour. There was a little stream and you could almost charm them out of the water by playing fish head tug of war. We petted them, which was just about as disgusting as it sounds.

Beers
After a lap of the island, we headed back to the guesthouse for a couple of beers. Aimé was going to cook us up something special, as he is a little bit of a Chinese cookery master. We sat around chatting about all the great stuff we saw that day and the hits just kept on a coming.

Rainbows, dirt bikes and smarmy dudes - oh my!
It rained on our parade and, of course, an intense rainbow appeared over the hills. A kid lazily pulled 150 yard wheelie down the main drag on his dirt bike, and the local millionaire porn photographer minced in with an (almost) 18 year old Tahitian princess. I thought that this stuff only happened in movies. He was 50'sh, had a long, luxurious mullet and red, mirrored sunglasses. I heard stories of the morning line up of hopefuls standing outside of his gates for "inspection". They sauntered off arm in arm with ice cream cones to do whatever it is that photographers and "actresses" do at noon on a Saturday. I couldn't quite figure out if he was movie porn, or postcard porn, but I digress.

And more beers
We needed to wait for lunch and Aimé brought out some marlin poisson cru and a special home made sauce as an appetizer. There was a fishing derby the day before and Stephan pulls out a photograph of a 60 kilo fish hanging by its tail. Aime informs me that this is the actual fish that we are snacking on as he bought 10 kilos of the guy. (Seriously good eats)

Ingrid again
She has led a pretty crazy life. She was in the running for Miss Tahiti when she was 18 before she was almost killed by eating some sort of poisonous fish. Her sister was Miss Tahiti, her first husband was tied to (part of? We couldn't quite figure that out) the Swedish Royal family, her second husband threatened to kill her and she had to flee to Hawaii for 4 years, her mother is 84 and her grandfather lived WELL into his 100's (she said 118, but I think I might have that wrong, lets say "old"), she used to surf and fish constantly (even when she was 6 months pregnant), she drinks like a fish and eats wasabi paste by the truckload. I kind of wish that she was 30 years younger.

The Devil
Our table was a little bit of a revolving door as people came and went to pay their respects and join us for a drink. One guy with a seriously raspy voice sat down with a sparkle in his eye. He almost had his head taken off in a motorbike accident and he has some obvious lasting vocal problems as a result. The doctor said that he must be the devil because he should be dead. We also met a descendant of Mendelssohn and so many personalities that I can't capture them all (nor would anyone want me to, this is a seriously long post already).

Lighter girl
Ingrid presents us with a gift of a Huahine lighter with a naked girl on it: her niece. Of course. Ingrid scolds Aimee as only a matriarch can do for commenting on her attributes.

Chow Mein
Lunch. And more poission cru. Deeeelicious. And full. SO full.

"Pussy woman"
The literal translation for the name Huahine. I guess those pesky missionaries didn't get here in time to circumvent that little mishap.

270 km/hr
Stephan and I were swapping stories as an attempt to try and explain to each other our progress in trying to figure "it" out (whatever "it" is). I was saying that I had nothing to go back to, that I didn't have a love life/property/car/clothes/a job, but I wanted to go "home". He agreed and had felt the same. Later on, he said something that I admired, I think it spoke to an integrity and a self awareness. He said "Mike, I didn't have the courage before to say it, but I didn't sell my car."

Stephan - I know you plan to see this one day. I am serious about dropping by the autobahn for a ride in the "Monster Mini", as long as you promise it won't be too touristy ;)

Goldfish
There are two strange people in the guesthouse as well. A weird Belgian dude and an Argentinian surfer girl. Lets just say that their short term memory is so gone that they might actually have no present. Stephan and I sat there chatting and every 5 minutes or so, one of them would ask a question like "Where are you from Mike?" 5 minutes later the other one would ask "When are you leaving?" 5 minutes later "Mike, where do you come from?" and on and on and on. She asked me how old I was and I said 80. She thought I was serious (well at least for 20 seconds more than she should of). I labelled them goldfish1 and goldfish2 as they can't remember the last trip around the bowl. Stephan had invited the Belgian to join us on the tour originally, but he declined as it was simply "too touristy". They are definitely burned, but they can't work for our new company.

Burned Out International
As we forced ourselves to snack on the biggest Papaya that I have ever seen in my life, we had quite a good time talking about starting a business together called Burned Out International. A business where people are happy, that is fun and that produces something tangible in the end. Then we decided that a better working business name is 2Papayas. (Damn-2papayas.com is taken). Obviously need some fleshing out to do here.

It was a good day. I wish that it wasn't so darn touristy though. What an idiot.