The Polynesian language is quite different. Taha'a, the island where we are now, is pronounced exactly how it's written - with a sharp pause between the last two a's. Lots of words are like this. When we listen to the language, it's very start-stop with lots of those sharp pauses between two vowels. Very strange.
At the airport on our way to Taha'a we saw a sign warning passengers that there has been an outbreak of dengue fever in the islands. Dengue is transmitted by mosquitoes. We soon learned there are plenty of mosquitoes around which stopped me doing any lying around outdoors as mozzies love me, sadly.
We landed at the island next to Taha'a called Raiatea. The view of the reefs around the island was beautiful.
Here's the plane we flew in, Dad!
Unfortunately John's bag didn't make the same flight as us! We were assured at would come in on the next flight a few hours later, and much to our surprise it did, but we couldn't make the most of the afternoon with John having nothing to swim in.
We made our way to our accommodation by boat and car. That evening we sat out on the jetty and watched the sun set. See all those clouds? They bring rain several times each day! Not what we came to a tropical island for but there's not much we can do about it. That island in the distance is Bora Bora, our destination after this island.
The programme was exactly the same as the Heiva we saw in Papeete. These performers weren't quite as polished but at least I could take photos. The costumes were still amazing as were the performances.
The dances were held in an enormous marquee, which was just as well cos it rained quite a bit. The area outside soon turned to mud.
The last dancing group was amazing. They had a number of costume changes.
Shake those hips and knock those knees!
It must be so awkward dancing in coconut bras! They must scour the island for ages to find pairs of the right sized coconuts, hehe. Of course, this is not something anyone in their right mind would voluntarily wear. When the missionaries arrived in the islands a few hundred years ago, they were horrified by the topless women and made them wear coconut shells to cover up. The tradition stayed.
While on that subject, the Tahitian name for breasts is "titties" and a bra translates as "tittie-holders"!
The locals often get dressed up in their best clothes for the festival. Women decorate their hair with either a single flower tucked behind their ear or a full garland around the head. I couldn't take direct photos of these so here are a few stolen shots.
We wandered outside the big marquee looking for food. About a dozen large thatched roof buildings surrounded the marquee. We later learned that they are all built just for the event then are pulled down. They were pretty permanent-looking buildings we thought.
The only take-away food we could find were baguettes. They were stuffed with meat, some kind of gravy, hot chips and loads of tomato sauce! It was surprisingly tasty but not exactly a balanced meal. It made us reflect on the dinners we've eaten in Polynesia so far - for me it's been chow mein, pasta, hamburger, pizza and the salubrious baguette. Hmmm, this is not a healthy start!
The next day we headed across to an exclusive island resort just across the water. We got free transport if we ate lunch there which worked well for us. We went there to snorkel on a great coral reef. We had to walk along a long stretch of coral beach first though, which was pretty painful on the feet.
There were lots of fish on the reef and they sometimes get fed so they were pretty friendly. This bird wrasse followed us around for quite some time.
Fish often came very close to us.
The fish were mostly the usual varieties but I found a couple that were new to me. This one's a white-spotted surgeonfish.
I can't for the life of me work out what these guys are though.
The tide was quite low and we had trouble getting over the coral at times.
The resort had all those overwater bungalows which looked amazing when the sun came out but not so appealing when it was raining! Finally there was a burst of sunshine and suddenly everything looked like a tourist bruchure.
This guy's job was to play the ukelele for guests as they got off the boat at the resort. We saw him play for some that arrived while we were there. His face was tattooed and he had a bottle of some sort of liquid through the pierced hole in his ear!
Back on Taha'a, we spent the following days exploring things near our accommodation. There are heaps of crabs here.
Our accommodation had bikes so we cycled quite a bit. There is a rum distllery near us so we had to check it out of course! We were shown around and we ended up buying a small bottle of vanilla rum. Vanilla is a big thing on this island.
We rode bikes along the coast road until we found a lovely little jetty built of stones. We drank the rum while we watched the sunset. A crab crept closer and closer the whole time we were there. The crabs are usually quite skittish so we guessed that this one was used to getting a few crumbs from picnics on this spot.
We then rode back to the village and ordered steak, chips and veges from this food van. By then it was completely dark and our bikes had no lights. It was a really fun and challenging ride home! This bike ride was one of the highlights so far.
The next day John went diving and I tagged along for a snorkel. We organised it through our accommodation and didn't really know what to expect. A 16 year old French boy from our accommodation joined us and we picked up an American family from the yacht they had hired for their holidays! Cool! The first dive was on a reef that I could snorkel on so while the others dived I looked around the reef. I saw schools of triggerfish and a few black-tipped reef sharks. This one actually checked me out. (It's ok - I've zoomed in a lot. He was about 4 metres away.)
After a while I saw the divers appear. The water around John here is stunning.
I had great fun swimming through the thousands of tiny bubbles released by the divers.
We moved on to a second site but it was too rough to snorkel here. I'm not very good on boats so I had taken some ginger tablets. To my horror, we sat rocking wildly for 35 minutes waiting for the divers but it turned out that I felt fine. Those ginger tablets work!
John enjoyed his dives. They saw reef sharks, a moray eel and lots of coral fish.
That night we watched yet another stunning sunset. Bora Bora seemed to glow. Those structures in the foreground are where they raise boats out of the water. Apparently they grow some sort of an algae on the boats if they're left idle in the water.
There are supposed to be manta rays near our place so we took a kayak out once and have snorkelled a few times looking for them but we had no luck.
Sadly, John came down with a cold after his dive so our last day on Taha'a was a fairly quiet one. On one of our bike runs to get breakfast we saw the speed limit on the island and had to laugh.
It's been surprisingly difficult to get a balanced meal here. We can get meals at our accommodation but they're very expensive and breakfast is poor value (coffee, fruit and bread and jam for $23 a head!). We bought quite a few meals from the "supermarket" but this was mostly fried things or cold toasted sandwiches with cheese and fake meat. The supermarket sold no fruit or vegetables at all! We found a few stalls on the road though and managed to get a few bananas to even out the diet.
So we've had a pretty cruisy start to our trip. I feel like we're more on a holiday than on our usual travels, but things will probably change a bit now. I think we stay no longer than three nights in any one destination in Polynesia from now on. We plan to island-hop so we'll spend quite a few days just travelling from one island to the next. We're bound to find some manta rays somewhere!
Til next time,
Heather
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