Our favourite island so far in the Society
Islands.
Apart from a number of charter
catamarans from Raiatea, there are very few tourists here. In fact a French
woman who runs a rather upmarket boutique was bemoaning the loss of a number of
hotels in the last few years, presumably hit by the recession. Huahine has only
a small airport so cannot compete with Bora Bora or Moorea. However, it is all
the better for that and the few hotels we saw were very attractive low key
affairs with lovely thatched rooms, some on stilts over the water. Well
recommended if you can afford it!
The local people, as elsewhere in
Polynesia, are very welcoming and laid back. The highlight of our stay was a
dance performance at the local fire station where the Huahine Group put on their
final performance of the season after winning a number of prizes at the dance
festival in Tahiti. There must have been in the region of 200 performers in all
including a band of about 30 drummers and percussionists and a smaller number of
ukulele players. The sound they produced was magnificent and the dancing simply
dazzling.
How the women can all wiggle their
bottoms in time with each other and to the music is amazing. About half the
performers were men and although they do less bottom wiggling they do some good
posturing, similar to the hukka of the NZ rugby team, but without the tongues
and with the addition of some fancy footwork, hip and thigh tricks that had the
local women and girls cheering and shouting for more. We have some very good
video clips of the act but only a few rather poor photos which do not do
justice to the atmosphere and the spectacle.
After the performance we chatted to a
couple of the band members, one of whom was playing.... a penis, much to the
delight of this Australian woman who accompanied us.
We stayed for a couple of nights at
Fare, both for this performance but also because there was an excellent
supermarket nearby and a laundry. Best of all there was a bar that had a happy
hour. Due to the high price of drink in French Polynesia and the strong
religious tradition there are extremely few bars in these islands. Those
there are tend to be run by Europeans or are part of hotels and are rather
expensive. It was nice to be able to meet other cruisers on neutral territory.
It can be a little difficult meeting new people, especially non- Brits when all the socialising is on people's
boats. As a result
we met some very nice Australians, a Texan and his Aussie partner and the crew
of Troutbridge a catamaran named after the ship in the Navy Lark (if anyone else
is old enough to remember it). This Guernesey based yacht had had to have a lot
of work done on a hull in Tahiti after dragging one night in the Tuamotus onto
an unforgiving coral reef. They were holed below the waterline but managed to
staunch the leak with some underwater epoxy long enough to reach
Tahiti.
We
visited one other anchorage at the other end of the island surrounded by the
crashing surf on the reef a few hundred yards away. Yet another idyllic
spot.
Raiatea in the background. This is
our next stop where we have booked in to a boat yard to have the bottom of the
boat cleaned of its carpet of sea grass and replace it with
anti-fouling.
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