Safiya in Moorea
Safiya
Harvey & Sue Death
Tue 27 Jun 2017 03:35
Coincidentally we had our first holiday all together in the South of France
towing a speed boat thirty years ago and here we were again having a
nautical holiday in a French owned country albeit with a larger boat!
We spent one night in the marina in Tahiti and with Declan safely dispatched
to the Uk for a holiday, the four of us set sail for Moorea. It's not very
far, you can see the island very clearly from Tahiti but the two islands are
like chalk and cheese. While Tahiti is big, busy and commercialised, its
little sister is small, laid back and unspoilt, with the friendliest people
we've come across to date.
While Tahiti's beaches are volcanic, black sand, Moorea's beaches are coral
white sand. The island is only 62km in circumference and almost entirely
surrounded and protected by a reef. Inside the reef the water is clear and
blue. We anchored up and were able to see the bottom quite clearly, no need
for a snorkel and mask!
By contrast the interior of the island is dominated by jagged mountains
covered in lush green vegetation.
As well as exploring the coastline by boat we also set out to explore the
interior of Moorea by a number of means; pushbikes, jeeps and quod bikes.
The latter allowed us to go off road over streams and along trails into what
was once the centre of the volcano. We climbed some steep elevations in the
quod bikes and were rewarded by fantastic views of the bays. Despite its
rugged nature there is a lot of fruit cultivation in the centre of the
island, particularly pineapple plantations and Moorea even has its own small
fruit juice factory.
Sue and Clive overcame their fear of being in close proximity to fish when
we snorkelled with huge rays. Tourist boats feed them so that they all
congregate in one area. We jumped off our dinghy into the water and a crowd
of curious rays swam right up to us looking for food, while in the back
ground, black tipped reef sharks circled around us.
It was Clive and Sue's 32nd wedding anniversary while we were in Moorea and
we celebrated during the day with a bike ride to the Sofitel on the East of
the island where we enjoyed a fabulous lunch on the dock, and in the evening
we had a lovely meal at the Hilton, made even more interesting when we tried
to navigate our way back to the boat in the dinghy through the coral beds in
the dark!
We were ahead of the Oyster pack in Moorea as most boats were spending a few
weeks in Tahiti doing repairs and maintenance and a lot of owners took the
opportunity to fly home. There was one other Oyster in the bay when we
moored up - Boysterous, owned by friends of ours Joe and Vickie who are
American and Lebanese. We enjoyed sundowners with them, and then for the
last few days our friends from Altair joined us for more G & T's.
Sadly all good things have to come to an end and we arrived back in the
marina in Tahiti yesterday where we will leave Safiya while we return to the
UK for three weeks to visit family and friends and most importantly to
attend Grace's graduation.
So there'll be no more blogging for a while!!
