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| Nothing like some beer to help ease into land life. |
After 12 days in Tahiti, we decided to shove off of the
mooring ball we were attached to and venture to Mo’orea which is just under
twenty miles northwest of Pape’ete. Our
time in Tahiti was well spent hanging out with old friends and making new
ones; not to mention numerous runs to the incredibly huge Carrefour grocery/department store for supplies. As usual, Kyanos arrived ahead of us despite leaving Fakarava after us. Their boat is just so much faster than ours
but hey, if there is something that I do have, it’s time so no worries.
As we were entering the pass just outside of Marina
Taina, we got a call on the radio from our friends aboard Bella Star. We haven’t seen
Aaron and Nicole since their going away party in Ballard, Washington way back
in April of 2011. We were actually quite
surprised to meet up with them as we had been following their progress from the
Galapagos and thought for sure that they would end up arriving in French
Polynesia well ahead of us and therefore end up being at least one island group
ahead of us for our entire time here.
But luck would have it and the next thing we know we are approaching a
mooring ball with Aaron and Nicole holding the line for us. What a welcome! We chatted for a bit and then they shoved off
and Richard and I got the boat in “shore mode” which meant taking down the lee
cloths, putting the overnight stuff away and then settling in to relax before
going ashore to explore.
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| Richard, Mark, and me. |
Once settled in, we heard from Ben and Sarah and also
Mark (who is now skippering Compass Rosey
on its way to Australia). Mark
agreed to check out the local bar which we heard had a happy hour and report
back on the specifics (times, etc). Come
to find out, La Casa Bianca has a
happy hour 7 days a week from 5 to 6 PM with two for one beers. No need to twist my arm, especially
considering how expensive French Polynesia is turning out to be. So now we had a plan and we invited all the
boats we knew which included Kyanos, Bella Star, Bella Vita, and Compass Rosey. We all showed up and had a great time
catching up with old friends (we had met Brett and Stacey of Bella Vita in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico)
and our Seattle friends, Aaron and Nicole.
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| Me and Nicole (with Aaron in the background) of Bella Star. |
Needless to say, we spent many a nights at happy hour
with various people we met while in Pape’ete.
We also rented a car for three days which came in handy when we were
transporting our transmission to the marine store to be checked out. We also used it to go grocery shopping which
was a huge convenience. On the second
day that we had the car, Ben and Sarah joined us and we toured the island of
Tahiti; we actually circumnavigated Tahiti Nui and most of Tahiti Iti, stopping
along the way to see the sights. We
visited caves, archeological sites, waterfalls, and a shoreline blowhole (check
out the video below). As our route took
us through Pape’ete on our way back to the marina, we stopped at the waterfront
and tried the roulettes (food trucks)
for dinner. We split two plates (poisson
cru and a mixed chow mein) between the four of us as well as a side of rice and
plate of green beans and walked away stuffed!
The food was really tasty; by the way, this is the second time we’ve
eaten at the roulettes and we have
yet to be disappointed.
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| Sarah and Ben of Kyanos, Stacey and Brett of Bella Vita, and Richard at Happy Hour. |
But before you start thinking that life is nothing but
frou-frou drinks with umbrellas on white sand beaches and stunning sunsets,
rest assured that we did some minor boat projects…just to offset the relaxing
time that we had on Tahiti. I even did
laundry (something I have not done in machines since Mexico) which ended up
taking about three hours late at night and with mixed results (some of the
machines didn’t completely work).
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