Honeymoon in French Polynesia #3
We’re back at Moorea today, Anchored in Opunohu Bay. Since we did the ATV tour on Moorea at the beginning of the trip we decided to stay on the boat today and rest. Devon has a bit of a hangover today anyway from yesterday’s cocktail hour. Since my last update we’ve been to Bora Bora, Taha’a, and Huahine. Tonight we sail back to Papeete, Tahiti where we’ll spend Wednesday night aboard the ship in port, then about a half day in the hotel room followed by a Thursday night flight back to LAX.
I’ve had much more sun in the last few days and it’s been pretty hot, about 30 degrees Celsius (86F). Since most of the people on board are European I’ve started to think in metric as much as possible so I can talk with them on their level– Kilometers instead of Miles, Kilos instead of Pounds, Euros instead of Dollars. Kinda fun actually and it makes me wish the U.S. would go metric.
While we were at Bora Bora the weather was a bit overcast so we couldn’t see all the color of the island and waters but it definitely is beautiful. I still think Moorea is the most beautiful Island. At Bora Bora we went on a Shark and Sting Ray feed and snorkel tour. VERY Cool! The Sting Ray are like puppies, they love people and keep coming up to you and touching your legs or almost landing on your chest. They don’t have teeth but they have really powerful suction for feeding. The bigger Rays are the friendlier ones. Of course we couldn’t help but think of Steve Irwin being killed by a Sting Ray but they are so friendly it’s hard to imagine they would hurt anyone on purpose. The sports attendant, Steve, summed it up well when he said, “being killed by a sting ray is like being killed by a box of kittens.” After the Sting Rays we swam with black tipped sharks. They were much less interested in us though and seemed to just circle us and patrol the area. Pilot fish and baby sharks swam underneath the larger sharks and there were all sorts of other fish in the area. The shark swim was pretty serene. We finally had a good sunset that night as well, tons of color.
The next day, we anchored at Taha’a and after breakfast we took a speedboat out to a motu for a Coral Garden drift. If you are ever in French Polynesia, THIS is the tour you should make sure and do. Basically you float down a little channel with the current while weaving around through openings in the coral. The water is only about 3-4 feet deep, the water is super clear, and there is a ton of colorful coral and fish. Fakarava’s coral pales in comparison. A local couple found and removed a “Crown of Thorns” from the channel. It is a crazy looking Sea Star about 1 foot in diameter, purple in color with red thorns all over the top. It is not native to the area and kills all of the coral it touches. I saw a program on Discovery about how Australia has a huge problem with the same animal in their reefs. After dinner there was a crab race on deck where you bet on the winner, but we didn’t win. They were pretty large Hermit Crabs that the crew picked up on Fakarava and each had a name like “Peter Pan” or “Sleeping Beauty.”
Yesterday the ship tied to a large mooring buoy at Huahine and following lunch we took a Jeep tour of the island. It’s a very pretty place and our guide told us of all sorts of cultural history for both Huahine and the other islands. We watched him feed the blue-eyed eels in a little creek, saw some of the ancient sacrificial Manae (from 500AD), and viewed bays and coral reefs from high altitude viewpoints (Belvedere). It was a fun tour. Last night was the Captains Dinner so everyone dressed up nicer than usual; the dining room was all done with white linens instead of the usual blue placemats. I had Rock Lobster tail and there was a special flaming meringue ice cream type of dessert. Devon missed out on dinner on account of her misjudging Cocktail Hour.
