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Published: March 30th 2009
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Fare Miti
The view from our veranda After we dashed out of Christchurch we had a couple of days to kill in Auckland including Christmas Day, the strangest one we have ever experienced. After various web cams and phone calls bridging the 13 hour time delay to the UK we were jealous of the mounds of turkey, stuffing and roast potatoes being prepared back home (and damnable Brussel Sprouts for Shabana). Our Christmas lunch was a buffet consisting of various foods from around the world, nice but deffo not the same.
As luck would have it on Boxing Day we were heading for Tahiti and then Moorea and crossing the time zone meant we would experience the tail end of Christmas Day all over again. Suffice to say there was even less Christmas cheer in Papeete than Auckland so it has to be said I don't think we will be away for Christmas again.
Next morning we take the ferry over to Moorea which is a quite 30 minute scoot across the turquoise waters, we arrive and disembark and wait for our bags to be delivered via forklift truck in huge metal crates. While we waited all the tourist buses and taxi pick up their passengers
Island Life
The is from the little island that had an old beach hut on than looked back on ours and buggered off, leaving us stranded in the blazing sunshine. The phone systems don't take money or credit cards so i went searching for a phone card with no luck. Asking the various tour operators in pigeon french if i could borrow the phone also yielded no help. Eventually I had to agree to pay the rental car company to make a 2 minute phone call to phone our beach hut owner who arrived 30 minutes later on. Not the easiest start to our island life.
Our home for the next week was Fare Miti a collection of about 8 beach huts with a kitchen and sitting area inside, along with a bathroom and bedroom, we also had a table and chairs on a veranda type thing outside. The beach started about 15 metres or so away with a narrowish strip of beach into a shallow reef that looked out onto a previously private island. It was a lovely little set up.
We immediately launched out to the supermarket about a 10 minute walk away to stock up on supplies, although we had brought precious pots of nutella and peanut butter and some pesto sauce from NZ. It
Happy New Year
Shabana in a merry moment was just like a trip to France as we returned with bagettes, cheese and salami. This was our daily ritual in the mornings and even some afternoons if we ran out of stuff. We also past the chicken man's stall who seemed to be shut everyday no matter what it said on the opening hours.
The days past quickly especially as I went diving on one of the mornings, i saw some nice stuff including a fairly tame turtle but the area was also riddled with Crown of Thorns which are the destroyer of reefs.
We were the only non French people of everybody that stayed there and we weren't sure what was going to happen on New Years Eve. We had planned our evening around a special dinner and some wine we had got from the NZ duty free. The rotissary man had finally opened up and it was such a shock i had walked past him before i realised there he was with about 15 whole chickens and a huge pan of roasted potatoes with garlic, onions and rosemary.
Later than evening as we danced to a rapidly dying mp3 player and a dual headphone
Me and Fabien
My new French chum adapter we were interupted by Fabien one of the French guys for across the way. He had injured himself trying to set up a shelter for a barbeque party they were having later and was looking for something to get rid of a splinter. After huge communication problems as Shabana was going through the wash bag offering him all sorts of files, cutters and scissors she gave up and offered him a glass of wine.
This set him off on a crazy schedule where he would turn up every 10 minutes with some kind of drink from beer to pastise (sp?), whisky and wine which we would share and try and talk, he would insist we come and join them on the beach, which we did after our dinner.
Little did we know what they had cooked up, duck breast, sausages, mashed and baked potatoes, salads, a huge selection of drinks etc. Stuffed from our own dinner we could only pick at the food although it was all delicious. We say the New Year in and after hugs and kisses all round, most of us ran into the warm sea to paddle about and look at the stars and drink some more. It was a beautiful and memorable evening and more than made up for being away at Christmas.
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