Society Islands here we come! First stop – Huahine
The Tuamotus certainly lived up to our expectations, plenty of crystal clear blue waters and fabulous snorkelling and diving. Now we’re moving on to the Society Islands with our first stop in Bora Bora.
I think these islands will be slightly more touristy than those in the Marquesas and Tuamotus and I must say, I’m ready for a bit of boutique shopping and browsing around a few pareo and tropical clothing shops, and finding a nice restaurant or two as well!
Friday 15 July – 10.45am: we once again successfully negotiated our way out through the tidal Tiputa pass and headed off for Huahine, about a 36 hour sail. However, that old “out of our comfort zone” reared its ugly head again about 3pm when the wind and waves came up. I am typing this at 11.30am on Saturday morning and we have been in very rough weather ever since. It has been a very long night with not a lot of sleep for the adults and a little bit of sea sickness from some of the younger crew members. We have been bouncing about, waves crashing over the boat and continuous squalls throughout the night. It has been like being on a mechanical bull at the Easter Showgrounds for the last 19 hours! Not pleasant at all, I will have a few bruises from crashing into door handles and cupboards! We have around 5 more hours of this to go.
Saturday 16 July – 4pm, finally we’re on terra firma in Huahine and very happy to be so too!
Huahine is made up of two islands, Huhahine Iti ( Little Huahine) and Huahine Nui ( Grand Huahine). These are two mountainous islands connected by a narrow isthmus and a bridge connects the two islands. We’ve anchored in Fare, the main town and it looks delightful from the boat.
We were straight into the dinghy to have a look around; it is beautiful, mountains covered in all sorts of lush foliage, palms and banyan trees, it is known as the Garden of Eden. Vanilla farms are numerous on the mountain flanks, and it is famous for its crops of watermelons and cucumbers. We had a walk around the town and then onto the beach and found somewhere to have our usual pina colada cocktail and watch the sunset before we headed to the Huahine Yacht club where we snagged two tables on the beach for dinner!
Sunday 17 July – a bit of a misty day today. We went into the village early because we had been told you could buy the beautiful Tahitian headpieces full of tropical flowers, and Kate and I were keen to get one each to wear at our daily cocktail sunset drinks. In we went to the market at 7.00am very excited, but were quickly disappointed that they only had them with fake flowers . However, the supermarket was good and there was some nice fruit and vegetables in the outside market.
The other bit of really good news is that we were able to dock outside the Yacht Club and fill up with precious water which meant we could do washing for the first time in ages. The boat looked like a Chinese laundry by the time we’d finished, with towels and clothes draped and hung out everywhere. This afternoon we sailed further around the coast and went into the beach and anchored in front of the beautiful La Mahana hotel where we had……you guessed it…..some pina coladas!
Monday 18 July – it is the most idyllic, glorious Tahitian sunny day, the water is indescribably beautiful and our photographs just don’t do it justice. The boys have been swimming all morning and this afternoon we rented cars.
What a beautiful island this is – the road was flat and it was easy to drive between Huahine Iti and Huahine Nui and the scenery is glorious – I have never seen so many shades of green – there must be a hundred of them. The foliage is so lush and with the sun streaming through, it has to be one of the most beautiful drives I have ever done, most of it alongside the water’s edge with hardly any cars on the road, the only hazard being dogs wandering around.
We have had the best day. . .. we started off by visiting two separate pareo studios where we saw the cotton stretched and nailed to a table and the two artists hand-painting beautiful Tahitian flowers on them. Next stop was the Huahine Pearl Farm. To visit this we were taken in a dragon boat over the lagoon to the Farm which was in a little over-the-water hut.
A lovely Tahitian lady talked us through the process of pearl farming (see my next blog!!). Back to the dock and into the cars (you can tell we were trying to fit in as much as we could before sunset and our usual tipples!) and off to see the artist Melanie’s studio. Melanie is American and specialises in Polynesian art and is famous here in Huahine– her studio is crammed full of beautiful paintings of Polynesia, portraits, street scenes, sunsets, boats, it was absolutely fabulous and luckily for us she popped her head in to say hello before we left.
Final stop was the Shell Museum – this was very interesting. It was in the owner, Frank’s house and he had all the shells meticulously curated into glass-topped cabinets with over 500 local species alone. More importantly, we viewed a case of shells where he told us the story of now poisonous they are, and how you could die from touching them, this came as quite a shock to all of us and we all took a lot of notice of it! The main take way from this is not to pick shells up from the seabed when you scuba dive or snorkel, only pick them up when they are dead on the beach.
Final stop was back at the La Mahana Hotel to drop off the rental cars and take our seats for our Happy Hour meeting. It was a really wonderful day and we had crammed so much into it. A Tahitian adventure from start to finish.