Tropical Taha'a

Ia orana! (This is 'hello' in Tahitian and is pronouced 'yorana' so we just remember 'Torana" and we've got it!)

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 French owners of our accommodation are fairly new and are absolutely lovely. The wife speaks good English too and told us that there would be a Heiva dance on that night in the next village. They were going so they took us as well. Awesome! We turned up at the village and had trouble finding somewhere to park the car as there must have been 100 cars there. I was amazed there were that many cars on the 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.

After the dancing group, a couple of singing groups came out. Again, they seemed to do exactly the same type of thing as we saw in Papeete. A colourful group would come in then form a U-shape. The first song would always be that weird bagpipe-sounding song. After that there was a mix of slower songs and some that had fabulous harmonies.

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

Simon............ Tahiti.

Bonjour!

To explain the title of this blog post, those of you of a certain age might remember that ad where a husband and wife are in a spa in an aeroplane (you can do anything in an ad!) She's looking at a tourist brochure and says, "Tahiti looks nice". He calls to the captain, "Simon........ Tahiti" and the plane banks presumably towards Tahiti. And it was all for a soap!

So why are we here? Courtney is living in Buenos Aires so we thought it was a good opportunity to visit that part of the world. However, Buenos Aires has roughly the same weather as Melbourne and we wanted some winter sunshine. While we were making our travel plans, we were reading Mutiny on the Bounty. What an amazing story! In the book, the Bounty stopped at Tahiti and the island sounded amazing. Tahiti is the main island of French Polynesia and is roughly half way between Australia and Argentina so it made sense that we visit it on the way to see Courtney.

We also found out that the Tahitian annual cultural festival, called Heiva, occurs in the first couple of weeks of July so we set our dates around that. After a rather difficult period of planning (it's high season so booking accommodation and flights was tricky) we headed off at the start of July.

First stop was an overnight in New Zealand. I had forgotten how friendly the Kiwis are. Even though we only stayed in an airport hotel we had a great time. We really need to go back there and try some of their walking tracks.....

We arrived in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia in the evening. It was pleasantly warm but not too hot. We headed along the waterfront, which was lovely.

An American couple who were on the same flight as us were also staying at the same accommodation so we ended up having dinner together. There is an area where food vans serve up a variety of local foods. We knew French Polynesia would be expensive but we had our first real lesson in this when a simple meal at a food van costed around $25!

We spent the next few days getting things organised and exploring the town. There are some lovely simple churches.

There was quite a bit of cool art on buildings.

From the beautiful to the ugly - we've seen some weird mannequins in the past but this one wins the ugly award!

Lunch most days was a baguette. They're huge!

One of the more interesting features of Polynesian culture are the mahu. These are local men who not only dress as women but are raised as women. This has been a part of the culture for a long time. Captain Bligh, of Bounty fame, even wrote about them. We've seen plenty of them working in the shops. They are treated just like anyone else.

They speak mainly French here and we've struggled with it. John's French is pretty good usually, but we haven't used it for ages and John's is rusty while mine is almost non-existent.

We had allowed two nights in Papeete to see the Heiva festival. We went to buy tickets but could only get in on the opening night. We made our way there on the night and it was fun seeing people getting ready for their performances.

Inside the stadium, we took a photo of the lovely ushers. It turned out though that photos aren't allowed to be taken of the performances, much to the dismay of most of the tourists. The lady on the left ended up being the camera Nazi, stopping everyone taking photos, including me.

The show started with the opening ceremony. We were surprised there were so few people in their seats at that stage, as we knew the show was nearly booked out. We soon learned why. The speeches dragged on and on. I snapped a few pics cos I figured this wasn't actually the performance, and I got quite a few before the camera Nazi stopped me.

There were different percussion groups through the night and they were all amazing.

Finally, the first of the singing groups started. Their harmonies were incredible. I tried to film them surrepticiously but it was difficult. You can just see one of the groups coming in in this video before someone blocks my camera's view.

In this one you can hear the high voices that sounded amazingly like bagpipes!

The singing was lovely but it got VERY repetitive. John was soon suggesting we leave but I thought we'd see what came in next. We had to sit through more talking as we were told every detail about the story that was about to performed by dancers - it was first told extensively in French, then English, then Tahitian. Seasons could change in the time it took for the description to finish. 

Finally, it was over and the dancers entered - all 140 of them in absolutely sensational costumes! We were bowled over by the colours, the dancing and the sheer numbers of performers. For about an hour they danced, formed choreographed patterns and shimmied those hips! They went through a number of costume changes. Over 100 ladies in the same costumes performing in sync was quite a sight!

There were featured performers too. Some were kings or queens in the stories but it seemed to be a requirement that there was a solo performance by a male and a female dancer. The male solos featured a lot of squatting and knee-knocking, often at the same time. The females could walk while they squatted but the hip-shaking was the feature. Apparently these groups practice for around six months to get ready for this competition.

Hours and hours of work must have gone into the costumes too. They mostly featured natural products like grasses, shells and feathers but they were often coloured in bright colours. As I couldn't get photos, I found some online of last year's Heiva festival to give you an idea of what they were like. Sadly, I couldn't find a pic of the large groups all dancing at once.

What we did find though is that the performers themselves hung around after the show a bit and were more than happy to have photos taken. I really don't know why they didn't allow photography during the performance. These guys were rapt to be asked!

It was a great night!

We spent the next day organising things and managed to get good enough internet most of the time to watch the Tiges thrash Gold Coast - yay! We watched the footy while eating $28 pizzas. This is seriously not a budget country!

Tomorrow we leave to go to the first of our island destinations. I can't wait to have a look at the underwater life there.

Till next time,

Heather and John

The Streets of San Francisco and our top 10 Mexican Destinations

Our four months in Mexico was a truly wonderful time. There are so many things that make this country so special. Some of them are:

The people: Mexicans have got the happiness thing sussed. Family connections are strong. On weekends, entire families go out together. Teenagers hold hands with parents and take grandma for a stroll in her wheelchair. Dads hold hands with daughters, mothers stroke the hair of sons. The family provides such strong support.

They love celebrations. They seem to look for any excuse for a fiesta. Music is loud and upbeat. Life occurs outside the houses, in the streets. Mexicans promenade around town squares on a Sunday afternoon or they dance the night away in those same squares.

Despite this being a strong Catholic country, they are not prudish. Even old couples hold hands in public. Young couples pash on park benches. Married couples salsa sexily on the dance floor. Public affection is absolutely normal.

Mexicans are so polite. They always say hello when they walk into a shop or even an elevator. Outside of the big cities, they usually say hello just passing you in the street. When they leave a restaurant they always say "buen provecho", which means "enjoy your meal", even if you've never met them or even spoken to them before.

We never felt threatened anywhere, There were a couple of places we avoided due to drug war problems, however I feel more concerned outside Coles in Ballarat than anywhere in Mexico that we visited. I'm not saying it's perfect (every country has dodgy areas) but we felt completely safe. Not once in four months did I feel sexually harrassed either. Mexicans are so respectful. Besides, why would they bother me when they have ther own gorgeous women?

The weather is perfect. I know we've been here at the best time of year but four months of endless blue skies has been amazing. Most places haven't been too hot or too cold, although we have taken the weather into consideration when planning our destinations. No wonder the North Americans come here in droves.

Mexican LOVE colour. Walls are painted yellow, blue, green, purple, pink, orange and brown. Bright flowers add extra splashes. Blankets are woven in bright colours and arts pop with vibrant hues. The arts are so strong here. Never have we been to a country where arts and crafts are so important. Pottery, murals, ceramics and textiles are everywhere. Each region has its own unique designs.

The food is amazing. Mexico is a gastronomical delight. Highlights were the moles (chocolate-based sauces) of Puebla, the cemites (amazing salad rolls with grilled meats) of Cholula, the fish tacos of Baja and the awesome street food that you can get just about anywhere.

I love the way each region has its own unique culture - different foods, arts and lifestyles. You can pick up a piece of pottery and know which town or region it has come from simply by its design. Weavings vary from place to place and even house designs are different. Some regions even have different races of people. The Mayans feature strongly in Yucatan. You can see the different races in so many faces. 

Looking back on our Mexican journey, here are our fave places in case some of you might be interested in going there one day:

1. The Mexican/Guatemalan border: We loved Las Nubes where we saw the most amazing waterfalls and places where the water disappeared underground and re-appeared further down the river. We then travelled on in a local minibus where the driver's lucky charm hanging from his mirror was a goat's leg! We caught a boat up the river to the amazing Yaxchilan ruins, which we had completely to ourselves for an hour or so then saw a wild puma on the return trip.

2. Divisadero and the Copper Canyon: The amazing canyon system was at its most spectacular at Divisadero. This was also where we ziplined down the canyon with incredible views around us.

3. La Paz, Baja California: From La Paz we snorkelled with whale sharks and sea lions. John even had a sea lion pup climb onto his chest! We saw frigatebird breeding grounds, jumping dolphins and schools of small manta rays.

4. The cenotes in Yucatan. Together with our "kids" we swam in these stunningly beautiful sinkholes, draped with vines and laced with greenery. Some even were almost caves and the rooves dripped with amazing stalagtites.

5. The unique village cultures around San Christobal de las Casas. At each village women, and sometimes men, dressed in different clothes. You could pick which village a person was from by what he or she was wearing. Their religions, customs and beliefs varied enormously. It was a fascinating place.

Sadly, our time in Mexico was up. Our flight home took us via San Francisco. I had never been there before so we decided to spend a couple of days there.

We arrived at the airport and went to immigration. We lined up to process our passports on a machine then went into another line to wait for imigration. And we waited. And we waited. It took just over two hours to get through. It was disorganised chaos!

By this time we hadn't eaten for a long time but there was no food anywhere so we headed to the airport train. The machine to buy a ticket wouldn't work but luckily there was a man there who could help. The train pulled up just as we got to the platform. At last things seemed to be going right! People walked to the doors to get on the train but before the doors opened the train moved off again! Another tourist and I looked at each other and started laughing. Luckily, it only moved a bit further up then this time it let us on.

The train smelled awful. Strangely, it smelled like a sheepyard. The windows were so filthy we could barely see out of them. The train screeched and shuddered its way through tunnels and pretty suburbs (what we could see of them through the windows.) A man, so drunk or stoned that he could barely keep his eyes open, wandered through the carriages begging.

We came to our station and rode the escalator to the street. There was a shout from a security man and a couple of youths bolted out of the station. Another security guy called over an old homeless-looking man who was swigging from a brown paper bag. An angry sounding black guy stormed off from the people he was with. We were starting to wish we were back in safe, happy Mexico!

Outside we saw a Carls' Jnr burger chain store. We had visited one of these in Mexico and it was pretty good. We were starving so we walked in. The grotty shop was full of people who looked like they'd seen tough times. The guy serving us was sickly pale and had the personality of a wet fish. While we waited for the burgers, we looked around and nearly everyone in the place looked like they lived on the streets. It was a bit scary.

We paid a whopping $9US each for our burgers and my vege burger was burnt. (How do you burn a vege burger in a chain burger store)? We then lugged our bags six blocks up those famous San Franciscan hills and found our hotel which quickly became a wonderful haven. The girl who checked us in was incredibly helpful. A bonus was they upgraded us to a larger room! Suddenly things were looking good again!

It was getting late but we thought we had to see something of the city so we went to a bar just down the road. It was in art deco style and served old-fashioned style cocktails. We got talking to a guy who was sitting next to John. Behind that guy was a group of people and I thought I heard one if them say the word, "Ballarat". Curious, I wandered over to them. It turned out that, of the four people there, two were local, one was from Melbourne and one was from Ballarat! One of the local women was dressed in 40's style clothing and had a fixation on the Dr Blake mysteries, which are filmed in Ballarat. They were a really fun bunch and we ended up staying at the bar til the wee hours with them. The cocktails were flowing and we all had a really great night. Woohoo!

From left to right: John, Anand, John, the Dr Blake lady whose name I can't remember, me.

We woke up the next day a bit worse for wear. We only had one full day to see San Francisco though, so we had to get going.

I couldn't believe it when I looked out of our window and saw these classic fire escape stairs like you see in the movies. They were everywhere in SF.

I loved the gorgeous style of houses here.

Many of the streets were really steep. Check out the angle the cars are parked on.

Of course, we had to catch a cable car. No trip to SF would be complete without this!

The Bay Bridge was visible at the end of some of the roads.

At the Ferry Building there were the most amazing food shops. There was one that specialised in melted cheese dishes. This was a mushroom shop. John loves funghi!

This retro tram was very cool.

We went to a famous restaurant called Tadich Grill. The decor was really cool in an old-fashioned way and the food was great.

We climbed up what seemed to be a  gazillion steps to get to a lookout tower. The area was really lush and green, surprisingly so for a city location.

The tower was decorated with cool murals. I thought these only existed in Mexico! Lol.

The views from the top were amazing. We could see all over the city....

....... plus across to Alcatraz. We didn't have time to visit the old prison though.

We got our only glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge from here.

More cool buildings and steep roads.

The Transamerica Building.

Next to the Transamerica building was a sequoia park. John said I had to put this photo in for you San!

A cool, retro streetscape.

Chinatown was much like Chinatowns anywhere else in the world, but this one was very big. They sold everything from roast ducks to Bobble-head Jon Snow toys!

Chinatown had some cool murals.

So that was the end of our Mexican travels. Mexico was a truly amazing country and we'd recommend it to anyone. 

Hasta luego!

Heather and John