Tahiti (wrap-up) & Moorea, Societies
By Chris

Tahiti
July 8^th  – July 11^th, 2004 

Well we finally got off the boat and went into town to get tickets for the big dance festival.  It was still blowing 25-30 but we knew we weren’t going ANYWHERE (our anchor set by two blows) and we needed to get off the boat. By now it was Friday July 9^th, and we had been here two weeks!!  Time for some fun.  The artisans’ festival (the real one) had just started so we decided we would go and check it out.  We finally found the right bus to take us out of town to the festival; it was a new modern bus that was only $1 instead of the $1.30 we were paying for the le truck!!  Figure that one out.  The festival was pretty large, with representatives from the Marquesas, Tuamotos and the Gambiers.  I really wanted to find chief Marc to see if he had the bone carvings for us.  I did a fast track looking for him while KT and Corbie methodically went booth to booth (funny I thought the guys were supposed to be the organized ones and girls just kind of shopped hap-hazardly).  Oh well. I found a couple of booths from Fatu Hiva but they didn’t know Marc, turns out they were from the other village on Fatu Hiva, the one we didn’t visit.  Marc was on the other side of the tent and he recognized me immediately.  I showed him my bone carving and he said he sold three of them the night before (before the festival was even open).  He also sold of the hatchets he made and a bunch of other things.  I quickly ran over to KT and told her I had found Marc and that she should come over immediately.  They wanted to finish their row and by the time they showed up (only 5 minutes later) Marc had sold EVERYTHING to a hotel in Bora Bora. Luckily Island Sonata had bought a tiki from Marc, but they were the only ones.  KT was bummed.  However I did find the woman from the village who I was going to buy the drum from (until Matarua said they wanted it but didn’t end up getting it).  We even tried to get other boats that went back later, to pick it up for us. Sitting right there was the EXACT drum we had been pining over since we left it behind 11 weeks before, without hesitation we bought it.  KT bought a bowl, also from Fatu Hiva.  Of course I ran forward like a little kid, not wanting to miss anything.  I ran into a guy we met on Oa Pou, who did some amazing wood and stone work.  He was all dressed up in Native garb and was excited to see someone he recognized.  This time I grabbed KT and Corbie and brought them over.  Corbie was really looking hard at a necklace and I was checking out some of the flower stone (only from Oa Pou) and Marquesian jade necklaces.  I figured I had enough but they were so beautiful.  Turns out that Ocean Girl and Dances de La Mer bought them for their husbands.  Mary wasn’t sure so she put it down to think about it, and we talked.  She turned around and it was gone, she freaked, the minute the person who was looking at it put it down again she jumped on it like it was a Million dollars ... “Mine” she said!!  We finished our tour and bought a beautiful platter and a wood/bone fishhook carving for a wall hanging.  We were excited and a little broke, but satisfied that we had a good collection of things to go with our memories.

That night we went to the dance competition.  It was very interesting to watch as they told their stories through dance.  There were a bunch of different scenes where large groups and then some individuals performed their portions.  It was amazing to watch as they moved in ways I didn’t think the human body was able, it reminded me of Circ de Sole’.  I swear one woman was going to blow out her hips and poke some ones eyes out the way she moved so fast.  It was hard to get the whole gist of the story but it was entertaining (when the spoke they spoke in Tahitian and French).  They also had a chanting portion but that got old after the first 5 minutes.  We were all rather tired, cold (if you can believe that) and the seats weren’t padded so I was like a little squirmy kid with ants in his pants.  We settled into the boat for a good nights sleep, and a trip to Moorea planned for the next day (would we FINALLY be able to leave).

Moorea
July 10^th  – July 15^th, 2004 

It was such a liberating feeling to finally pull up anchor out of Maeva Beach in Tahiti.  I thought it would be a struggle because of how hard we were set but the anchor came up smoothly and we made our way up the anchorage to the small southern pass.  We waved goodbye to a couple of boats and said FINALLY to a couple of others that were hauling up anchor besides us.  There was no wind for sailing so we motored the 23 miles to Oponahu Bay.  As we saw after the blow in Fakarava there were at least 12 boats on the move to Moorea.  Moorea was beautiful with Cooks Bay (miss-named because Cook actually visited Oponahu Bay) further to the east.  We anchored just inside the reef in 12 feet of water.  Not only could you see the bottom, you could see all the chain out to your anchor.  It felt SOOO good.  We played cards on Island Sonata, it wasn’t even a question they just showed up and brought us back to their boat so we could finally finish the game we started before the last blow.  The next day we got up and went to a place where the tourist feed the stingrays.

It was truly amazing.  We were standing in about 4 feet of water.  They would come right up to you, ride up your front until they were almost “standing” in front of you like they were ready to dance.  They would open their mouths, which are on the bottom, and take whatever piece of fish you had right out of your hand.  You could pet them and scrape their backs, which they seemed to enjoy and left cool patterns in the sand silt that covered them.  It was quite an experience to watch people who were at first rather taken aback by their aggressiveness, to finally sitting there laughing and dancing with them.  We headed back to the boats for an afternoon of wakeboarding and knee boarding behind the dinghies.  It was fun but I was sore and tired after only about 5 minutes, hey this paradise living is harder than it looks.  That night we finished the day with a girls/boys night on Waking Dream and Billabong.  I guess a couple of the boats needed some same sex bonding time.  We ate dinner and played poker while the girls did the same on Billabong. I think there must be something in the theory behind drinking and gambling, because I stayed the soberest and lost the most, while Ben was hammered (and didn’t even really know how to play) but kicked everyone’s butts.  Oh well come to think of it I never really paid up!!

On Monday, we walked to the local resort, amazing at $500 a night, to reserve some motor scooters for the following day.  We kept walking into Cooks Bay to visit the Pineapple processing plant and sample some of their juices.  It was funny, they gave you all the free shots of booze you could drink but the samples of fruit juices (which they actually made) cost $1.  Oh well, after taking the cheep way out, we continued walking to the head of the bay and saw a couple of boats we knew anchored deep within the bay.  They had a great view of the mountains but the water wasn’t as clear as our anchorage and some moved over later the next day.

We hopped on our scooters at around 8:30 the next morning.  Waking Dream, Island Sonata, and us each shared one with our significant others.  They could move pretty fast and kept up with the local traffic.  We even took them “off-road” and they handled it fine until I popped my fuel line and it almost drained the tank, just barely missing the hot exhaust (now that would have been interesting).  The best view was from Belvidere, which was on a mountain between the two bays.  The foliage was amazing; pine trees in some places, cool Joshua like trees with large fields of pineapples in between.  It was a great way to see the whole island, although we were exhausted by the end of the day (hey keeping that throttle pinned down all day is a lot of work).  I can’t imagine how tired we would have been if we actually rented bikes like I wanted to initially.  There were some very cool anchorages that Waking Dream will get a chance to explore during their visa extension time, and the southern edge of the island looked like it had some HUGE surf.  We ended the day with a combined dinner on Billabong, as we prepared to say goodbye to Waking Dream (who we probably won’t see until New Zealand or Tonga).  They left early the next day, and spotted whales right at the entrance to the bay (oh to have a dingy).  We hung out on the boat and lazed around while we prepared for our trip to Bora Bora.  We knew it was time to leave when I woke up the next morning to two huge cruise ships arguing who was going to anchor where within the bay. 

It was 140 miles and we tried desperately to sail.  We only averaged 2.5 knots for the first 6 hours and gave up when hit the swell outside the lee of the island.  We then motored all night until we arrived at Huahine at around daybreak.  The wind picked up (to about 10 knots) so I raised the sails and we bore off for Bora Bora.  Almost immediately it died so we were back to motoring ... 26 hours all together.  What really sucked was we got about 20-25 knots of wind just as we rounded the northern tip of Bora Bora and had to motor into it, along with 6 foot swell just to get into the pass.  We found a nice little spot in the lee of a motu, right off the outer reef. It is rather protected from the wind so it is starting to get a little crowded.