More from Moorea
Serai
Jason and Emily Willis
Wed 18 Jul 2007 23:02
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17:29.3S 149:51.0W
There can be no doubt that Moorea is a beautiful
island. Its mountainous scenery is spectacular, but still it is rather tainted.
The whole island is awash with 'World Class' hotels. There are more little
bungalows on stilts with palm tree leaf roofs than you could possibly shake the
proverbial stick at. They seem to have stolen the very soul of the place, and
certainly have led to a doubling in all prices! We had expected to be blown away
by Moorea, but instead Moorea tunred out to be only a 'light breeze'.
We took the opportunity to try to fix our
watermaker, ably aided by Geoff from Sifar, once again (from now on he should be
only refererred to as The Professor, and then only in muted tones of
deference!). We replaced all the O ring seals and generally cleaned it up with
high hopes that it would work again. Sadly it did not, and so we think it must
be that the membrane has to be replaced - it cannot really be anything else. Of
course this is the one spare we do not have, so we will next try to acid wash
the membrane in the hopes that this might jump start it. Whilst this 'repair'
was going on ems once again set to the toe rails with a pot of varnish. After a
quick sand down, we added another coat of varnish and they look great once
again. We can at least be proud of our toe rails, if not of the rather dodgy
hull beneath them!
Day 2 brought fine weather and some much needed
shore exercise. Ems and I decided to walk to the next bay, Cooks Bay, so named
after Cook who they thought stopped here, but in fact did not. He actually
stopped in the bay we were anchored in, Oponuhu Bay. Cooks Bay is the main
anchorage but the water is not as nice as Oponuhu, but there is more to do
ashore. In other words there are more swanky hotels and a few more 'French'
restaurants. Of course the standard Ems walk always turns into something more,
and by the time she ordered a turnaround and return to Serai, we were absolutely
knackered. On all fours by now, stumbling along the verge, parched from lack of
water, I offered up my thumb to any passing strangers in the hope they would
take pity on us. And now I can confirm there is a god. He is in the form of a
Moorean in a pick up truck. He pulled up next to us and gave us a ride in the
back of his truck all the way back to our bay! Thank you, thank you!
We had read that there was some great diving to be
done in Moorea, so we decided to look into it a bit more. We asked at our
nearest 'world class' hotel, only to discover that the lady running the dive
shop was indeed from 'Another World' and had not got a clue about any of the
diving in Moorea, telling us that one dive site was in Cooks Bay when in fact we
knew it was in Oponuhu. We made a joint decision that perhaps this was not the
dive company for us - the dive we wanted to do was a 145 ft dive onto coral
formations that look like huge rose flowers. Not for the faint hearted, we
decided we would rather start off with someone who actualy knew where it was.
The hotel also wanted 70 dollars each for the priviledge of diving with them.
Next we decided to try at a dive shop rather than
hotel. Indeed the price was a whole 5 dollars cheaper, even when using all our
own kit, but we had to do another dive with them to 'prove' ourselves. This
meant that the real cost of doing the one dive we really wanted to do was going
to be 260 dollars. Now Iove diving, but really... So it was decided that we
would not be doing a dive in Moorea afterall. Until barefeet turned up that is.
Now Chris loves a dive, but needs dive buddies. Chris has a dive compressor on
board and so we teamed up. We provided 2 buddies in the form of us, and in
return he fills our tanks. We took off in his dinghy to the other side of the
reef and then jumped in. We had a great dive in about 60 feet. The water was
'gin clear' and there was no current. We ambled along over a carpet of
multicoloured corals, sighting 6 black tip reef sharks, a Green Turtle and
several gorgous reef fish including a massive Trigger Fish. We are a bit wary of
these now after being told that they bite and have been known to take on
sharks!
Ems felt that our first foray into the island on
foot had not got us far enough, and so we headed out again. This time we found a
bike shop and hired 2 very heavy duty bikes. Unfortunately mine was about 3
sizes too small and therefore I looked like 12 year old trying to ride a bmx -
there legs rotate in small circles and they never seem able to get a decent leg
extension in order to drive the peddles. It was Ok for about a mile and then
strated to get increasingly uncomfortable. The handle bars decided to work loose
to so that I could wiggle them up and down, whilst at the same time the seat
decided to move to, swinging from side to side. At full speed I was a
vision of motion in all directions, and probably a rather frightening sight to
motorists. This time we made it to the far east side of the island to a lovely
looking beach along a small lagoon. The locals we having 6 man outrigger racing
competitions, and we were only interupted by a swarm of sand flies and
mosquitoes that decided they too wanted to share our lunch. Having slapped
ourselves black and blue we decided to head back. Once again knackered I felt it
would be impossible to expect a passing motorist to pick us up and our bikes so
we just had to brave it and keep peddaling. Once we got back to the bike shop,
we treated ourselves to a couple of smoothies and listened wide eyed as the
owner told us we had just cycled 32 KM. Amazed to be still alive we next
pondered how we would be feeling in the morning as we walked back our bay and
the boat.
It will seem odd to read this, but we rarely relax
on board. We seem to always have jobs to do or places to go to. We decided to
treat ourselves and I set up the hammock on the front of the boat. Ems spent an
entire afternoon reading and snooxzng in the hammock, whilst managing to also
feel guilty at the same time. Incredible how she manages to do this. She almost
makes herself feel so guilty that she actually does not enjoy it!
Our time in Moorea was nearly at an end. The finale
was to head out on a half hour dinghy ride to a small motu further down the
lagoon where you can feed sharks and sting rays in waist deep water. As soon as
we dropped the hook about 8 rays swam over to us. As the 'world class' hotels
obviously have an american clientele, the rays seemed to have a strange penchant
for hot dog sausages! Anyway, they swim all around you and you can touch them
and hold them and feed them. Its really amazing fun and so nice to get so close
to them. The sharks seemed a little more shy and merely circled us rather than
come in for food; perhaps a blessing in disguise!
The passage from Moorea to Huahine is 80 miles - an
overnight trip for Serai. We studied the weather hard and talked to other boats
about when to set off. The forecast was good with nothing more than 15 knots
forecast, although the skies were due to be cloudy. And so off we set at 4pm,
bound for Huahine, a supposedly unspoiled mecca amongst these
islands.
For news of our trip you'll just have to read
on!
Till the next time!
Lots of love
J and Ems xx
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