94 – High Society

As we are sailing along in French Polynesia, I get a text from my sister Cathy saying "It was so much fun having you at game night last night!" This text was accompanied by these pictures.  What a hoot!  A few weeks ago, she asked me for a recent picture but I certainly didn't think anything about it, nor could I have dreamed this up! While it made me so happy, it also made me a bit tearful as it made me miss them all the more. I so wish that I could have been there in person, however, it was great to be there a bit more than just in spirit.  If you ask any of our sailing friends, they'll agree that one the biggest negatives of this lifestyle is that you really miss your family and friends back home.  I love my family and I miss all of you!!!!!

 

So back to the sailing blog.  We had a delightful overnight trip - complete with a full moon to light up the sky - as we sailed from the Tuamotu chain of islands to Tahiti our first stop in the Society chain of islands.  We were still about 10 miles away when we caught our first glimpse of this capital island of French Polynesia and were assaulted by the wonderful aroma of tropical flowers filling the air.  Right away, we knew we were in for another treat.  Our first anchorage was a spot called Venus Point - named after Captain James Cook landed his first expedition in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus across the sun.  While, I have to say, while we weren't lucky enough to witness that phenomena, the planet has seemed to shine even more brightly and we've watched it set into the water on several occasions while sailing overnight.  Another interesting historical fact about this bay is that it's the 

the location for the famous mutiny aboard "The HMS Bounty” in 1788.  

This huge bay offers a wonderful anchorage as its protected from the rough seas by a huge coral reef which allowed easy access for our early morning arrival.  We dropped our anchor and almost immediately took the dinghy ashore for the ½ mile walk to the grocery store we’d seen on our map.  While this is a bit of an exaggeration, I almost cried when we walked through the doors.  This store was literally the largest most stocked store we’d seen in almost a year. As we walked every single isle and fawned over the huge selection of cheese and fresh produce selections, we were in heaven!

The next day, our friends Sabine and Jochen aboard “Josa” arrived in our harbor and we all decided to rent a car for a few days to explore a bit as well as have easy transport for the boat parts and food we wanted to buy in town.   Between exploring the island with our friends, shopping, waiting out the rain storms and getting our refrigerator repaired (yes, it’s fixed!!!!), our first week in Tahiti flew by.

Next, we moved to another anchorage near the Papeete airport where we settled in, quickly met a few other boat neighbors and even hired the children from the boat “Curious” to clean the bottom of our boat.   We were having so much fun with new friends who were so helpful and fun as they showed us all of the best places to shop and let us know about the Sunday farmer’s market in Papeete that another week and half flew by. 

The Papeete Sunday market was an absolute delight!  Our friends Kirke and Sten from “Curious” gave us detailed instructions regarding the layout of the market and specifically the guys who sells the best roasted pork at the market.  Leaving the boat before sunrise (we were told to arrive by 6:00am as they sell out by about 7:00am and the waiting line is about 30 minutes long), we were treated to gorgeous moon setting.  Following instructions from Kirke, we patiently waited in line with tons of other people and were indeed rewarded with the most amazing pork. What’s so funny is that there are several other sellers of pork but these guys have the longest line and always sell out early.  Yet, another example of how it definitely pays to have “local” knowledge.  With our pork in hand (and a few samples in our bellies), we set out to explore the rest of the market.  The market is a long-standing daily market with many sellers of fresh flowers, Polynesian pearls, produce and fresh fish.  However, on Sunday, the market is on steroids.  The fruit and vegetable vendors take over not only the inside of the market but many neighboring streets and share space with several people also selling prepared foods.  Kirka and Sten knew of the best place to get Firi Firi (local donuts) so we had to wait in line there too.  Enjoying our Firi Firi, we wondered aimlessly (I am sure I stopped at every vendor and many of them more than once) as we filled both of our backpacks as well our 2 shopping bags.

As it was getting later in the morning, we decided to also visit the prepared foods (mostly Asian dishes) in search of something fun for lunch.  At one booth, we met up with Cuc and Bill.  Cuc is a lovely Vietnamese lady, who upon learning that we were American (my lack of French was her first clue), immediately started telling us about Bill her American husband.  Bill, a veteran of the Vietnam war and the child of an American (and WWII veteran) father and Tahitian mother, met Cuc while in Vietnam. Cuc was a nurse in both Vietnam and the US before they moved to Tahiti.  These days she spends her time preparing foods that she sells locally and every Sunday at the market. They are the most adorable couple and we spent a couple of hours talking to both of them before choosing a few items to take home for our lunch.  As I tried to pay her, Cuc, refusing any payment and adding more items to our loot, shook her head and said “No, it tastes better if I give them to you.”  I don't know if she was right or not, but I do know everything tasted wonderful!!

The next week, the outboard for our dinghy started acting up and, unable to find the parts we needed, we contacted a local mechanic who unfortunately was away and not due back for another week.  Not to be deterred, Pedro took the engine apart several times and with the help of YouTube, managed to resolve our issue.  By this time, it was late in the week so we decided to stay a few more days so we could again hit up the Sunday market to load up on the pork, fresh produce and more of Cuc’s prepared food.  As she once again refused to allow us to pay, we surprised her with some Mother’s Day flowers from the market.  Once again, we spent another hour or so talking with them before tearfully bidding them good-bye. With the full moon rising again, we realized that we’d been in Tahiti a month.  Strictly from a tourist point of view, I have to say that personally, Tahiti didn’t have that much to offer.  However, as cruisers looking to reprovision and repair after almost a year in French Polynesia, once we scratched away at the surface, this island was a perfect stop.

The next day, we pulled up anchor and sailed the short 15 miles over to Cook’s Bay in Moorea.  Moorea is such a beautiful island and, in contrast to Tahiti with her big cities, was lush and sparsely populated.  Cook's Bay was situated such that we were within walking distance of several things we wanted to see.  No sooner had we dropped anchor, than our friends Vincent and Cecille aboard “Kalymnos” - along with their daughter Liz who was visiting from Paris – also arrived.   The next day, we all decided to take the short hike to the local Rhum distillery/fruit juice manufacturing plant.  While there was no production going while we were there, the tasting room was open and we all enjoyed trying the various rhum products as well as some fresh fruit juices.

The next day, Pedro and I signed up for a local cooking class that Kirke from “Curious” told us about.  Luckily, this too was a moderately short hike from the dinghy dock. The class was great and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting both the instructors and our fellow students.   This dishes we made were traditional foods made with fresh tuna, homemade coconut milk and breadfruit as well as homemade breads.  Afterwards they emailed us all of the recipes and met us the next day with fresh eggs from their farm.  

For our next adventure, we did a much longer hike through several pineapple plantations and on towards a lookout called "3 Pines" for a view of Cook’s Bay where our boat was anchored.  Moorea is famous for growing the Queen Pineapples and there are acres and acres of the delicious fruit growing throughout the island many with hiking trails right through the fields.

We spent another day snorkeling with Vincent, Cecille and Liz and thoroughly enjoyed evenings on each other’s boats but as soon as the weather looked good, we pulled up anchor and took off for our overnight sail over to Huahine.  With 2 possible anchorages, we decided to first motor down to the Baie d’Avea.  Huahine is actually comprised of two islands connected by a small bridge and the Baie d’Avea is located in Huahine Lti.  I have to say, this was definitely the prettiest water we anchored in since leaving the Tuamotu Islands. We spent a couple of days here snorkeling off the boat, taking the dinghy ashore for beach walks and enjoying happy hour at the local resort with our friends Roger and Jenny on “Atisha” (who used his drone to take these amazing pictures).  Our favorite excursion was snorkeling the small but gorgeous reef near the resort which housed both an octopus and colorful anemone along with numerous small reef fish.  

After a couple of days, we reluctantly left our gorgeous anchorage in favor of a more protected one closer to the main town of Fare.  This served two purposes as this bay was better protected from the large swell that was predicted to arrive in the next few days plus allowed us access to the town which was complete with a grocery store, vendors selling fresh produce, scooter rentals and several choices of restaurants.  We rented a scooter so that we could see the rest of the island and also visit the river that's home to the island's famous blue-eyed eels.  The island was beautiful and the eels were huge and really cool to see (we met a local man who fed them while we watched). After our scooter ride, we took the recommendations of several boaters and stopped at a restaurant just outside of town named Izzy’s.  Our meal was fabulous and we delighted in talking with both our server - a local lady - and Izzy - the owner from Southern California who moved to Polynesia about 8 years ago and opened up the restaurant.

After a couple of more days, the predicted swell arrived and seemed manageable enough so we took our chances and managed to navigate out the pass for the 5-hour sail over to the island of Raiatea where we dropped anchor near several other boating friends and wasted no time reconnecting.  The entire time we were anchored there, we enjoyed sundowners on what seemed to be a different boat each night.  Our first day, we took the dinghy up the Apo’oma’u River to a gorgeous botanical garden. This windy and narrow river, reminded us of the various Florida rivers in which we loved to kayak and we both found ourselves looking out for alligators (thankfully we never saw any).   The next day we, along with Roger and Jenny from “Atisha," rented a car to explore the island.  After a few hours of driving around the coast and needing to stretch our legs a bit, we found a beautiful hike in the middle of the island with partial views of the bay where our boats were anchored. 

We stayed a few more days enjoying our boating friends before picking up anchor to motor the short distance to our next stop on the island of Taha‘a.  Amongst its many other attributes, the island boasts of 2 rhum distilleries within walking distance of the dinghy dock. Needless to say, we visited both and even went back for sunset happy hour at the tapas bar connected to one of the distilleries. 

The next day, we, along with with Rob and Margie of “Silverwind,” all rented e-bikes for a tour of the island.  This was the perfect mode of transport for this mostly flat picturesque island (there were 2 monster hills which were thankfully towards the end of our ride – one of which got the best of me as I fell off the bike trying to change gears but I lived to tell about it). Anyway, our first stop was a pearl farm.  While there were no oysters harvested on Saturday while we were there, they did give us a great overview of the process and allowed us to roam the facility at our leisure.  After hearing about how time consuming the oyster cultivation process is, we appreciated their beauty and certainly understood why they are so expensive.  Nevertheless, we managed to get away from the gorgeous jewelry store adjacent to the workshop with all wallets still intact.  

Continuing on our island tour, our next stop was a vanilla plantation.  Again, there was no production going on as we arrived (I think we just missed them) but we were able to get a full presentation about the process and the history of vanilla in Polynesia.  The plant is actually from a strain originating in Mexico.  As it’s not native to the islands, its very labor intensive and has to be checked daily and manually pollinated. This too was fascinating and certainly explains why vanilla is so expensive.  Here I couldn’t resist.  We love vanilla so I had to buy some extract.  I’d previously bought some vanilla beans and am currently making my own extract with vodka but it still has a few months to go before it’s ready.  Continuing on, we stopped for lunch, hit every grocery store we saw (mostly just to see what they had but we did buy a few things) and continued on around the perimeter of the island enjoying the breathtaking views.  This was definitely a must do item on this island.

The next day we all took our dinghies over to reef that surrounds the islands to a place called the Coral Gardens.  This is a cut in the reef that allows water current to sneak in providing for a drift snorkel over colorful coral full of small reef fish and lots of anemones.  We loved this so much that we did the drift twice and came back the next day to do it twice again.  

Next, it was time to head to Bora Bora for our last French Polynesian island and our first boat guests since we left Panama.  Our dear friend Charlie (if you remember we had a great time when Charlie joined us in Greece in 2022) and his girlfriend Jeri (whom we’d met once before and were anxious to get to know better) booked last minute flights into Bora Bora to spend 5 days with us.  Our passage to Bora Bora was thankfully uneventful (we did pass a boat with friends who texted me a picture of us while under sail) and we arrived a few days early to make sure we were there when they arrived. Several boats we’d met along the way were also in Bora Bora so we enjoyed getting together for sundowners as well as a breathtakingly beautiful view hike with Rob and Margie.

Since we still had a bit of time, we booked a dive trip.  Our first stop was the manta ray feeding station where we planned to take Charlie and Jeri.  It was great to check out the site first and we got to see 4 manta rays.  Our second stop was just outside the pass on the island’s reef.  While the coral was not amazing, we had the best time of the whole dive when our guide found a curious octopus, and we spent the better part of the dive playing with the little guy.

At last, it was time for our guests to arrive so we moved from our anchorage to a mooring ball near the town dock to make it easier to take the dinghy to pick-up them along with 4 bags of luggage - 2 of which were filled with items we asked them to buy for our use and to give to islanders in some of the more remote places we’re planning to visit.  Once they were safely aboard and we found hiding places for all of the wonderful items they brought us, it was time to explore

Our first day with our boat guests, we decided to go for a sail out the pass for a few hours.  The wind was great but the swells made the sailing a bit rougher than we liked so we turned around and headed for a different anchorage that was adjacent to several good snorkeling sites.  We stayed at this mooring for 2 days so we could hit the various snorkeling spots.  The first spot we hit was loaded with stingrays and small black tip sharks.  While it’s not allowed, the local tour operators are clearly still feeding both of these and thus they are very curious and not at all afraid of humans swimming in their waters.  As a result, we got to a couple of hours swimming around and watching these creatures.

The next day, we went to a spot known to be a habitat for Eagle Rays.  We snorkeled around several promising spots but were never able to see any rays. So back to the boat we went for sundowners.  The next day, we moved to an anchorage near the manta ray cleaning station where the local reef fish take on the task of “cleaning” both the exterior and the teeth of these majestic creatures.  As soon as we had the boat’s anchor secured, we jumped in the dingy to head to the snorkel site.  This first time, we saw some pretty coral and a few reef fish but the fact that there were no other local boats should have given us warning that there was nothing else to see so we went away, disheartened.  However, the next morning, right after breakfast, we again hopped into the dinghy and headed to the site.  This time there were several other boats there so we were a bit more confident.  After just a few minutes, a 12-foot-wide manta ray leisurely swam right below us.  I’m pretty sure we swam around the site for an hour just watching this guy enjoying a spa day.  It really was amazing!    

We headed back to the big boat, pulled up the anchor once again and headed back to the first mooring field so we could again be near town for an evening out.  Now, lest you think this was all just fun and games, we made Jeri work for her (uh, more like ours) supper.  One of the items Charlie and Jeri brought us was a tortilla maker and Jeri rolled up her sleeves and made us several batches (we froze a couple of them) and even taught me how to cook the duck breast I bought at the local market (saving the grease to be used later on some fabulous, pan-fried potatoes.  

Our arrival in Bora Bora could not have been better timed.  Every July, many Polynesian islands hold a month-long festival called Heiva.  This is an annual celebration of Polynesian culture, and we arrived in time to witness some of the festivities.  Most Polynesian islands have their own festival (understandably, Tahiti is the largest). Each of Bora Bora's six villages on the island practice for months (we’d watched many practices in our time in Polynesia) and during Heiva each night two villages dress up in elaborate costumes putting on an amazingly vigorous show of traditional dancing and singing with huge numbers of participants (it’s hard to believe that not every single member of the village is present in one capacity of another).  On our last night with Charlie and Jeri, we enjoyed a great dinner at one the pop-up restaurants set-up strictly for the festival and enjoyed the show afterwards.  It was the perfect way to end our time together (at least until next time)!

As I type this, we are on day 7 of a 4-day crossing (yup, you read that right – the winds absolutely died but sadly the swell didn’t so we’re having a VERY slow sail) to our next island of Penrhyn in the Cook Islands.  But I’ll fill you in on that next time.

Until next post!