Tahiti to Moorea

We had a windless crossing to Tahiti—memories of Mexico—we have become seasoned cruisers now though and took an extra day instead of putting on the engine as we would have done a year ago.
We anchored at Marina Taire which is a 20 minute ride to downtown on Le Truck. It was a huge culture shock at first—noise, traffic and everything available—at a cost!!! It is a busy pleasant city not spoiled by the high rises which have marred Hawaii. It is safe and people are pleasant. The market downtown has a large variety of fruit and vegs all run by the Chinese who seem to have taken over the market gardens of much of the world. The supermarket is amazing—products from all over the world. Much is imported from NZ and meat, butter and apples are not expensive. The large deli section is full of cheeses and pates, mostly from France and it is hard not to spend your entire food budget there. Everything is available and it was great having a selection. Since Panama where we had stocked up with canned goods we have become used to eating whatever fresh food is available locally.
Pearls, the local specialty are available everywhere and at all price ranges. The town is colourful and casual.
We did find the typical frustration of trying to find specific boat items in a foreign language. Everyone being helpful sends you from one store to another and at the end of the day you still have not found what you want—it will be a treat in NZ.
Everything is very expensive—a light lunch in an outdoor patio is about $90 for the two of us if we had one drink—we have got good at getting a beer and eating a sandwich at take away bar. Baguettes have become the norm and sandwiches are everywhere. The local people here are a mix of nationalities from centuries of invasions and are very attractive and a lot slimmer than their Polynesian counterparts in the Marquesas and Tuamotus.
We had arrived in time to participate in the Tahiti-Moorea rally—a yacht rally put on by the tourist bureau to welcome cruisers to their islands so we decided to participate.
The first afternoon at the signup they put on a welcome dance and handed out information and we got coupons for free drinks—we have become very adept at taking advantage of such opportunities.
The following morning we left with about 15 other boats to sail the 10 miles to Moorea. Unfortunately there was very little wind so half way they asked everyone to motor the rest so we would be in time for the hangi (lunch cooked in the ground oven). They welcomed us to the beautiful beach with music and traditional costumes and served us the huge lunch.
Then we had the games—we teamed up with another boat and two locals for the canoe race which we won handily—several of the canoes which are very slim with an outrigger managed to dump but we all seemed to coordinate ours well.
There was a javelin type throwing game where you had to spear a coconut and a run which involved carrying a pole of fruit around the track. They then put on a dance show and gave out the prizes—we won a beautiful pearl on a chocker which somehow I ended up with which crowned the day. It was a lot of fun and we appreciated the effort they had gone to organizing the event. We met many other cruisers most of which are going to NZ also.
We moved around into Cooks Bay the next day which is an idyllic place with rugged peaks at the head of the bay. It was Canada day so we invited a number of other boats in the anchorage to a pot luck where we all wore red or white and Ken had trivia questions for everyone—he was the only one who knew most of the answers. It was a lot of fun.
The next day we did a 20km hike up the valley to a viewpoint of the southern half of this beautiful island—it had been an important religious site several hundred years ago and there are the remains of their complex civilization. We then walked around the bays home and got a feel of this tropical wonderland. Flowers abound and most people have wonderful gardens. There are some beautiful homes on the water and you could not help but feel envious that they get to live here.
We are heading out today to anchor on a reef at the mouth of the bay where we will have a few days snorkeling, apparently you can swim with the stingrays. We will head back to Tahiti on Sunday night to restock and check out and then leave for Huahine, our next destination where I will do our next update.