Puraganui and Mount Auorotini

Tags: French Polynesia, Mangareva, hiking

Date: July 13, 2026

We returned to Rikitea to wait for the supply boat to do some provisioning with at view to leave the Gambiers and head to the Tuamuto archipelago. However, the supply boat was several days delayed and the winds were not favorable so we ended up staying a lot longer at anchor off Rikitea than anticipated. We could not have chosen a better time since it turned out to be the start of the yearly Puraganui on Mangareva. Puraganui means large gathering (from "puraga" = gathering/assembly and "nui" = large or great, "nuinui" = very large or very great, "nuinuinuinui" = extraordinarily large or great). The Puraganui on Mangareva is a festival with traditional Polynesian dancing and competitions of all manners: beauty pageants to find Miss and Mister Mangareva, competitions of fishing, braiding, flower crown making, fruit carrying, rock carrying but also more mundane competitions like a petanque tournament, sports for the kids etc.

One of the traditions is that the two dance troupes of the island as well as the kids' dancing group drive around the island with each their percussion group to perform in people's front yards. Here, the first percussion group arrives to the sports hall on the first evening of the Puraganui:

They set up at the entrance to the sports hall to welcome everyone. Note the young boy in the black shirt sitting just left of the middle:

He was an amazing percussionist, beating his upside down GN standard oven tray at an incredible speed. In the picture above, he is taking a well-deserved break while the boy in blue behind a similar instrument is beating the rhythm during one of the calmer parts of the piece.

Inside the sports hall we were treated to three performances. First the young girls with their teacher in the white dress helping them remember the moves:

Here is one of the adult groups performing:

The traditional dance in Mangareva is the Pe'i, which involves a great deal of stamping and holding the arms in the air. All is accompanied by loud drumming. The drummers are seated in the blue t-shirts in the above picture.

In between attending the Puraganui sessions we also had time for another hike, this time to get to the top of Mount Duff/Auorotini:

On the way we came by some quite open forest with edible berries in the undergrowth. They were probably of the species Rubus illecebrosus with the common name strawberry raspberry — at one time believed to be a hybrid between strawberries and raspberries. They are beautiful and bright red but don't have a lot of flavor:

Some places looked almost like a Swedish forest with moss- or fern-covered stones in between the fir trees:

As we have seen before, a lot of the hike was on top of a ridge:

A look at the south facing sheer side of Mount Auorotini, shortly before we reached the top:

View from the top over Rikitea:

Mount Mokoto: