Celebrating my birthday in Huahine, French Polynesia
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Mon 19 May 2014 02:55
We got the rest of the boat ready and left the dock about 2pm to head to Huahine, to try everything out, meaning the boat and us as we have been tied up for over 2 weeks!
Unfortunately, the winds were far too light to sail, but we did get the headsail up for a short while to make sure all was ok.
We arrived in Huahine on Monday lunchtime, and after a swim in the gorgeous lagoon just off the boat, we had a lazy afternoon, reading, relaxing and generally enjoying being on anchor again.
How gorgeous is the water?
Tuesday was my birthday, so we hired a car and went round the island. Huahine is almost two island, they are about the same size and are joined by an isthmus, over which there is a small bridge. The whole trip took about 5 hours. We stopped off in the main town to get some fresh fruit and vegetables for the next trip to Niue, and then carried on round the island. The whole place looks like one huge market garden, beautiful flowers, plants, and fruit trees are everywhere.
Huahine is also famous for its Tiki site, situated just outside the main town. This was the seat of royal power in the island. The main house was oval shaped, for the Chief, and all the other buildings on the site were square. There are tikis scattered all along the waterfront.
The grand house used by the Tribal Chief.
The tiki site
The lagoon where the pearls are grown. The is a small farm here, nothing like the ones we have seen previously, but with the added extra of a pottery where they use clay from the lagoon bed and natural dyes also found in the lagoon.
An open shell showing the pearl lodged in the gonad on the top left hand side. The mother of pearl, inside the shell determines the colour of the pearl at the end of the process.
One job we needed to do in Huahine was clear out of French Polynesia. As we are a bit behind now, we couldn't get the agent to clear us out with the other boats, so we went to the police station ourselves. The clearly aren't many boats arriving in and out of Huahine as the process was somewhat long-winded, it took nearly two hours to get everything done. What also caused a few problems was that as British citizens and Europeans we do not need a visa for the islands. I think that the police are more used to Americans who do need visas, and couldn't really understand why we didn't have them. At one stage the policeman just put a handwritten note in our passports saying we had permission to leave! Eventually we were all stamped, sealed and ready to depart.
In the evening we went ashore for a birthday dinner, to a restaurant, Chez Tara, recommended to us by another boat. Unfortunately, it must have been the chef's night off as the food was so bad we sent it all back and ended up having cheese and biscuits on the boat instead!
On Wednesday, after spending the morning doing last minute checks and generally sorting everything out on board, we set off for a week long sail to Niue to catch up with the fleet.
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