Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Market ? What Market?

So we are all pumped up to go to Fare on Huahine for market day. According to the guide books and the girl in the scooter rental place - Yes, there is a market on Saturday. All day! Down by the cargo dock. Well, long story short, we bought a few supplies at the regular grocery store and were back to the big boat in an hour. Quite disappointing, there were two tail-gate trucks with a few pieces of fruit and the other one had some veal. Our afternoon was spent burning up fuel in the whaler, boogey boarding in the bay where we have the big boat parked. It took a few times for Georgia to get back into the groove and because I'm lucky today, I get up first time. But I'm not a very good boat driver and I couldn't get the throttle right to allow Glen to stabalize the board so that he could get up. So before we ripped his arms out, he promised I could try driving another day and he got back on board and drove for Georgia again. When we finished that craziness, we took a tour in the whaler to the other side of the island in search of a smooth snorkel place as the wind had picked up on the west side making it too rough to snorkel there. we saw some neat things from the water, but curiously, it was rough on the east side too so we headed back to the Mother ship and soothed our soar muscles with papaya smoothies for Happy Hour.

Sunday was a dive day, Eric and Anne came from Oso Blanco and we headed for Avapehi Pass for a spectacular dive (according to the dive books). We anchored our boats by the local dive boat (good sign - there is dive activity here) and descended to the dead coral below. It will get better as we go into the pass - Not!. We found a couple of eels and saw a few more fish than usual, but diving here is not very good to say the least. To top the experience off, we mis-judged the current and almost got ourselves swept out to sea (not a sign of experienced divers as we like to think of ourselves). So we called it a day and headed back to the big boats, chatted for a bit before Eric and Anne took off for their big boat then cleaned our gear. Tomorrow, we will head over to Raiatea, a two hour trip.

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Friday, June 25, 2010

Huahine - Beautiful!

Our crossing from Tahiti to Huahine was interesting because of the big water and the fact that it was dark. There was a quarter moon on but it didn't show because of the rain clouds. But our first glimpses of Huahine were in bright sunshine. The Avapehi Pass was wide and well marked and Smooth! The lagoon to the south of the village of Fare is also well marked. The water colors are unbelievable, the depths are beautiful dark blue and the sand shallows are the loveliest shade of turquoise. The water visibility is at least 90 feet in most places. We parked up on the reef side of the lagoon and immediately prepared to snorkel the reef beside us. The current runs pretty strong in this part of the lagoon channel as I was swept rapidly away from the boat when I jumped in the water and had a difficult time swimming back to the boat. This method of getting to the reef was not going to work so we lowered the whaler and drove ourselves over, anchored the whaler in a sandy spot then spent the better part of the morning viewing the many little fishes and coral heads. We found two eels. A cyclone swept the area in February and the evidence was in the many huge coral rocks that were broken or upside down in the water. After our snorkel we took an exploratory trip on the whaler back to Fare and south to Aveo Bay. Along the way we found Port Bourayne which is a large sheltered area that resembles a bay but is open to the east side of Huahine. Huahine is really two islands in the same lagoon. Anyway, because Port Bourayne was so nice we hoisted anchor on the big boat and moved in to Port Bourayne. This is bar none the nicest anchorage we have been in yet since leaving Canada's west coast. No swell, no current, no noisy town, no boat traffic, no wind, no waves - only smooth blue water with lovely lush forest lining the sandy beaches. You get the picture - right? We did a shake down dive once we were all set up just to get Georgia acquainted with our equipment, sadly our nice anchorage does not have great diving, but we got all the wrinkles out of our gear. The next day as we were enjoying our morning coffee, Oso Blanco arrived in Huahine from their travels in Moorea and Tahiti. This is the first we have seen them since the Marquesis. We had so many stories to tell each other. They anchored beside us and when they were all settled in we all headed out to do a dive on the outside of the reef. The dive was O.K., but we are still sorry to see so much coral damage. There was one lone black tip shark as we entered the water, we came across two eels and we found two large anemones with the resident clown fishes. Next time we will try the pass to see if we can find more life. To finish our day off, Anne, Eric and Bear came over to our boat for Happy Hour then we all hopped into our whaler for the 10 min. boat ride to the restaurant Mauarii in Aveo Bay. It is a great restaurant and we had a lovely evening. The full moon lit the way home and we were forward thinking enough to put a trail on the GPS as we went to dinner so that we could follow the red line back to the boats in the dark. Today was another sunny day. Oso Blanco moved their anchorage to Aveo Bay to join some of their other boating buddies and we took our whaler into Fare to pick up our rented scooters for 9:00 am. As we were tying up to the quay in Fare, I remembered my driver's license. It wasn't with me! Great, now we will have an issue - it has taken us 10 min to get here. (Georgia had forgotten her license too) Luckily, even though we rented through Eurocar car rentals, they did not ask to see our driver's licenses, they only asked if we were familiar with driving scooters. Well of course we are. I think I drove the scooter at the race track once, that should do it! Thank God there isn't too much traffic on this island, because I'm dangerous on a scooter. It takes four hours to circumnavigate the two islands so off we headed to explore. We stopped at an archeological site, toured several artisan's shops, found the sacred blue eyed eels, marveled at the clever design of the ancient fish traps and enjoyed a sunny day surrounded by magnificent scenery around every turn. We stopped for lunch at the Mauarii and had a great fish sandwich with coconut/vanilla sauce and fries. The fries are stuffed in your sandwich! Weird, but tastey. It was fun to travel around the area on land, we saw Oso Blanco in her new anchorage and admired our boat sitting in her great anchorage and so on, just a nice change of perspective.

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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Impressions of Tahiti

Finally we have dropped our mooring lines at Marina Taina in Papeete, Tahiti and are headed for the island of Huahine. We have been in Tahiti for a week now and are bored stiff. First, there was major concern as to whether we were even going to get to Tahiti from Calgary on June 15 as there was a big general strike here in Tahiti that had everything - literally everything closed down. But as we entered each new phase of our flight schedule, the planes were flying so we made it as initially planned. Georgia is with us, a grad gift to her for finishing one phase of her education - she is an Animal Health Technician now. Because of the strike, we delayed having some repairs done on our whaler because we needed to be here to have it done, so that kept us until Friday and then the weather decided not to play along with our game and heavy rain, winds and seas kept us tied up. We broke out one day and rented a car for a driving tour of the island of Tahiti. It only takes 4 hours to circumnavigate, but we stopped for lunch and to see the botanical gardens and to hike up to some lovely water falls, so we filled the day. There are a few beaches along the way, they have black sand beaches, but it was a rainy day and nobody wanted to get wetter. The vegitation is of course very lush as all we have seen it do is rain, so now we know why it is so green. The grocery store is very nice, things from all over the world, but because this is an island i the middle of the ocean, everything has to be shipped by boat or plane and so everything is very expensive here. The down town Papeete is rather small and after 10 pearl shops, you pretty much have covered it (or rather don't want to see anymore). We have been filling our afternoons/evenings by visiting new boat friends from Italy/Australia and swapping boat and travel stories. But now as evening is closing in, our boat is wobbling along in 11 foot seas with a three foot chop on top (great fun). The boat is handling it very well and we are contemplating having a nice plate of kokori (pearl oyster meat) for dinner with a bottle of wine. We are very excited to set our eyes on a new place when dawn arrives tomorrow.

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