Moorea

Moorea still gets our vote for the prettiest of the Society Islands. Since we had traveled here 5 years ago on a holiday, we were not going to stop here with the boat, happily, we changed our minds. When we arrived, we anchored on the top, port side of Opunohu Bay in about 26 feet of turquoise water with a sandy bottom. This is noted as the prettiest anchorage in Moorea by all of the guide books, so as you might imagine, every other boat visiting Moorea is also anchored here. These sail boat guys are really teaching us about how to get cozy in an anchorage, we are like sardines here. Anchoring here is definitely not like the Canadian Northwest where if there is one other boat in the bay, you consider it crowded and move on, here there are so few other bays to move on too. But the weather is calm for three glorious days and this anchorage is picture perfect with the beautiful water, sandy beach, the crashing surf on the reef, the palm trees and the towering volcanic mountains covered in robes of lush green. This is what the tropics is all about, getting up in the morning and having your coffee on the back deck, no wind, water like a bathtub, air temp. 26 degrees, sun shining and then in the evening, having a glass of wine on the fly bridge, not a whisper of wind, under a full moon that lights the world around you. This is what we have been talking about! The diving has been quiet good, we did two dives with Top Dive and it was fun to find Nicholas is still a dive master here - we dove with him 5 years ago. Our first evening here we met a very nice South African couple on a 76 Nordhavn and had Happy Hour with them and a good visit. They of course have a very nice boat. The small village of Papetoai has a nice boat quay and we tied up there and walked around a bit. Our exploring netted us the locations of three small grocery stores and a good local restaurant for lunch - Snack Mahana. Today we rented what they call a "Bugster" - a go cart with signal lights - and toured the island a bit. Found a happy pizza place - Chez Luciano - for lunch, good pizza and very fast. We bought some local pineapples from a road side stand for pinacoladas later (maybe, I'm hoping!!!) and found yet some more little crafty things that we just had to have. We got the scoop on a good restaurant for tomorrow. When we got back to the big boat, the wind was really up, about 25 knots, and it seemed that we were dragging a bit. So because of the tight quarters, we pulled anchor and just went around the corner into the bottom end of Opunohu Bay where we found the protection we needed from the wind and surprisingly the elbow room we so crave. This move also exposes us to a whole new panorama of beauty, sometimes, you just have to be here!

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