Following our beautiful few days on Easter Island, we head off in the middle of the night to Tahiti. Upon landing at 2am, it will be the twins’ 7th birthday! We have a very short night in a great AirBnB with the friendliest host ever. He not only prepared birthday candles as requested, but threw in some Pokémon magazines and cards (he clearly knows his audience) and – a real life saver for our onward journey – graciously agrees to store our backpacks and co (after all, you really don’t need much on an island) for the coming 4 weeks (!!). After so many weeks of beans and eggs for breakfast, the kids jump onto the croissants and crêpes and after blowing out their candles we pack up to head off across the bay to Moorea.
Off the ferry, we jump onto the bus only to find out that it goes in the opposite direction so instead of the planned 15min in the bus, we take a good hour. On the plus side this gives us an almost full tour of the whole island upfront. Our AirBnb is conveniently located at the entrance of Oponoahu bay, but as we are carless and hungry we must first find a way to get to a restaurant and to stock up the fridge. We soon find out that public transport is practically non existent (except for the one circle bus timed to ferry arrivals) and taxis don’t exactly just linger along the street. So we start to walk, but quickly realise that it will take us over an hour to get to the next town, in the scorching sun and with hungry tired kids – on their birthday no less -, not the best option. Which leaves us with hitchhiking and after a good 10min of sticking out our thumbs, a friendly lady luckily takes pity on us and agrees to squeeze all 5 of us into her Twingo to drop us of at the closest town Maharepa. By now it is already nearly 3pm and everything is closed! But we find a café, have lunch between cawing birds and then head off to our next mission of renting a car, and the supermarket. As we explore our home for the coming week, which comes with its own little pontoon, we are delighted to discover just how perfectly situated it is. The snorkelling just off the pontoon is great, fish abound and in the bay just a few minutes by kayak dolphins frolic just a few feet away. We very quickly take to our new island rhythm: a little kayak excursion to warm up the muscles and greet the dolphins, fresh fruit to excess for breakfast, some snorkelling to increase our “fish sighted” database, some lunch, more snorkelling, sunset kayak, and off to sleep.
Close to our house is the Tipaniers beach, where you can kayak out to meet stingrays. A bit daunting at first, but the stingrays are so used to swimming around humans that we quickly feel at ease. We even get to spot our first blacktip sharks! Thierry and I debate whether we should participate in the Whale excursion tour, apparently there are lots of whales around and swimming near them must be a mind bending experience. We hesitate – the kids are still little, after all, and even I get vertigo snorkelling over the big deep, let alone having to swim against the current without using the arms for 100-200m. We decide it’s too big an ask and opt out. Which turns out to be a very good decision because on the day in question, during the tour, a young woman got violently attacked by whitetip sharks…..
On a happier note, to the other side of our house lies Temea beach, definitely one of my top 5 experiences in Polynesia. The snorkelling there is truly spectacular, corals abound and the first time that we get to see the splendour of French Polynesia’s underwater diversity as we imagined it. I am so excited, I keep blubbering oohs and aaahs……
Moorea was definitely the perfect choice to kick off our French Polynesian adventure – the organisation of the next part turns out to be quite more painful than anticipated. We expected to improvise on the ground – find a boat for the 2-3 weeks we had planned, and some island hopping in between. Turns out there is no off season in French Polynesia and improvisation is not on the agenda. Not helped by it being the beginning of the local 2 week spring break as well as the annual Hawaiki Nui Va’a competition, an international pirogue race hosting over 3000 participants which does not help the availability question. Thierry and I spend whole days trying to come up with alternative programs, only to find out that either the flights are full or all the pensions are booked (most islands don’t have hotels, or if they do, only a few, and the rest are family run pensions). At some point I am so frustrated, I suggest to pack up and fly off to New Zealand early, which, of course, would be a big shame given we organised pretty much the whole first half of our trip around the timings in Polynesia to hit the last weeks before hurricane season. Fortunately we don’t have to, and on a fortuitous day, things finally fall in place – Thierry found us a great boat and skipper willing to not only take us around the Iles sous le Vent but also do the crossover to the Tuamotus archipelago which Thierry is desperate to discover, and for then days in-between I manage to get a few last spots on Taha’a and Huahine. With that finally sorted we can enjoy our last couple of days on Moorea – the 10 days just flew by on this somewhat unexpected highlight of our trip.