by Judy Handley | Jun 19, 2006 | French Polynesia - Society Islands, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 245, Year 1: Windbird in Tahiti
Date: Monday, June 19, 2006
Weather: Not Recorded
Latitude: 17 degrees 35 minutes S
Longitude: 149 degrees 37 minutes W
Location: Anchored Near Marina Taina, Papeete, Tahiti
Windbird has arrived in Tahiti. We haven’t seen much of it yet, but it is certainly the biggest city we have seen since Panama. Moorea is such a quiet, low-key island. I can tell already that Tahiti is not. The sail from Moorea to here is about 28 miles from anchorage to anchorage. The pass between the two islands is only ten miles wide, but Cook’s Bay is a few miles from the pass. And once you get to Tahiti, you enter the Passe de Papeete and have a few more miles to go up the Chenel de Faaa. The reef separates you from the ocean and the airport is on your land side. When you first enter the pass, the city of Papeete is directly in front of you. Some people stay on the quay in town, but theft there is rampant so we decided to head to the area near the Marina Taina in “suburbs”. It is three miles from here to town by boat, but I’m not sure how far it is by land. This we will discover tomorrow.
We are anchored in a little bay close to the Marina Taina. The view from our anchorage across the reef is of Moorea with Tahiti’s resort hotels in the other direction. We can use the marina dinghy dock, the expensive laundry ($11US per load to wash and another $11 per load to dry, and the showers there for just a $10US deposit that is returned when we turn in the key. The marina is very modern and the facilities are better than anyplace we have seen on this voyage. We can purchase time on the marina’s wireless internet connection. They actually sell an antenna to boost our capacity to receive the wireless onboard. We have been looking for an antenna like this since we were in Bonaire, but have not found one. Matt, the internet guru here, is a very friendly and helpful young man. He will come to the boat with an antenna and let us see if it gives us the needed boost before purchasing. If we can’t receive wireless on the boat, at least we can take our computer into the marina and communicate from there. When we walk through the marina and out to the main road, it is just a stone’s throw to the left to a traffic circle where we can hop on Le Truck. Le Truck is the cheaper way to travel into Papeete, but you do have to transfer. To the right, we can catch the Tahiti “Greyhound” bus with air conditioning. The cost is $2US per person into Tahiti and another $2 back home. If we walk about 10 minutes to the left, we reach a huge shopping complex called Carrefour. We walked there today and were in awe of the huge variety of things available. Some things are extremely expensive ($11 for a US fresh artichoke) but others are very reasonable ($4 for a frozen chicken). Drinks are the really expensive items. It costs about $50 for a case of beer and about $15 for a case of coke. But you have to eat and drink, so you just pay the price.
We are looking forward to exploring downtown Papeete tomorrow and will report on that venture in tomorrow’s log. Every day is a new adventure and we are very much looking forward to our explorations here in Tahiti.
by Judy Handley | Jun 18, 2006 | French Polynesia - Society Islands, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 244, Year 1: Happy Father’s Day
Date: Sunday, June 18, 2006
Weather: Not Recorded
Location: Cook’s Bay, Moorea (Society Islands, French Polynesia)
There’s not much to report today . . . just a typical day in the life of a cruiser. We spent the entire morning continuing to reorganize the food storage, and it is a great feeling to have that done. We now know much better where to store certain things where they will be accessible during passages and when we have guests aboard. What seemed like good storage space when we were living aboard has ended up not to be so while cruising. We just hope our new organization works better for us.
Our next task was to get the v-berth ready for company. Mary Ellen and Lee, Mark’s sister and brother-in-law, fly into Papeete on Friday. We use the v-berth for storage during passages and somehow it always gets filled with “things”. We’re not sure where all the stuff comes from and we find it amazing that we can get it all put away. Boats have limited storage, but you learn to use that space in amazing ways. So ME and Lee, if you are reading this, we are all ready for you.
Our next task was to get ready for company for dinner. Last night we went over to Quantum Leap to visit for a short time and invited them over for dinner tonight. Tom had a birthday last week, and he and Bette Lee had their 38th wedding anniversary on Friday night. Add Father’s Day to that, and we felt we had great reasons to celebrate together. We will be leaving for Papeete in the morning and probably won’t see them again for quite a while. About the time we return here with Mary Ellen and Lee, they will be heading to Papeete to pick up their family who will be visiting with them in July. I know I have said before that in this cruising life, you constantly make news friends but keep the old. We look forward to seeing Quantum Leap later in the summer or fall when our cruising schedules once again coincide.
So tomorrow we head across the channel to Papeete. There is a strike of some sort there and it is starting to cause cruisers some inconveniences. We aren’t sure who is striking, but we know the Custom’s Office and the largest chandleries are not accessible at this time. There are also reduced ferry and land travel schedules. At this point, the strike is not affecting tourists. Flights are coming in and out on a regular schedule. We’ll just have to get there and find out the details. Papeete is a big city, so things are going to be a little different for the next week or so. Some cruisers love Papeete and others really dislike it. It will be interesting to see how we adjust.
by Judy Handley | Jun 17, 2006 | French Polynesia - Society Islands, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 243, Year 1: Living at Anchor in French Polynesia
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2006
Weather: Not Recorded
Location: Cook’s Bay, Moorea (Society Islands, French Polynesia)
We have been here for six days and each day has been wonderful. I think Moorea has just the right mix of beauty, tradition, and modern conveniences to make it a very comfortable place to stay. The businesses here follow island time and close at midday. That is still hard for us to get used to, but I think it is a good thing. Everything closes from noon and reopens two or three hours later. Life is easy here. I’m sure things will change when we cross the channel and go to Tahiti, but we know this place is only ten miles away. If Tahiti gets too rowdy, we’ll just head back here.
Today was a “work on the boat” day. We started out by taking out every single can of food from all of their hiding places aboard. We decided that it was time to access what we have and update the spreadsheets. When we started out we had everything logged into a spreadsheet, but as we traveled we sometimes forgot to record when we used things. This update will help us decide what we need to buy while we are in Tahiti where prices are high, but not as high as in the out islands. We are just a little more than half way to New Zealand, so it is a good time reassess. We still have cans of food sitting around and we will finish this job tomorrow. Around 11 AM we headed into the Bali Hai to walk to the internet café. It always closes at noon and reopens at 1:30, but I figured it would close at noon today and not open again until Saturday–right assumption. But we got there in time to download our land-based e-mail and send a couple of picture files to friends, but I was not able to send more picture files to the website. That will have to wait until we are in Papeete. On the way back we stopped at a local pottery place. The displays were beautiful, but very expensive.
When we returned to Windbird, we got into cleaning mode. The bottom and waterline of the boat gets an incredible amount of growth out here. And the growth creeps onto the white topsides. Every couple of weeks we have to do a major cleaning. This requires that Mark gets in to the water using our Snuba gear and dives under the boat to clean. I stay in the dinghy and clean around the waterline. It is hard and exhausting work. I guess this is our payment for living here in paradise. Not easy, but the return is certainly worth it.
We finished this work at about 5:00 PM here and decided to call our kids back in Massachusetts. We knew our son was visiting with our daughter this weekend and thought we could talk to both at the same time. We thought we had a five hour difference, but it is six hours. It was 11 PM in Massachusetts, but the kids were still up watching a tape of the US versus Italy World Cup Match today. It was wonderful talking with them even though the Satellite connection was broken. The kids had planned to call us tomorrow for Father’s Day, but we beat them to it. We had no idea that tomorrow was Father’s Day. Those things fall through the cracks out here.
Tomorrow we will finish repacking all of the canned goods and finish cleaning the bottom of the boat. At 6 PM, Tom, BetteLee, and Katherine from Quantum Leap will come over for dinner. We plan to watch South Pacific and see if we can identify any of the landscapes. Moorea is the mythical Bali Hai in that movie and I think Bora Bora is the site of the main airstrip. It will be fun to see if we recognize any of the scenery.
by Judy Handley | Jun 16, 2006 | French Polynesia - Society Islands, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 242, Year 1: Yesterday’s Tour of Moorea—The Details
Date: Friday, June 16, 2006
Weather: Still Sunny and Beautiful
Location: Cook’s Bay, Moorea (Society Islands, French Polynesia)
This is the continuation of yesterday’s log. I had promised to get the details out early in the day, but as always, one thing led to another, and that didn’t happen. So I am just including the details of yesterday’s tour with today’s log. I’ll start with the details of yesterday and get to today later in the log.
Although Bora Bora has the reputation as French Polynesia’s most beautiful island, many think Moorea should hold that distinction. Moorea has beautiful white-sand beaches, a turquoise-blue lagoon encircling it, and lush volcanic peaks that make for very dramatic scenery. And all of this is mixed with a relaxed lifestyle. There are no high-rise glass and steel hotels. The resorts are big but they fit into the landscape with their thatched-roof bungalows on the water’s edge and sometimes over the water. The island’s shape is triangular with the flat top of the triangle cut deeply by two bays. It has an encircling coral reef which forms the wide blue-green lagoon. In places the colors are very vivid from a bright turquoise blue blending into a deeper turquoise and then a bright blue. As you drive around the island, the side facing Tahiti has surfing waves rolling in over the coral reef. Tahiti is only ten miles away and at night on that side of the island, you can see all of Papeete lit up like a Christmas tree. It looks huge from here.
The road that goes all the way around the island hugs the coastline and is 59 kilometers in length. Instead of mile markers here, you have kilometer stones. These are slabs of stone with the kilometer carved into the stone. The kilometers are indicated as PK’s. I have no idea what a PD is, but I will use that terminology to indicate distance as we traveled. If you drove and didn’t stop a lot as we did, you could drive it easily in an hour. We started our trek in Paopao at the Club Bali Hai Hotel. As I have mentioned before, this resort is just a very short dinghy ride from the boat and they are very welcoming to cruisers and let us use their wharf. We rented the car in the lobby of the Bali Hai and headed north to the top part of the island. The first little town is Maharepa. It is about 4 kilometers from Paopao and since it is an easy walk from the Bali Hai, we had been there on foot before. Once we left there, however, we were in unfamiliar territory. We continued to Temae where there is a huge estuary on the coast that is being “reclaimed” and developed into a US$75 million 18-hole golf course and 150-room five-star hotel. The residents here fought this for many years, but in the end, development won. Since other hotels on the island are closing, it is hard to figure out why another bigger hotel is being built. But we all know that is the way of “progress”. Next we went past the airport and then up a hill to the Toatea Lookout across the Sea of the Moon which is the pass between Moorea and Tahiti. It was our first view of Tahiti since she was wrapped in clouds when we sailed past on arrival. The view was beautiful. You look down on the Sofitel Ia Ora Hotel which costs $780 per night to stay in one of the thatched huts over the water.
The next stop was in Vaiare. This is home to the very busy ferry terminal connecting Papeete, Tahiti to Moorea. Cars were parked everywhere along the road and in a large parking area. It reminded us of the ferry terminal on the Cape going to Martha’s Vineyard. There is a marina in Vaiare, so we stopped to check out the local boats. There is also a large supermarket there, so we stopped to check that out. We bought bread and cheese and had this as an early lunch in the parking lot. Then it was on to the next town of Afareaitu. This is located at PK10. The views of the lagoon from here were really beautiful. There is a small motu, Motu Ahi, out on the reef here and the views of the lagoon with its turquoise waters were just beautiful. We were supposed to stop and visit Tahitian Gold here. We understood this to be a vanilla plantation and processing plant that produces some of the best vanilla in the world. Unfortunately, it is no longer in production here. We were told Tahitian Gold is now in Tahiti. This part of the coast of Moorea reminded us of the west coast of Florida prior to the development of high rises. This, of course, was only true when we looked out over the water. When we looked inland at the towering mountains, we no longer had that “Florida” feeling.
We were now driving through tiny little villages and coconut plantations. At PK24 in the town of Haapiti, we visited the twin-towered Eglise de la Sante Famille built in 1891. This was once the head church of the Catholic mission on the island. The setting was idyllic, but were were not able to go inside the church. By this time we had rounded the bottom of the island and started up the west coast. There is an anchorage here for boats entering the Matauvau Pass and surfer waves out on the reef. Beautiful place. We stopped at Linareva’s Floating Restaurant, Le Bateau, to have a cold drink and enjoy the views. It was a really unique little restaurant in a floating boat at the end of a long pier. You could watch the tropical fish swimming in the water as you walked out to the restaurant. Just a couple of kilometers further on, we could tell that we were entering a more developed area. We passed the Tiki Village Theater which is like a miniature Disney Polynesian World and then we saw this huge cement Tahitian warrior beside the road and a big sign that said Painapo (Pineapple) Beach. We just had to stop and check this out and we were very glad that we did. Pineapple Beach is a restaurant and the thatched roof hut with all of the tables was a beautiful replica of a traditional house structure. We met the owner who welcomed us to paradise and then went down by the beach. There was an older man sitting on the beach weaving the strands of coconut fiber into beautiful little rings. He said someone was coming to the restaurant for their 50th wedding anniversary and wanted rings for all the guests as favors. He was wearing a ring that was a black pearl woven into the braided coconut fiber. I loved it and we tried to find a way to meet with this man again so I could bring him a pearl and have it woven into a ring. He said he would be heading to Papeete soon for the month long Hieva celebration and I will try to find him there. He spoke very good English and explained that his name was Bozoo-not like the clown but indicating a beautiful small boat.
Next we came to the northwest coast of the island where most of the hotels and small tourist shops are located. The town here is called Tiahura. We had been here with the Quantum Leap crew a couple of days ago, so we were familiar with the touristy feel of this part of the island. We then headed back across the top of the island, down around Opunohu Bay and back up to Pihaena at the tip of land between Opunohu Bay and Cook’s Bay. We drove past the Sheraton where we had planned to snorkel and headed first to the Distillerie de Moorea Fruit-Juice Factory. All of the juices are made with no preservatives and they make 40-proof fruit liqueurs. The nice thing about this visit was the taste-testing. They were very, very generous with tasting, giving us a full shot of each product they had to sell. I ended up buying a few bottles for gifts, and then we were off to the Sheraton. We had heard that there was great snorkeling off the beach there and we were not disappointed. This Sheraton has thatched roof huts that go quite a ways out into the lagoon and the snorkeling around them was nice. The coral was as colorful as any coral we have seen on this voyage.
The final stop of this trip was all the way back to Cook’s Bay and back to the Vaire ferry area to the grocery store. By this time it was almost 7:00 PM. We had just enough time to make our 7 o’clock reservation at Alfredo’s. We had a great time listening to Ron Falconer sing and play the dulcimer. We made the reservations so that we could hear our friend Kathleen from Quantum Leap who had been invited to join Ron for a few songs. Kathleen plays the guitar and sings and it was a great combo. By the time we got back to Windbird, we were exhausted, but we had a great day.
Today we took it slow. Mark took down all of the canvas in the cockpit to reinforce the stitching and I cleaned the stainless. That was all we did today, but it took most of the day. Tonight we went to Quantum Leap. They had invited Ron, the singer from Alfredo’s, to join a few of us tonight. We learned more about Ron’s sailing adventures and he was very helpful in giving us advice on South Pacific cruises. We are anxious to read his book, “Together Alone”.
by Judy Handley | Jun 15, 2006 | French Polynesia - Society Islands, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 241, Year 1: A Full Day Tour of Moorea
Date: Thursday, June 15, 2006
Weather: Another Fantastic Day
Location: Cook’s Bay, Moorea (Society Islands, French Polynesia)
What a day! We picked up the rental car at 8:00 am this morning and we have just returned to the boat at 11:30 pm. It was a long, but fantastic day. We drove the perimeter of Moorea, met very interesting people, went snorkeling and saw fish we have never seen before and some very colorful coral, drove up into the mountains, visited archaeological sites, went to the Moore Juice Factory (which produces only “fermented” juices), and ended our evening at a local restaurant called Alfredo’s. Kathleen from Quantum Leap was going to be singing and playing guitar there tonight with Ron Falconer. He is a sailor who lived in the Caroline Islands in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with his wife and young children, who now makes his living as a musician.
It was a day jam-packed with new experiences and I will have to write the details in the morning. After almost 14 hours on the go, it is time for rest. I’ll check-in early in the tomorrow with the details of today.
by Judy Handley | Jun 14, 2006 | French Polynesia - Society Islands, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 240, Year 1: Drive About Beautiful Moorea
Date: Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Weather: Fantastic!
Location: Cook’s Bay, Moorea (Society Islands, French Polynesia)
The beauty of this place is indescribable. The mountains and spires that loom above us are just breathtaking. Today we took a ride with the folks from Quantum Leap in their rental car. We drove from here in Cook’s Bay around to Opunohu Bay and then up into the mountains to a viewpoint that was spectacular. The drive to Opunohu Bay took us out to the coral reef that surrounds the island. A number of boats are anchored out there now that the winds have died down and it looks most inviting. The waters are shallow and turquoise blue with lots of coral visible from land. The beaches have white, white sand. We had lunch at a hotel on the reef and watched kite surfers who put on quite a show. It was a great afternoon and when we returned to the Bali Hai, our homebase here, Mark and I set off for the internet café to try and send pictures to the website. Unfortunately we got there after 4:00 which is closing time, so we will have to try again tomorrow or Friday. The enjoyed the walk even though we were unsuccessful in our quest. The road that goes all the way around this island is right on the water’s edge, so the views are great as you walk.
As we drove around today, we all discussed how to describe to others what it is like here. Someone said it is like Hawaii 50 years ago. It reminds me of the western coast of south Florida in the 1960’s, with the addition of the mountains. It is much less developed than I anticipated, but at the same time I would say the people here are very much living in the 21st century with one foot embedded in an ancient past. Tomorrow when we drive the entire island I am hoping to have a better handle on how to describe it to you.
Tonight we attended the Polynesian dance show at the hotel. The dancing was not as good as some we have seen in the Marquesas, but it was still fascinating to watch. We had a great dinner afterwards and met more people who are staying at the hotel. Most of them own time shares here. If they didn’t have the time share, they would be paying about $170 per night at the Bali High. At another hotel on the east side of the island we hear the rooms go for $780 per night. I want to see this place tomorrow and will let you know what makes it worth that much money!
