Day 41 Chopper ride

Nuka Hiva by air
DSL (kind of) - By mid morning, they had finished installing DSL and the Internet was back on. The connection was much slower than we were used to but worlds faster than we had seen previously on Isles Marquises.
I was not successful at uploading the blog with all of the pictures so I used Skype to call the Apple technical support line. In case Apple is looking for a good demonstration of its level of customer service, this was it. I am on an island in the middle of the Pacific and the Apple tech is talking me through a manual upload of my blog to the dotMac server. After performing a test, he determined that the connection was too slow for the automatic upload from the iWeb program on my computer so he showed me how to take the blog apart into pieces that can be manually uploaded. While this worked, it was also very slow so I was unable to get much uploaded in the two hours I was on line.
So for those reading the text version, text is all you are going to get until we get to Tahiti on May 7th. I am expecting I will find a faster connection in “the big city” but even that could be proven wrong.
Helicopter - The guidebook said “don’t miss the helicopter tour of Nuka Hiva” so several of us decided to sign up. All of the Marquisian islands are the remains of relatively recent volcanos so they tend to have remarkable basalt spires such as those we saw in Fatu Hiva. By comparison, the island of Nuka Hiva looks rather tame from the sea view.
When we climbed into Captain Jean Pierre Fabas’ twin rotor Ecureuil, I sat in the front because I had the biggest camera. The captain said he spoke only a little English. The plane was very noisy and we were wearing ear protectors so normal speaking would have been difficult anyway. Nonetheless, the captain knew how to show off for the camera. He would tap me on the shoulder, point to his eyes and then to the scenery ahead. Then with his hand he would indicate that he was going to bank in for a closer look. The net result was a combination sightseeing trip and amusement park ride. For anyone uncomfortable with small planes and heights (I could look straight down through the plexiglass under my feet) this might have been very uncomfortable but I thought is was fantastic.
Have you ever looked straight down over the edge of a 1200 foot waterfall. Well, we did - just before dropping into the canyon into which it fell. Hoowee!!
The island lived up to it’s billing. From the air, you get a view of spectacular spires, vertical canyons and the jagged remains of a very large crater. The guide book was right. This was a trip not to miss.