Where to Next?: Moorea, French Polynesia

Partly cloudy, 30 degrees

A morning tour sounded like it would be good for beating the heat, but I’m not sure there is any beating this heat. It was good to be up and out anyway.

welcome to Moorea

We are still in French Polynesia, today on the island of Moorea, and then later in the evening we will move the 17 km to Tahiti where we’ll dock over night. Tomorrow is the last day of segment #2 of 5 for us, which means some people will get off and some will get on tomorrow.

Before we arrived in French Polynesia, I knew very little about the geography of the area.

what can I even say?

Some of what I’ve learned is that that French Polynesia is made up of 118 island and atolls, 67 of which are inhabited. Moorea is only 10 miles in width from the west to the east and 17 km from Tahiti where we sailed to this evening – took about 90 minutes. Moorea is made up of gorgeous mountains springing right up from the sea – mind blowing. I’ve said a few things are mind blowing lately…but really they are.

vanilla pods

Another tender ride started the day. Today’s tour had us hopping into another 4x4. This time it is an open air, more rustic vehicle. Like when we were in Nuku Hiva 2 days ago, this is a neat way to see a bunch of the island sites. Calling these vehicles 4x4s and saying we would be ‘off-roading’ would accurately describe today’s tour. There were 7 of us in the back of a truck, there was bench seating in the back with a covering from the sun. We weren’t at all strapped in and at lots of points the terrain was so bumpy you had to hold on –

our guide with the flag

not exactly high safety standards, but we weren’t worried.

Our first stop was a photo stop at Opunohu bay – it was gorgeous. I still can’t get over how blue the water is. The original and the remake of Mutiny of the Bounty were filmed in this bay. Just like the last

tasting jam in quite a location

4x4 tour we did, this was convoy style with one guide giving info at each stop. Our guide spoke pretty good English, so we got a bit more info. We were only at Opunohu bay for about 10 minutes, just enough time to ‘make a photos’ and hear some info.

10 minutes up the road and we stopped at tropical garden to hear about and see vanilla growing, learn about other fruits and sample some jam. The most interesting thing we learned about was a noni fruit. I smelled this

bananas

fruit before I even knew it was a thing. Walking along a path I mentioned to Chris that I smelled something funky, a weird, could be described as cheese funk. Sure enough we learned that this was a noni fruit. The fruit is claimed to be used for medicinal purposes, but there’s no real evidence of that.

convoy

We then stopped at a juice factory for a sampling of pineapple juice and pineapple liquor (8%). Very, very tasty…would easily have bought more than a sample if this was offered, but it was just a

replica of Paul Gaugin's house

shop, not a restaurant of café.

Our next stop, a pineapple plantation, was accessed by a very, very bumpy road. A 4x4 was definitely needed here. We were not strapped in and had to hold on. We were going very, very slowly, so speed wasn’t an issue… just very rough. I guess this is why the tour isn’t recommended for those with back/neck problems or pregnant women!

This pineapple plantation is somewhat less structured than the one in Hawaii

archeological site

was. Here, families rent 1-acre plots of land from the government and farm these. Of course, just like in Hawaii, these folks claim that these pineapples are the sweetest in the world. Well, compared to the pineapple on the ship and the Hawaiian pineapple, I’d have to agree – very sweetness and soft. As we drove through the plantation our guide stopped occasionally to pluck

wild growing ginger out of the ground to show us, grabbed a few lime leaves for us to smell and pointed out grapefruit, breadfruit, limes and other fruits I can’t even remember…they’re just everywhere.

As we made our way out of the

what to say?

pineapple plantation, we crossed a stream teaming with eels! We were taken here intentionally to see the eels. They were pretty cool. Most people stayed in the trucks, but you could have stepped in with the eels.