Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Shinny Boats and Little Goats
Our parking spot inside Opunohu Bay on Moorea is very interesting in that it is the play ground of the large - and I mean large! - private yachts. In the three days that we are here there are two nearly 200 ft yachts, each with their harem of water toys and two elegant sailing vessels one nearing 200 ft and the other a very graciously styled three mast ship of 300 +ft. We are definitely slumming it here. These vessels are each so beautiful in their own ways, the sailing ships with their lines and style and the power vessels with their utter opulence. It's not really "peeping Tom" activity when you openly stand on your back deck with the binoculars and check them all out - Is it?
So here's the scoop on the "great restaurant" we were directed to for dinner. Chez Vina. Sunday is supposed to be their "Traditional Polynesian Oven" day. So I phoned on Sat. for a reservation.
"Alow?"
"Hello, Do you speak English?"
"A leetle beet."
"Are you open for dinner tomorrow night? Could I make a reservation for two people?"
"Oui." (Yes - in French - good I can understand that much)
"Could you pick us up, we are on a boat and do not have a car?"
"Oui."
So we manage to get that ironed out - we are never really sure that they have understood us or we have understood them, but we have nothing but time here so we are learning patience. 6:00 pm at the Protestant Church by the Papeotai Boat Quay is our pick up time. After I hang up I realize that they don't know our name or description and that we don't know what kind of vehicle to look for. Glen says - Relax, we'll be the only white, non French speaking, out of place looking, people waiting by the church. O.K. so now we are waiting by the church and it is 6:00 pm, we know to phone again as it seems they like to send a pick-up once they know you are there instead of arriving as planned (Go Figure!) The driver will be a bit late - no problem - we are occupied watching the Family day events wind down in the park area. The Polynesian people really do take their weekends seriously. They have organized picnics with sports competitions and music every free day, not just special occasions. Our driver arrives at 6:30 and it is dark now so he drives by us once and we stand in the middle of the road the next time by so he has to stop. He is Serge, the owner of the restaurant and we are riding in his vintage 1980 Volvo. Serge opens and closes the doors for us "Because they are a little temperamental!" Serge is French and has been in Moorea for more than 25 years and he has had this car for all that time. He has a little farm on the mountain side and he has just come from finishing his chores. When we arrive at the restaurant, we are the only people there (typically not a good sign). Serge gives us our menus and goes off to get us a couple of Hinano (Tahitian made beer). According to the menu, we have goofed up, the Traditional Polynesian Oven Feast is at noon, every Sunday - Now what are we going to choose? Serge plops our beers down and asks what we would like to eat and since I get to speak first, I whine that we had really hoped to have the Traditional Oven meal, but we see unfortunately that we have missed it. "Pas de problem, Madam" (No problem, Madam - whew, my high school French is paying off) Serge goes on to explain that the Traditional Oven is a great thing because the people cook the food in the covered pit and eat what they need then recover the pit and the food can be eaten like this for two days. So we indeed can have the Traditional meal and the feast begins. Six courses of wonderful flavors and accompaniments. We have special entertainment tonight - Serge has a little 15 day old goat kid that he is bottle feeding and the little guy has the run of the restaurant (only in French Polynesia!) The little goat follows Serge around like a little dog, because he thinks Serge is his Mama. He comes bounding sideways out of the kitchen, his little hooves spinning on the smooth tiles, then he bleats in complaint when his tether rope (which isn't tethered) gets tangled around some chair legs and holds him in one spot. He is hilarious. The food was great, the entertainment special and we have another good memory from our travels.
We are on the down stokes of our time here, getting ready to go home again. We spend our last lazy days in Moorea polishing the stainless and diving. We are going to need a holiday from our holiday (Not). Lucky for us we choose to head back to Papeete, Tahiti and Marina Taina very early in the morning on July 28 and get into the Tahiti lagoon just as the wind rises to 25 knots, thus missing the impending bad weather that is about to blow out in the open. We are happy to find that we get a standard side dock tie instead of the med moor we had last time. Back at the marina, our social calander quickly fills our remaining days - dinner with our South African friends, a BBQ with our neighboring sail boat and pizza with our Australian/Italian friends. We give the boat a good bath and ready everything to be closed down for the time period we will be gone. Things have been great out here, but we are actually looking forward to going home to Calgary for a while. We fly out on July 31 and will be back to Tahiti on Aug 30. When we return, we will be heading to Suwarrow in the Cook Islands and then on to Samoa. Our time at home will be spent researching where to go and what to see when we get there. Can't wait.
So here's the scoop on the "great restaurant" we were directed to for dinner. Chez Vina. Sunday is supposed to be their "Traditional Polynesian Oven" day. So I phoned on Sat. for a reservation.
"Alow?"
"Hello, Do you speak English?"
"A leetle beet."
"Are you open for dinner tomorrow night? Could I make a reservation for two people?"
"Oui." (Yes - in French - good I can understand that much)
"Could you pick us up, we are on a boat and do not have a car?"
"Oui."
So we manage to get that ironed out - we are never really sure that they have understood us or we have understood them, but we have nothing but time here so we are learning patience. 6:00 pm at the Protestant Church by the Papeotai Boat Quay is our pick up time. After I hang up I realize that they don't know our name or description and that we don't know what kind of vehicle to look for. Glen says - Relax, we'll be the only white, non French speaking, out of place looking, people waiting by the church. O.K. so now we are waiting by the church and it is 6:00 pm, we know to phone again as it seems they like to send a pick-up once they know you are there instead of arriving as planned (Go Figure!) The driver will be a bit late - no problem - we are occupied watching the Family day events wind down in the park area. The Polynesian people really do take their weekends seriously. They have organized picnics with sports competitions and music every free day, not just special occasions. Our driver arrives at 6:30 and it is dark now so he drives by us once and we stand in the middle of the road the next time by so he has to stop. He is Serge, the owner of the restaurant and we are riding in his vintage 1980 Volvo. Serge opens and closes the doors for us "Because they are a little temperamental!" Serge is French and has been in Moorea for more than 25 years and he has had this car for all that time. He has a little farm on the mountain side and he has just come from finishing his chores. When we arrive at the restaurant, we are the only people there (typically not a good sign). Serge gives us our menus and goes off to get us a couple of Hinano (Tahitian made beer). According to the menu, we have goofed up, the Traditional Polynesian Oven Feast is at noon, every Sunday - Now what are we going to choose? Serge plops our beers down and asks what we would like to eat and since I get to speak first, I whine that we had really hoped to have the Traditional Oven meal, but we see unfortunately that we have missed it. "Pas de problem, Madam" (No problem, Madam - whew, my high school French is paying off) Serge goes on to explain that the Traditional Oven is a great thing because the people cook the food in the covered pit and eat what they need then recover the pit and the food can be eaten like this for two days. So we indeed can have the Traditional meal and the feast begins. Six courses of wonderful flavors and accompaniments. We have special entertainment tonight - Serge has a little 15 day old goat kid that he is bottle feeding and the little guy has the run of the restaurant (only in French Polynesia!) The little goat follows Serge around like a little dog, because he thinks Serge is his Mama. He comes bounding sideways out of the kitchen, his little hooves spinning on the smooth tiles, then he bleats in complaint when his tether rope (which isn't tethered) gets tangled around some chair legs and holds him in one spot. He is hilarious. The food was great, the entertainment special and we have another good memory from our travels.
We are on the down stokes of our time here, getting ready to go home again. We spend our last lazy days in Moorea polishing the stainless and diving. We are going to need a holiday from our holiday (Not). Lucky for us we choose to head back to Papeete, Tahiti and Marina Taina very early in the morning on July 28 and get into the Tahiti lagoon just as the wind rises to 25 knots, thus missing the impending bad weather that is about to blow out in the open. We are happy to find that we get a standard side dock tie instead of the med moor we had last time. Back at the marina, our social calander quickly fills our remaining days - dinner with our South African friends, a BBQ with our neighboring sail boat and pizza with our Australian/Italian friends. We give the boat a good bath and ready everything to be closed down for the time period we will be gone. Things have been great out here, but we are actually looking forward to going home to Calgary for a while. We fly out on July 31 and will be back to Tahiti on Aug 30. When we return, we will be heading to Suwarrow in the Cook Islands and then on to Samoa. Our time at home will be spent researching where to go and what to see when we get there. Can't wait.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
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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Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Weather Reports and Weather Reports!
It is July 19 and we have been in Bora Bora for 11 days now. This is a first for long term anchorages for us, but the weather will not ease up and let us out. We are going to be heading back toward Tahiti, to Moorea and this is part of the problem as we will be going against the waves/swell and currently also the wind. A rough ride to put it in layman's terms. So we pull weather reports off of the satellite at least twice a day to see any changes and hopefully spot a calming trend. Today is supposed to be the day. We have filled our time since Georgia left with boat chores, doing nothing and maybe an occasional dive. We hate to even take the whaler out to go to the main island of Bora Bora (only a short distance from the motu we are anchored by) as the wind howls through the open channel giving us massive salt water showers. I've had to dig my lovely "pink" plastic rain coat out to wear when we go someplace so that I can at least have some part of me dry. The little whaler has never had so many sponge baths in it's life. We went to dinner last night at Fare Manuai, a very nice restaurant. The eating establishments here will pick you up free of charge for a meal, which is nice as it saves a $30.00 taxi ride return. The dinner was pretty good. We had a farewell drink with the Oso Blanco group as on the 19 they head north west to the northern Cook's, a path we will take in Sept when we return from our trip home. So our paths will probably not cross again until the bottom end of Tonga when we both head into New Zealand in November to avoid cyclone season in the South Pacific.
So at 2:00 pm on July 19 (yesterday now) we made the break from Bora Bora. The going was pretty decent in the lee of Tahaa and Raiatea, but definitely lived up to all of the weather reports from that point on to Moorea. As always, the wind is steepest when you start out on a trip, thus assuring that when you reach your destination you will have to wash the boat as it has been completely and totally sprayed. The waves were predicted to be 7 ft at 7 second intervals and in the darkness they were all of that (and I think more - it always seems bigger when you take it on the nose). But here we are now, an hour out of Moorea at 7:30 am on the 20th and everything is pretty calm as the sun breaks brightly over the horizon. Not a rain cloud in site - just when we would wish for one the most (really helps in boat washing). Can't wait to explore this next new island of the Society Group.
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Friday, July 16, 2010
Bastille Day and Birthday Parties
The boating people are really a little floating community. They just travel from one island to the next, just socializing in a different setting all the time. So Bastille Day is a big thing here in French Polynesia, and the boat people are all excited about heading in to the parade (big event) and seeing all of the goings on. But there is a bit of a delema as to what time the parade should be as the President is supposed to attend the parade and he also has to attend the parade in Papeete, Tahiti. So will it be 8:00 am or 2:00 pm and this does not get ironed out until the morning of the parade. We heard the VHF radio sounding off at 6:30 am, but just rolled over and covered our ears (oops this was the general announcement of the parade time - 8:00 am),so we missed the parade! But from one of our friends, whose opinion we trust, we just missed standing in the sun, hearing one speech and then another speech. (so in other words - not much!) That's O.K. because we wanted more time for snorkeling and diving anyway. That evening there was a big pot luck deal at the yacht club (small lean-too on the beach with a dingy dock. Cyclone in Feb. nearly wiped it off the island.) and another general announcement over the VHF that it was Eric's birthday (Oso Blanco) and we already knew this, so were there for the whole thing. Georgia had a lot of fun as this event brought all of the people in from the surrounding boats and she was happy to find that there was a lot of young people her age to hang out with. It is lucky for us that she only discovered this on her last night here as we may have had to be party chauffers in her efforts to keep herself occupied on the boat. We did do a spa day at the Hilton - Georgia and I, it is not Glen's idea of a good time - and it was very nice to be pampered for a little while. Mind you the ride back to the big boat on the whaler and being splashed by the waves and sprayed by the wind pretty much negated all of the benifits. Our favorite sail boat - Dream Catcher is in the anchorage here at Bora Bora now so we had refreshments on their deck one night and took them diving another day. It is a lovely 82 foot "Swan", pure sailing elegance. The owners and crew are equally nice and very interesting people. Georgia flew home from Bora Bora yesterday and should be arriving in Calgary as I type this. The weather surrounding the island is going to keep us here at least until Monday or Tuesday so we have 4 or so days left to entertain ourselves here. It is time to move on though and Moorea will be our next stop on our way back to Tahiti.
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Monday, July 12, 2010
Bora Bora
Having Georgia on board insures that we don't just idle our time away looking at scenery. We have explored each island of the Society group that we have landed on - thoroughly, and Bora bora is no exception. We have done a couple of dives, one on a very healthy coral reef inside the lagoon and one with the "sharks" on the outside of the reef - the visibility was crystal clear and the fishes were large and numerous. The fish are also very used to being feed so gather as soon as a diver enters the water - this includes the sharks - which can be a bit un-nerving. What if they get upset because you didn't bring them a snack? Snack on you????? We tag along after the Lagoon cruise boats and get in on such easy thrills as feeding and swimming with the rays. T(hey feed them with their tourists (meaning they feed the rays with squid, not the tourists) and move on and we slide in and swim with the still expectant rays. Needless to say, this was one of Georgia's trip highlights. Bora Bora is a small island, the circling road is only 32 km. so our day rental of the car turned out to be only a half day (lunch time included) Most of the posh resorts are on the Motus surrounding the main island, which is O.K. as we can reach anything with our small boats. We have the Hilton Bora Bora just up the coast from our anchorage and they allow outside reservations for all of their facilities - nice. Of special note here in the Tahiti area was the total solar eclipse that happened at 7:13 am July 11 and lasted for roughly two hours. We bought our special solar viewing glasses, available at any store on any of the islands and were perched on top of the boat, waiting in giddy anticipation for this astrological event to occur. .....And the rain clouds rolled in! Then the mountain in the centre of the island seemed to be in the way, were we even going to get a glimpse? Yes, we saw the whole thing very clearly. In Bora Bora, it was only 90% coverage, but still very impressive. We are all shopped out, don't want to see any more pearl stores or paero stores (the universal wrap around dress/skirt/whatever) but we are still very happy to swim and dive in the beautiful blue water (good, because that part is free and shopping is getting pricey). The weather here has been pretty windy, but the rains come during the night or early morning and the days are sunny and hot. So no complaints on that.
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