Manihiki is a low coral atoll in the northern Cook Islands, almost ring-shaped, with a large lagoon in the middle. After six days on the open Pacific, its first appearance felt almost unreal. We had become used to islands like Tahiti, Moorea or Bora Bora rising out of the sea like mountains, while Manihiki remained almost invisible for a long time. Only when we got closer did palm trees and a thin line of land begin to appear above the horizon.
We anchored near Tauhunu, on the western side of the atoll. There was a small anchorage there, with the police station and harbour authorities close to the shore, so it seemed like the natural place to make our first contact with the island. For the official entry procedure, however, we had to head towards Tukao, on the northern part of the atoll, where the airport was located.
Customs officers came aboard, inspected the boat and carried out the biosecurity procedure. Part of it involved spraying against insects and anything else we might accidentally bring in from outside. On such isolated islands this is taken seriously. The ecosystem is small and vulnerable, and something that might be insignificant on a continent can become a serious problem on a remote atoll.
The whole procedure took long enough that we spent almost the entire day dealing with it. By the time we returned to Tauhunu, darkness was already beginning to fall. We had dinner on the boat and went to bed early, planning to finally explore the island the next morning.
That morning, the first problem appeared immediately.
Damjan could not find his wallet.
We turned the boat upside down, checked every bag, bench, cabin and place where he might have left it.
Nothing.
At one point we even started wondering whether it might have disappeared during the inspection the day before. The idea seemed almost absurd, but when a wallet disappears together with money, cards and documents, all kinds of theories start going through your head.
We went ashore to report it to the police.
The police station was locked.
Nobody there.
In a way, that was our first introduction to the rhythm of Manihiki.
We continued walking through the village and only then really started to notice where we had arrived.
There was no asphalt. Hardly any cars. Dusty roads ran between palm trees and simple houses. Some houses were built from concrete, others were much more basic. Electricity came mostly from solar panels and diesel generators.
Everything felt simple, quiet and very far away from the world we had come from.
While we were walking, a woman approached on a small scooter. She slowed down and called out to us.
“You must be from the boat that arrived yesterday?”
We said yes.
“Then this must be yours. You dropped your wallet.”
She handed Damjan his wallet.
He opened it.
Everything was still inside.
Money.
Cards.
Documents.
He immediately pulled out a few hundred dollars to thank her.
She refused.
She simply said that she had found something that did not belong to her and that returning it was the normal thing to do.
Then she got back on her scooter and rode away.
We just stood there watching her disappear down the road.
It immediately reminded me of Tahiti, where a complete stranger had stopped and given me a lift back to the marina simply because he saw me carrying heavy shopping bags.
At the time I had already found that unusual.
On Manihiki, that feeling became even stronger.
It is not that people there are perfect or that island life has no problems, but there seemed to be a kind of basic trust between people that felt much more natural than what we were used to.
Later, Damjan and I split up.
He returned to the boat to check a few things, while I continued walking through the village.
Somewhere along the way I met a man riding another tiny motorbike.
The first thing I noticed was his glasses.
They looked as if they had been broken several times and then glued back together, with strange additions that looked like pieces of shell attached to them. The whole construction seemed as if it might fall apart in a strong breeze.
The man, however, was incredibly friendly.
He started asking where I was from, how I liked Manihiki, what life was like in Serbia, and how long we had been sailing.
After a few minutes, completely casually, he invited me to breakfast.
I tried to refuse politely.
That did not work.
He explained exactly where his house was.
“Third house after the school.”
In the end I said I would come later and continued walking, already feeling slightly guilty because now I really had no excuse not to show up.
About fifteen minutes later I met Damjan again and told him the whole story.
“Well, let’s go,” he said.
We had barely walked a few minutes when a woman came out of another house and invited us in for tea.
Damjan and I looked at each other.
By this point we were beginning to wonder what was going on with the people on this island.
The woman insisted so much that we eventually found ourselves sitting inside her house.
We were given lemonade, tea, and a conversation that lasted much longer than we had planned.
It turned out that she had lived away from the island, studied art in Italy and seen quite a bit of the world.
But she had returned to Manihiki.
“This is where I feel best,” she said.
When we were getting ready to leave, she opened her freezer and started offering us fish and food for the boat.
She was convinced that we must not have enough supplies.
She had no idea that we had loaded the boat in Carrefour on Tahiti as if we were preparing for an expedition to Mars.
It took some convincing before she accepted that we really had more than enough food.
Only later did we learn that her name was Cia.
That same day, after lunch and once the worst of the heat had passed, we went walking through the village again.
That was when we met Kora.
He was involved in pearl farming.
And on Manihiki, pearls are not some small side business. They are part of the life of the island.
The lagoon in the middle of the atoll is not just beautiful scenery. It is a workplace.
In its waters, black-lip pearl oysters are farmed, producing the famous black pearls of the Cook Islands.
Kora invited us to come and see his farm and the place where the pearls were handled and sorted.
He told us to continue along the dusty road through the trees and take the first path on the left.
“You can’t miss it.”
On Manihiki, that kind of direction actually works.
When we arrived, there were sacks full of shells in the yard.
At a table sat a Japanese man named Kiyoshi.
In front of him was a pile of pearls.
That was the first time I really understood that a “black pearl” is not necessarily black.
In front of us were pearls with silver, green, blue, purple and almost completely dark tones, each slightly different from the others.
Kiyoshi was sorting them by size, shape, lustre and surface quality.
A pearl that looked perfect to me would take him only a few seconds to place into a completely different category.
Through the conversation, we also learned how the whole process worked.
A small nucleus and a piece of tissue are carefully inserted into the oyster. The oyster is then returned to the lagoon. If it accepts the procedure, it slowly begins to cover the nucleus with layers of nacre.
Months later, sometimes more than a year later, the oyster is opened and only then do you find out what has actually formed inside.
The whole process requires far more patience, knowledge and luck than I had ever imagined.
Kora explained that he sold many of his pearls through contacts on Rarotonga and to regular customers, while Kiyoshi came periodically from Japan to help with sorting and grading.
By the end of the day, they invited us to return the next morning for a full-day workshop.
Of course we accepted.
The next morning we were back with them almost at first light.
We spent most of the day learning about the oysters, the nucleus, the growing process and the grading of the pearls.
Only when you see dozens or hundreds of them laid out in front of you do you begin to notice differences you would probably never see in a jewellery shop.
One was almost completely black.
Another green.
Another silver.
Another had a purple tone.
Some were perfectly smooth, others had small imperfections, and some had completely irregular shapes.
The plan was also to go into the lagoon and dive around the pearl farms so we could see how the oysters were kept underwater.
But during the day the wind picked up.
The lagoon became rough enough that going out to the farm no longer made much sense.
The dive had to be cancelled.
They invited us to come back again the following day.
Naturally, we did.
In the meantime, Damjan managed to make a dive on the outside of the atoll.
I had to skip it because my tank was empty.
Later he told me that the visibility had been fantastic and that the seabed dropped away very quickly into deep water.
At one point he became so focused on chasing a large Napoleon fish that only when he checked his instruments did he realise how deep he had gone.
That was enough to make him stop the chase and slowly head back up.
The following day we were once again with Kora and Kiyoshi, spending most of the morning with the pearls.
At one point Cia appeared.
She looked surprised when she saw us.
“You’re still here? Perfect! Tonight is my birthday. You have to come.”
It did not sound like an invitation that left much room for refusal.
We returned to the boat to clean ourselves up and find something that might work as a present.
Buying a last-minute birthday gift is not particularly easy when you are on a tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific.
Only then did we learn that it was not one birthday.
It was two.
Cia and Kiyoshi had been born on exactly the same day, in the same year, so they were celebrating together.
When we arrived, it felt as though half the island was there.
There was food, cakes, children, music, singing and plenty of laughter.
It felt like one large family gathering, and somehow, after only a few days on Manihiki, we had found ourselves right in the middle of it.
As soon as I walked in, however, I spotted a familiar face.
The man with the strange glasses.
The man who had invited me to breakfast.
He came straight over to me.
“Why didn’t you come? I prepared everything.”
I tried to explain that we had genuinely intended to come, but that on the way a woman had invited us in for tea and everything had gone off course from there.
At that moment Cia noticed what was happening.
“I invited them for tea,” she said.
Everyone burst out laughing.
And then we discovered the best part.
The man with the strange glasses was Cia’s brother.
Later we also learned that he held an important position connected with pearl farming in the Cook Islands.
From that point on, the conversation naturally turned almost entirely to pearls.
Who had produced the biggest one.
Who had sold the most expensive necklace.
Whose pearls had the best colour.
Who had sold pearls in Tahiti.
Which farm gave the best results.
Cia herself was wearing earrings and a necklace made of large dark pearls as if they were the most ordinary thing in the world.
To us, pearls like that looked like something from the window of an expensive jewellery store.
To them, they were simply part of everyday life.
That evening was when I finally understood Manihiki.
Pearls were not just something they sold.
They were work.
Family tradition.
Knowledge.
Pride.
A subject of endless conversation.
And, of course, a reason for endless debate about whose pearls were the best.
The stories continued late into the night.
The next morning we prepared the boat, went ashore one last time to say goodbye, and then raised the anchor.
We had spent only a few days on Manihiki, but in that short time we felt as though we had met more people than on some much larger islands where we had stayed much longer.
Behind us remained a ring of palm trees and a lagoon full of pearl oysters.
Ahead of us was the next atoll.
Suwarrow.