Tahiti & Moorea, Society Islands.

 

Monday 17^th July, Fare, Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia.

A lovely Monday afternoon here in Fare when we were supposed to be sailing over to the neighbouring island of Taha'a but the forecast got less and less optimistic and this morning, after an early departure, there was just not enough wind so we turned around and here we still are. There are a lot worse places to be trapped I can tell you, a lot worse. The island of Huahine wasn't even on my radar a couple of weeks ago but friends recommended it and then of course Karl couldn't resist ticking that box. And it has turned out to be a little gem of an island.

We've been in the Society Islands since the end of June having left the Marquesas and sailed right on by the Tuamotus (gasps from all the sailors) straight to Tahiti. We had planned to stop in the Tuamotus, they do tend to make the all time favourites lists amongst sailors, but the logistics were driving us nuts. The passes through the reefs only have a couple of hours window to get through on each turn of the tide because of the strong currents so timing your arrival is everything. We had great wind so would have needed to slow down to arrive at a suitable time and, well, Gráinne just didn't want to slow down. We spent a couple of days tying ourselves in knots trying to find a target island that we could arrive at at the appropriate time and finally said "forget it, let's just keep going straight to Tahiti".

Now I think Tahiti was the only island of French Polynesia that I'd heard of in my pre-sailing life. That and maybe Bora Bora. But ironically we had almost decided to skip Tahiti too because the general reputation these days is that it's not what it used to be and is very overdeveloped and busy and not very pleasant. On the morning we arrived we anchored in the bay by Point Venus – the spot where Captain Cook had anchored and built an observatory for his task of observing the transit of Venus on his first voyage in 1769. It was a lovely quiet spot, we had pancakes for breakfast made from an Australian packet with a best before date of January 2020. We survived that and spent the day clearing up, recovering from the passage and planning our assault on the capital Papeete. 

A sunrise arrival in Tahiti after a week at sea.

The next day we conceded that we were unlikely to win the roulette game that is trying to find a free marina berth in Papeete so we motored down to anchor by the airport. Also, it was by the airport and Karl got to watch planes. We realised we'd anchored by a few floating bars and started to worry about the potential night-time noise but at 5pm they all upped anchor and left! Lovely.

Heading down the channel inside the reef with Papeete airport runway on the left and a view to Moorea off to the right.

Papeete was a little overwhelming. It's a real city with a population of around 25,000. So many people! Tahiti has a population of 190,000! So many people!!! Straight off the dinghy dock we found ourselves confronted with four lanes of traffic and pedestrian crossings controlled by lights that made a sound like winning at the pokies (slot machines) when it was time to cross. And lots of people. And shops. And noise. Karl's says: "And the smell! Cars really stink!". We didn't take too long though to regain our composure and head straight for 3 Brasseurs brewery for lunch with Matilda and Cerulean.

At the big and busy Papeete market.

Even the McDonald's in Tahiti comes with a view of the lagoon and Moorea.

Because of the skipping the Tuamotus thing we unexpectedly found ourselves in Tahiti at the very best time of year - during their Heiva festival. Heiva involves lots of Polynesian music, singing, dancing and sports competitions and attracts participants from all over French Polynesia. Tiny little islands send a fairly large percentage of their populations to put on very impressive music and dance performances. We went along to a show one evening and it was just fantastic.

This group is from the Austral island of Rurutu, population 2500. They were enjoying every moment of their Heiva performance in the big smoke.

So as well as Heiva we did the tourism thing, hired a car and stayed ashore for a couple of nights. Tahiti is almost two islands – Tahiti Nui (big Tahiti) and Tahiti Iti (little Tahiti) are joined by just a narrow isthmus. Tahiti Iti is a bit of a different world, much smaller, quieter and more laid back. We were able to circumnavigate the entire island, spend alot of time gawping in awe at the shelves of the Carrefour supermarket and still have time left to do laundry in the washing machine that came with our holiday home. Tourism perfection. And we saw many, many, many churches. Surely the highest concentration of churches in the world. Every small village seems to have about three. 

Road trip on Tahiti Iti.

Grottes de Mara'a, a pretty tinkling pool in a drippy cave.

Ceremonial platform at the Arahurahu Marae. Even though we're kind of maraed out at this point this one was quite impressive.

A sailor's holiday: laundry done and hanging out to dry, using someone else's internet to upload a blog and hosting the neighbour's dog at Matiti.

Almost the end of the road at Tautira, Tahiti Iti.

Down south in Tahiti Iti Karl made the surfers' pilgrimage to the famous break at Teahupo'o (where the surfing will be held for next year's Paris Olympics). We went out in a boat to stare at the wave and watch the surfers - amazing to be able to see them heading straight for you down a barrel, like something out of a surfing magazine. Karl was buzzing for days. The local who was driving our tour boat and who also surfs the wave, Homana O'Connor, has Irish heritage and was very excited to meet someone else whose name began with an "O'".

Karl catching barrel before he's 50.

Karl as buzzing as if he had actually caught barrel.

So pumped by the surfing he just had to make fire.

On our last day in Tahiti we took the dinghy down to the big Carrefour to stock up on goodies. It's a pretty long trip, 2 nautical miles (4km), and on the way back the wind had come up and the lagoon had gotten very choppy. Enzo (the dinghy) was sitting a little lower in the water than usual (beer is heavy) as we bashed straight into the waves getting completely soaked (save the baguette!!!) and taking on water with every wave. Enzo became an absolute bathtub. There was some frantic bailing and lots of promising to never ever ever take a long dinghy ride in big wind ever again but we did make it back and.....by some miracle.....the baguette stayed dry!

Next stop after Tahiti was the next door island of Moorea. It's Tahiti's smaller, quieter, sister island (L'Ile Soeur, population about 18,000) just a half a day's sail away. Going there from Tahiti is a bit like going from Brisbane to Straddie for the weekend. We anchored in Cook's Bay. Can't get away from Captain Cook it seems. A beautiful, beautiful bay surrounded by tall, green mountains. We got chatting to some of the crew of an Aussie boat, Icarus, ashore and they invited us over for drinks. It was only later, as we were getting ready to head across, that I realised we'd met them before. They had been the boat in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten back in 2021 that had kindly offered to witness an Australian Stat Dec I needed for something or other (probably my citizenship application I think) and now here they were again on their way back to Townsville this season.

The anchorage at the very beautiful Cook's Bay

We hired a moped for a day, rather than a car, to do a more relaxed circumnavigation of Moorea and even then Karl still had to slow down to drag out the trip. It is not a big island. It is very pretty though and also has lots of churches. And if someone ever holds a gun to your head and forces you to spend a week or so in an overwater bungalow in a tropical resort you could do worse than to choose the Sofitel Moorea. We didn't sample it ourselves but from what we saw I think I could imagine myself there.

Vroom vroom beep beep.

One of the many, many, many churches in the Society Islands.

Beach rules. Now does "upa upa" mean boom-boom or mega-bass?

Contemplating what could be at the Sofitel bungalows.

And at the end of the day we realised the best place on the island was back in Cook's Bay.

All that and I haven't even started to tell you about Huahine yet! So I'll do that in a separate blog. But first, here's Karl's favourite Tahitian ad.