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| Moorea |
Having caught up on a few boat jobs in Papeete Jude’s sister
and niece arrived from Sydney to spend a week with us on the boat. After a
couple of days looking around the town it was time to head off to Moorea, the
closest island, about 17 miles away. It is great to see Irit and Gaba asits
been nearly three years since I last saw them!
We anchored in Opunohu bay with a spectacular backdrop of high,
jagged mountains with verdant vegetation, quite different from the Tuamotus.
The island is still ringed by a reef with a few passes to enter the anchorages
of the islands. I think it took all of three minutes for us to jump in the
clear waters for a swim, even Irit with her stringent warm water threshold of
27 degrees was in for a swim.
One of the highlights of visiting the island was swimming
with the sting rays and reef sharks, a 25 minute dinghy ride from the
anchorage. The sting rays are very friendly and will come right up to you.
Katya seemed to be the “sting ray whisperer” as they were most interested in
her. As well as the sting rays there are many reef sharks swimming around,
thankfully they are harmless and beautiful to watch, once you get over the idea
of swimming with sharks.
The island also has a number of great hikes, one of which we
took up to the Belvedere viewpoint staring at the head of Opunohu bay slowly
working our way up the hill, with a convenient stop off at a tropical agriculture
college for some refreshing sorbet and then an even more refreshing coconut at
the top.
The route down passes a number of ancient and abandoned Polynesian
home sites on a beautiful walk through the rainforest, crossing refreshing
streams and pineapple plantations. All in all it was a great hike and
satisfying to stretch our legs.
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| Natural tree swing - Go Jane! |
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| Pineapple flower |
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| View from the top of the Belvedere hike |
We lingered a couple of more days on Moorea visiting our
friends on Red Thread doing a wall
dive on the outer reef with Neil and more swimming but all good things must
come to an end as we had to head back to Papeete to drop Irit and Gabs off and
continue our boat projects in preparation for our onward journey to the Cook
Islands.
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| Lobster dinner! |
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| Dinghy ride to swim with the sting rays |
One of the highlights of visiting the island was swimming
with the sting rays and reef sharks, a 25 minute dinghy ride from the
anchorage. The sting rays are very friendly and will come right up to you.
Katya seemed to be the “sting ray whisperer” as they were most interested in
her. As well as the sting rays there are many reef sharks swimming around,
thankfully they are harmless and beautiful to watch, once you get over the idea
of swimming with sharks.
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