Monday - January 31, 2005

French Polynesia: Tahiti and Moorea

The French Polynesian Islands have to be one of the most beautiful areas on earth. I kept walking around with the song Bali Hai of "South Pacific" fame running through my brain. We visited Tahiti first and thought it was just gorgeous. Then we visited Moorea the next day, and it was even more lovely. I am told that Bora Bora, which some people on board visited on an overnight trip, is even more beautiful, but I have a hard time understanding how that could be possible.

I can see why Gauguin arrived in French Polynesia and decided to stay. The islands are truly my idea of paradise. The water, which is at least a dozen shades of blue, is bordered by white and black sand beaches. The land is so lush and fertile that tropical flowers, such as hibiscus, frangiapani, Chinese Pagoda, and Bird of Paradise grow like weeds. Everywhere you look, you will see ginger plants with their bright red flowers; banana,rubber, mango, guava, and breadfruit trees, and coconut palms. Pineapple plantations stretch over the valleys that are ringed by green mountains with waterfalls cascading hundreds of feet down their sides. It is all indescribably beautiful.

In Tahiti, we docked at a new dock in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia. Because we had left Hawaii early we got to Papeete the day before we had been scheduled to arrive and had an extra afternoon there. Other than visiting its market, Papeete is nothing to write home about, so I won't. Suffice to say that our first afternoon in Papeete started off sunny and hot, but soon turned to driving rain, so we spent a few hours touring the aforementioned indoor market. But for our full day on the island, we hired a van and driver for six hours to take seven of us around the island. We had a wonderful day in the capable hands of Freddo, our driver. Between his English and our collective knowledge of high school French, we managed quite well. Freddo took us to a black sand beach where we walked out into the water, which was as warm as a bathtub, and watched the fishermen setting out. We visited a magnificent waterfall that was several hundred feet high, the Arahoho blowhole, and the Museum of Tahiti. Freddo bought us a bunch of finger bananas to try and they were the sweetest bananas I have ever tasted. Later, we stopped for lunch at a beach-side restaurant where we ordered plates of seafood, and managed to fight off the flies that descended on us when the food arrived long enough to polish off almost everything that was served to us. What we couldn't eat went to the very patient dog that kept us company through our lunch. We had beautifully sunny day for all this, which made things all that much better. Unfortunately, Mike took a spill on the slippery rocks at the blowhole and sprained a finger, but he'll survive.

After returning to the ship, we decided to skip dinner in our restaurant and headed up to the Sun Deck where we joined a lot of other passengers for some music, free drinks and a huge barbeque where we could choose from lamb chops, roast beef, hamburgers and hotdogs, an array of salads, and a table covered with desserts. It was a beautiful evening for it and the crew had decorated the deck with palm fronds and strings of colored lights, so it was quite a nice setting. Then at 11 pm, there were three long blasts on the whistle, and we headed out to sea again on our way to Moorea.

The approach to Moorea is something to see because there are two huge harbors separated by a spit of land where the mountains come down to meet the sea. I have to take the word of other on this because I was sawing logs when we dropped anchor around 6 am, but Mike was up shortly after that to set off on his Catamaran and snorkeling excursion. He said the Catamaran took him and a few others out beyond the reef which rings the harbors, and the snorkeling was almost as good as that he did off the Great Barrier Reef. Part of the time he got to sit in one of the seats on the front of a pontoon and he said it felt as though he was flying over the water!

I didn't go on this excursion because one was required to know how to swim to do this, so I opted to do a driving tour of the island in the afternoon with my mother. It was the most wonderful drive with incredible scenery. The highlight was a visit to Belvedere Point near the top of a mountain where we could see out over the two bays to the QE2 anchored in the farthest harbor. Mike went one better than us - he decided on the spur of the moment to take a jeep tour around the island. He put down his $30 and waited while they found five other people to fill the jeep. This was about the time that the QE2 crew was given shore leave, so a couple of crew members signed up and they recruited enough others. Since Mike was the only one not on the crew, they decided to make him an honorary crew member for the duration of the jeep trip! He enjoyed the trip and saw a lot of the island, but got quite wet since it rained heavily for the first half of the trip and the jeep had open sides.

It was a very hot and humid day, with occasional cloudbursts, but by the time we pulled up anchor around 6 pm, the sky was a deep blue with puffy white clouds. The views of the island as we sailed away are something I will remember forever, and I vowed that we will come back to stay for a longer period some day. But for now, we are off to New Zealand.