May 25 - Cook's Bay, Moorea

We arrived in Papeete 15 to a Tahitian welcome of flowers in our hair and a drum concert, as well as virtually no customs check (should've bought that $8 bottle of rum in Fiji!). We piled into the private truck going to Hiti Mahana, a highly recommended campground/hostel 10 km out of the city, along with about eight other backpackers. We ended up staying at Hiti Mahana for two nights, although it was overpriced (breakfast included, but not worth it at all), out of the way, a bit run down, etc. For only the second time since the Great Ocean Road we pitched our tent, this time in incredibly hot and humid conditions. We had decided we'd probably just spend one night, but found out there was a circle island tour planned for the next day, so decided to do that, then head out for Moorea the following day. We braved the heat enough to walk the 2 km out to the bank and grocery store for money and supplies, then couldn't find a restaurant open for dinner so had to make do with bread, cheese, and Coke. Too hot to cook!

The next morning the tour started off fine, with beautiful (hot!) weather once again. We saw an only-in-high-tide blow hole that wasn't too impressive since it wasn't high tide, stopped by the ruins of an old church erected where Bougainville landed, and then cooled down for a bit with a swim under a waterfall. As we were driving to Tahiti-iti (little Tahiti island basically connected to the main island) for lunch, the rain started, and it didn't let up until we were practically home at the end of the day. We were sure that our tent would be soaked, our packs sopping wet, and the ground under two feet of water (which is apparently what had happened to some campers the previous week). But for some reason the gods were smiling on us - despite the torrential downpour we were submerged in all afternoon, it hardly rained at all at Hiti Mahana, and all our things were fine. The tour was a different story though... We enjoyed the Gauguin Museum, with copies of many of his paintings and stories about his life in Tahiti, but had to skip the nearby Botanical Gardens because of the rain. We waded through six inches of water to go to some caves, taking off our shirts 16 so they might at least stay somewhat dry. (Didn't work, of course, since our towels were as wet as we were and our shirts got all wet when we tried to put them back on). The final stop was a distillery, which was an interesting haven from the storm. They had at least 20 very brightly coloured and extremely potent fruit liqueurs and brandies, and we were welcome to try any and all of them. Although I'm sure they'd make great mixers, they were a bit strong straight (although we had quite a few before reaching that conclusion...).

The next morning after I had an early pre-breakfast snorkel (decent fish, not much coral; overall, pretty mediocre), we took Le truck to downtown Papeete, and then caught the catamaran (30 minutes) to Moorea. While waiting for the boat, we traded half-hour bag watching stints with Len and Margaret, a friendly retired British couple who had been on the circle island tour with us and who we've run into a few times each day since then. When we got to Moorea, we took the bus half way around the island to another campground / hostel, Chez Nelson et Josienne. This was half the price of Hiti Mahana, a much better location, camping right above the beach, good cooking facilities, etc. It was wonderful, and we ended up staying there two nights before moving 200 m up the road to Moorea Camping, where we splurged on a private one-room bungalow (nothing like Fiji!) for three nights. The basic pattern to the days was something like this: get awakened by the sun around 7:30 am, have a ham and cheese baguette sandwich for breakfast, go for a morning snorkel or swim to get cooled off, read for a while, go to the local creperie for lunch, cool off again, relax for a while, go to the store for a 35¢ baguette and drinks, come back and watch the gorgeous sunset, play some cards, go to dinner, have some Tahiti Drink (rum punch in a carton. At $6.00/liter, it's cheaper than making our own), and go to bed. A tough life...

On Tuesday we rented a motor scooter and toured the island. The sharp volcanic mountain peaks in the center of the island were a stunning contrast to the beautiful water surrounding the island. We rode up about 5 km to a lookout point, the Belvedere, near the center of the island, where we got a superb view of the two bays, Opunohu and Cook's, and the mountain that rises up between them, Mt. Rotui. Rotui used to be the geographical center of Moorea, but the northern half of the island sank quite a few years ago. We also passed through the ruins of a few marae 17 , and went to the Moorea fruit juice distillery. We've been subsidizing the distillery fairly substantially with our purchases of Tahiti Drink, Piña Colada, and a few fruit juices. Like the other distillery, they had some pretty potent brandies as well as some pretty good fruit liqueurs. We got some Tahiti Drink to tide us over for the next few days. At this point we had decided to stay in our bungalow at Moorea Camping for the rest of our stay in Moorea, but as we rode past the Cook's Bay Hotel, we decided to have a look. Their normal prices are $70 and up, but we had gotten a brochure offering $45 rooms if you just showed up without a reservation. So we took a look, liked what we saw, and decided to stay. There's a decent pool, great views of the mountains, what looked like it might be good snorkeling (deep water just outside the hotel), new places to eat, and a comfortable room with a fan. So in the morning we got up and checked out, lugged our 25 kg+ (55 lb.) packs to le petit village a kilometer away, and caught the bus back to Cook's Bay, where we are now, and where we'll stay until the last boat back to Tahiti Saturday afternoon - only two days away!

It's now Thursday about noon; we've gone snorkeling three times in the 24 hours we've been here. To me the snorkeling seems like a "Best of" the South Pacific - we've seen nearly all the varieties of fish we've become accustomed to, plus about half a dozen new ones. No moon wrasse, but plenty of other wrasse varieties, with every shade of color and great patterns as well. A blue pug-nosed fish with what seem to be upside down fins and a bright green patch on the side. Some big striped fish, including an unusual drab olive green one with orange stripes that propels itself by fluttering a bunch of centipede leg-like wavy mini-fins that lie all along the top of its back. Some one to two foot long needle-like fish that look just like ones we saw in Jamaica, but bigger, as well as somewhat smaller (one foot) ones that look more like a straightened out sea horse. Many bannerfish (as we're finishing up our last underwater camera, we have to resist the temptation to keep taking great bannerfish and wrasse shots. And today we just saw an eagle ray, flapping its "wings" gracefully, like a massive underwater bird, off the reef in the deep water, where it drops off almost straight to 150-200 feet deep! (A big cruise ship came in and anchored in the bay today).

There's also a nice bridge leading to one of the restaurants that crosses over some water one to two feet deep. As we went to dinner last night, some people were watching an eel. We stopped to look, and saw it swim right under the bridge - about two feet long, and in the same area we'd been snorkeling! And the best discovery yet - this morning Shikha went out for an early trip to look for fish from the bridge, and saw an octopus! She came back to get me, and it was really amazing. It was waving its tentacles around for a while, grabbing unsuccessfully at the inquisitive brown fish, who are apparently as curious about octopi as humans. It then decided to move, and shot out for about ten feet, body first with its tentacles hanging behind. We've got about half a dozen underwater camera shots left, and probably four more snorkeling trips - hopefully we'll run into one of these guys underwater and get some great pictures!

May 27

"I won't touch this with my fingers. If I had a fork, I might eat it."

"Our palates aren't used to this taste. Where's the prime rib?"

And the guy next to Shikha: "What is this? I don't like raw fish." Shikha: "I think it's papaya." The guy: "Oh. I like papaya!"

On our afternoon snorkeling excursion a few hours earlier, we had seen at least three new varieties, two of which were deemed worthy of some of our last photos. A curious little dark rectangular box-shaped fish with green polka dots that, while I was waiting for Shikha to come see it, waited too, with its tail bent back along its body! And a spectacular fish with many spiny fins sticking up all around its back. 18 We've seen that one or its cousins in a few videos and the Sydney Aquarium, and the spiny fins are poisonous, so we got close enough for a picture but didn't hang around too long! One of the people across the table from us at dinner (a guy from Fullerton here on his honeymoon) had been scuba diving earlier in the day and had gotten bit on the arm by a moray eel, apparently out of the blue. Hopefully no such adventures for us in our last days here.

May 28 - Faaa Airport, Tahiti, French Polynesia