April 25, First Day in Mo’orea (Second Day in French Polynesia)

After yesterday’s wearying day, we woke up looking forward to better experiences on our second island in French Polynesia – Mo’orea. “Okay Doug”, you say. “Tell us the correct way to pronounce this correctly.” For starters, don’t say “MOH-re-ah”; too English, too American. Rather, it is pronounced “MOH-oh-RAY-yah”, with a brief glottal stop between the first and second syllables. At the end of the day, the Polynesians will know where you are talking about, if you say it incorrectly. However, I take a certain pride and believe it is respectful to try to learn the sounds of places, names, and things, to learn the words as close to the native tongue, as my American ears will allow. Probably why I like music so much; I pay close attention to sounds of languages and their subtle and infinite variations.

Anyway, however you wish to pronounce it, we arrived at Mo’orea overnight. Frankly, it wasn’t a long trip. If you look at a map of Tahiti and Mo’orea: and if you spot Papeete on the northwest of Tahiti and Papeto’ai on the northwest of Mo’orea, you quickly realize that the ship could have gone from one to the other in less than on hour. They are only 12 miles or so apart. However, in the captain’s defense, the ship had to move very slowly to enter our final location in the bay, because there is a wide coral reef and some serious rocks. The ship had to be guided by a pilot ship on the right course, and it had to proceed very, very slowly, to avoid damage to either the reef or the ship’s hull. (This information is actually hindsight, since it was after midnight when all of this took place.)

We started the day very early, waking up at 6:30am. We thought we had a tour that required us to be at the rendezvous point by 7:45am. We wanted to grab some breakfast beforehand. However, when we doublechecked our tickets – we had booked excursions for today and for tomorrow – we realized we had mixed up our excursions. Today’s outing did not convene until 1:30pm. The morning was overcast, and within the hour we had an appreciable rain shower. Here is how Mo'orea looked this morning before the reain moved out.

(Morning view of Mo'orea from our balcony)

(Morning view of Mo'orea from our balcony)

(Patrise views Mo'orea from our balcony)

(Rain clouds over Mo'orea)

Taking advantage of being awake, we went to the main dining room, the Windjammer, located on Deck 14. There was a line of about 12-14 people in line ahead of us, waiting for the dining room to open, which it finally did about six to seven minutes later. We went in, selected, and ate our breakfast, then proceeded back to the room.

(One of the waiters in the Windjammer has developed a real balancing skill. For several days, he has greeted morning customers with a tray on his head carrying various arrangements of pastry. At times he dances while carrying the pastries on his head.)

We laid down in bed, trying to get some more sleep. That worked for about an hour, then we woke up again. We decided to go to shore early and explore the local village a bit before having to meet our tour at the pier. The ship is anchored in the bay, and so the crew uses the ship’s lifeboats as “tenders” to convey us from ship to shore. The Concierge, Danilo, spotted us in line waiting to load one of the tender boats. Since we are special guests, we get the perk of having the Concierge escort us to the head of the line to leave the ship. That’s what we did.

(Our Concierge, Danilo, about to take us down for our first tender to shore.)

(The ship's lifeboats serve as the "tender" vessels to carry passengers to shore.)

(A view of the inside of our lifeboat. Each lifeboat has a captain and a small 2-person crew.)

(Sitting in the boat, waiting to get to shore.)

The tender boat set sail and after a 10-minute ride, we arrived at the pier in Papeto’ai. As soon as we disembarked, we entered a local marketplace with several vendors set up to sell island tours, snorkel tours, pearls, clothing of various sorts, native crafts, and food. We tried to buy some food to eat for lunch, before wandering around; again, we were stymied by a lack of cash. The food vendor suggested we go into the village to get cash from an ATM. We asked the taxi driver whether she accepted credit card to take us to the ATM. She had bad news on two fronts: (1) she didn’t accept credit cards, and (2) the ATM in the village was not working. We concluded that we had to return to the ship, to get cash from one of its ATM machines.

Back to the pier, back to a tender – they would be running back and forth from ship to shore and shore to ship, deep into the night – back to the ship. We found an ATM, got cash, returned to the tender gathering point. However, this time, there was a very long line, and Danilo was nowhere to be seen or found. (We tried calling him.) Although the time for the tour’s gathering at the pier was drawing near, we figured we still had adequate time to make it. The plan we devised was that I would go to the gathering place with a ticket, to be sure the tour operator knew we were present, while Patrise would go back to the food vendor, cash in hand, to buy some lunch for us; we planned to eat it on the bus. We made it onto a tender boat and then back to the pier, with only a few minutes to spare.

(View of Mo'orea from the tender)

(View of Mo'orea from the tender)

(This brown stuff is a type of algae stirred up from the reef during rain events and storms. It also contains some debris from the land, including coconuts.)

(A view of the Ovation of the Seas, as we approach the pier.)

Now I am waiting for the tour to start loading busses, only find out we didn’t have an assigned bus number. Oh brother, what more could wrong?! Just wait, there’s more…

Patrise arrives to meet me, lunch in hand, while we are waiting for busses to load. The organizer had told me not to worry; he had our names, and he would assign us to a bus once everyone else had boarded. Not comfortable with the “wait and see approach”, we saw a Royal Caribbean staff person nearby and asked him about how the numbers had been assigned. He pointed to another RC staffer, a higher-ranking officer and said she could get assign us a bus number. We walked over to her, showed her our tickets, and she gave us the stick-on labels that designated us as bus #33 riders.

(Despite the black and red lines, you can see the general heart shape of Mo'orea.)

Now for an interesting side plot. I saw a coke can lying on a nearby wall; he assumed it was garbage that someone had left there. So I took the back paper of the labels, folded it up and then stuck it in the can. One minute later a man comes over and says, “Why did you put that in my drink?” I shrunk back, horrified. What had I just done???!!!!! I apologized profusely and stated that I would buy him another Coke. He deferred, accepted my apology ad stated he was almost finished with it anyway. He poured out the remainder of the drink, which admittedly was very little, but obviously that was not the point. I had violated his food. He and his wife walked over to the staging area for another tour, while I continued to feel like a real dork. Patrise asked about the exchange. When I told her, she gave me a 5-dollar bill and said she still felt bad for him; I should offer him some money for reparation. I walked over to him and gave him the $5, which he again tried to hand back to me. However, I was insistent and continually apologetic; he eventually accepted the money.

After all of this, the tour busses were finally beginning to load, which was none too soon, as we were sweating away in the heat and humidity – and the awkward embarrassment for moi, I might add.

Unlike the tour I took on Tahiti, this tour was going to go all around the circumference of the island. Mo’orea is heart shaped with two bays at its northern end, which gives it the distinctive heart similarity. The two bays are the Opunohu Bay and Cook’s Bay. Opunohu (no pronunciation offered) Bay means “stomach of the stonefish.” Apparently, a lot of stonefish can be found in the bay, and since stonefish are poisonous to humans, I supposed ancient Mo’oreans would have taken note of such a place. Cook’s Bay is named in honor of the British captain James Cook, even though he never sailed into this bay. (Go figure?)

We motored around the island making several stops for picture breaks, for leg breaks, and for shopping. Here are some of the photos, I took along the way.

(Our first stop was a tiki village, a cultural site, with buildings reminiscent of what an old Mo'orean village may have looked like. A chief's hut on the left, an event space on the right.)

(Paul Gaughin, left, Marlon Brando, center, and Gaughin replica paintings, right. Paul Gaughin moved to French Polynesia and stayed her for over ten years until his death. Marlon Brando lived here, while filming Mutiny on the Bounty. He had an affair with a young Tahitian woman half his age [36 and 19].)

(Older Polynesian woman seen on the Tiki Village compound)

(A man and woman musician team performing traditional songs. I tipped them, of course.)

(Parents waiting to pick up school children; socializing along the shore; men at work.)

(The Sofitel Hotel with the famous bungalows over the water style rooms. Although it was not a Sofitel brand at the time, this was the one of the first sites in the world where this style of hotel room was offered.)

The two most notable stops were the one we made after traveling up a road of one of the taller mountains and the one we made for shopping. The trip up the mountain road was nerve wracking to say the least. The road was a narrow, supposedly 2-lane facility, with many sharp hairpin curves, tight curves, no guard rails, and steep drops. The driver continuously honked his horn approaching curves, to warn oncoming, downhill vehicles. Still, we had to stop twice to work around tight tolerances with smaller cars; and twice we had to stop, in order to have oncoming busses back up, to give us a narrow, but sufficient space to pass by them. After a while, having the window seat, Patrise could not stand to look anymore. The same was true when we began coming down the hill. Having made it up the hill, here are photos of some of the views we were treated to.

(Our mountain went higher, but this stop was as fas the road would go. Fabulous view of the "octopus" mountain. Apparently the natives say the mountain resembles the head of an octopus and there are eight mountain ranges that extend outward from it. Our driver kept referring to it as the "octopussy.")

(Another view of the octopus -- sorry don't know the real name -- with Ohpunohu (stonefish stomach) Bay to the left.

(Hard to see in this photo, but the Opunohu Bay is to the left and Cook's Bay is to the right of the mountain.)

(Even at the top of the mountain, several of the avian residents can be found with families. Smile)

The other notable stop was the shopping trip. We looked at a number of items, and eventually purchased three smaller things, including a handcrafted, native style fan for Patrise to use. The tour bus brought us back to the pier near the end of the afternoon, 5 or 5:3oish. However, rather than calling it a day and heading back to the ship, we decided to find a local restaurant to get a better taste of local cuisine. (Lunch had been locally prepared, but not particularly tasty. Both of us threw away most of our dishes.) The tour operator said that any taxi driver would take us to a local restaurant. The driver we hired, took us to the nearest village, and she pointed us in the direction of Chez Tamahau. Chez Tamahau claimed to offer the best in French, steak, seafood, and Chinese cuisines; diversity is the critical success factor for most French Polynesian businesses it seems. These are some views of Chez Tamahau. The waitress/hostess was very pleasant; and after some back and forth with explanations of menu items, we ordered drinks, appetizers and entrees (mains), and a dessert. While we waited, we were swatting mosquitos, so Patrise got up and went to a nearby store to purchase insect repellent. She sprayed herself on the way back, and when she handed the spray to me, I stepped outside and sprayed myself also. That made the rest of the evening more pleasant.

(Chez Tamahau is an open air restaurant.)

(You can glimpse the village general store in back of me, where Patrise bought insect repellent. Saved the evening.)

We ate a delicious meal, although the dessert turned out not to be our cup of tea, so we only nibbled on it. We asked our hostess to call a taxi for us, and we stood outside and waited. As we waited, we struck up a conversation with a young Australian couple, Ian and Sherie (not sure about spelling). They were waiting for a shuttle that they had used for earlier trips on the island. A taxi finally pulled in, just after the shuttle arrived. Another party hijacked the taxi, so we joined Ian and Sherie in their ride with “Harry”. Harry was very loquacious and jovial, which made for an enjoyable chatty ride back to the pier, where we arrived about 9pm. The last tender was scheduled to leave the pier for the ship at 11pm, so we were surprised at the number of people getting off of the boat that we were to board. It seems many of them were crew members; and having spent many long days on the ship without touching land, they were determined to get off for a while, even if for only two scant hours or so.

(Last view of out ship, on the way back from the pier.)

Upon returning to the ship, we went directly to Guest Services to take care of some paperwork that would exempt us from paying an additional 17% tax on one of our purchases. The ship had to stamp one of our receipts in triplicate, keep two copies – one for their records, and one to mail to the FP government – and return a stamped copy to us for our records. Ah, the joys of bureaucracy even in a small tropical island.

Then we returned to our suite after a long and satisfying day, settled in for the evening and prepared to get up early for tomorrow’s excursion, departing at 7:45am.