After an excellent week enjoying the hospitality and super cheap prices in Western Samoa, Eitan and I set off on the two-day passage to Wallis and Futuna. Wallis and Futuna is a small, French territory comprised three islands: Wallis, Futuna, and Alofi. Alofi is primarily uninhabited and not included in the country’s name. It was a nice and easy trip and we arrived at Wallis at 8 am, along with three other boats we didn’t know we were buddy boating with! SV Lucky Girl, SV Pania, and SV Ikigai were all coming from Apia as well but we didn’t get a chance to meet them while we were there.
Wallis looked a lot like the Society Islands in French Polynesia: an inner volcanic island surrounded by an outer reef. In addition to the outer reef, another reef extended a few hundred feet off of the main island which significantly increased the landmass at low tide and made it almost impossible to get to shore, except for a few locations where a channel had been carved through.
We anchored, then headed to shore, docking the dinghy at the pier in the capital city (or town?) called Mata Utu. Since we arrived on Saturday, we were only seen by immigration and would need to come back on Monday morning for customs. In the meantime, we were still allowed to go to shore, so we walked over to the post office to use the free wifi and pick up some SIM cards. After coming from Samoa where the data was roughly $1 per GB, I was shocked to see the cheapest phone plan was $10 for only 0.5 GB. We tried to purchase the least expensive option but the lady communicated to us, through Google Translate, that they didn’t have any more SIM cards.
We sat at the post office for a little longer using the wifi and were approached by a French man, excited that we were speaking English since he was also fluent. He had recently moved to Wallis and we explained we were just passing through and hoped to pick up some SIM cards to stay connected. He looked confused and told us he had just purchased a SIM card before he approached us. Thinking we had misunderstood something, we asked him to translate and see if there were any more cards available. It turns out they rarely have tourists and refuse to sell SIM cards to non-residents. A little annoying but I guess we could survive the week without it.
Later, I walked up to one of the local grocery stores to see if they had anything we could use. It felt like I was transported back to French Polynesia, seeing a basket of baguettes and all the same French products from before, along with a measly selection of sad vegetables. After experiencing the cost and selection of products in Rarotonga and the Samoas, I was confused why there wasn’t more available here and could only attribute it to the presiding country.
Monday morning we returned back to the pier, along with the three other buddy boats, and waited for customs to arrive to finish clearing into the country. Luckily, one of the crew members on SV Pania spoke French and, after 30 minutes of waiting, asked the security guard of the container yard if he knew where the customs officials were or could point us in their direction. The security guard seemed completely unwilling to help and kept shrugging his shoulders, appearing to be as confused as we were. After an hour of waiting, we saw someone in official-looking clothes walk out of the door, on the other side of the security building. Imagine our annoyance when Eitan walked over and discovered the customs office was in the building attached to where the security guard was sitting.
We decided to take advantage of being on shore and fill up a round of fuel jerrycans. Since there is no tourism here there are also no taxis but we managed to hitchhike our way to the nearest gas station. Since it was 1:30 pm during the week, we prayed the gas station would be open when we got there because if there’s anything we know about French territories in the Pacific, it’s that they like their long lunch breaks and may not even show up afterward! Of course, it was closed when we arrived and we asked a man, sitting under a tree near the station if he knew when it opened. He just shrugged his shoulders and motioned with his hands something that looked like 2:30. After waiting about an hour, the doors of the shop attached to the gas station opened and the man under the tree turned out to be the gas attendant.
So far, Wallis did not seem to have a very accommodating culture and we decided to spend the rest of our time enjoying the couple of islands we could anchor off of. The island itself was quite beautiful and the little motu islands on the outer reef were even more lovely. Once again, we were surrounded by palm trees, sandy beaches, and turquoise waters. Eitan and I explored the islands and sand bars exposed at low tide and we got together with the other boats a couple of times, having a few bonfires on the beach. The snorkeling wasn’t anything to write home about but it was nice to get in the water again after being in Apia and Pago Pago. Unfortunately, some of the other islands that looked even more stunning were too deep to anchor near and too far away for the dinghy to access.
After a week in Wallis, it was time to check out of the country and it seemed the other boats were on the same schedule. To avoid taking all the boats back to Mata Utu, we all hopped into SV Lucky Girl for the hour-long commute. After a group lunch, we prepared the boats to leave the next morning.
To break up the trip, we followed SV Ikigai on the 24-hour passage to Futuna, the country’s other namesake island. We dropped anchor in the small harbor, luckily arriving at low tide to easily see the reef outlining the bay. Seeing no suitable place to drop the dinghy, we decided against going to shore and just staying onboard for the night before taking off in the morning. We later learned that we were the fifth boat to anchor there since 2017! Given the anchoring conditions, it was easy to see why.
The next day, we were off to our final destination for the year: Fiji!
