Advertisement
Published: September 14th 2004
View of Moorea
This was the view that we had when we woke up on our first morning on Tahiti.We're in Tahiti now. We left Easter Island on Sunday evening and had a 6 hour journey to Papeete, where we were greeted at the airport by a band playing Polynesian music and women in traditional dress giving out flowers to wear behind our ears (and yes, Graeme did wear his for a while!). We stayed in a really nice hotel near the airport for the night, and the view in the morning was amazing - across the ocean to Moorea, a neighbouring island which rises spectacularly from the ocean. Photo will appear here soon!
The next morning we took the ferry to Moorea and finally got to our accommodation after waiting for the bus for over an hour, they're very laid back in this part of the world and the bus won't stop at the ferry quay if there's not enough people, I guess they can't be bothered... Moorea is amazing... The scenery is specatular, the weather is gorgeous and the sea is so blue and clear. We're staying in a lovely place - right on the beach, palm trees everywhere, sunshine and clear blue sea. Today was a day of new experiences: I went to the watersports place
Enjoying a cocktail
After a day in the sun we were in need of a cool drink at the beach bar! next to the hotel to enquire about hiring a canoe, and yes, I could have a conoe but they had two places left on a swimming with stingrays and sharks trip (leaving in 5 mins), so we decided quickly that we would splash out and do it, and boy were we glad! It was fantastic, definitely the highlight of the trip so far. If we'd had time to think about it we probably would have chickened out, but it was amazing. We were given masks and snorkles, and we went out into the lagoon where the water only came up to our chests. The man had fish to attract the stingrays, but they're quite tame and not a danger because they're so used to people. We were able to stroke them and swim with them, and we'd bought an underwater camera so we could take pictures. The lagoon has large areas of coral reef in it, and there were hundreds of fish of all colours and sizes that we were able to swim with and take pictures. The water was warm and it was fab. The instructor then took us out of the lagoon into the ocean, where we 'swam'
Le Truck
The bus that took us round the island to our hotel was brightly painted and have any windows, not that it needed any, the cool breeze was very welcoming. with sharks - actually we floated wearing bouyancy aids and held on to a rope off the back of the boat, but there were lots of sharks - smaller than us, and not interested in us in the slightest. The water was so clear that we could see the 15 metres down to the ocean floor, which was covered in coral and teeming with exotic fish. Wow!
The other new experience today was pineapple, previously known to some of you as 'the devil's fruit', well, pineapple is the national fruit here, and is the main crop grown on Moorea. We bought one in the supermarket and it's actually quite nice, I wouldn't go as far as to say it was lovely, but a great deal nicer than any pineapple I've ever eaten before. Graeme loved it!
Bye for now. We have some photos on CD now, and when I find an internet cafe with a CD rom drive in it I'll post some.
from Jo and Graeme x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 62; dbt: 0.0559s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
ezza
non-member comment
moorea
your beach hut on moorea looks lovely, don't suppose you could tell me the hotel name and cost?