16.42S 151.02W

 

The rain cleared, the sun came out and beautiful Huahine glistened....the lush tropical vegetation wet from the downpour.  We had a fun night ashore at the local yacht club (they call themselves a yacht club and put on a happy hours in the hope of attracting cruisers – it works!) before eating at the local roulottes.   These are caravans from which locals serve up food.  In Papeete we went with a bunch of cruisers and found it hard to choose from the huge selection on offer – pizza, hamburgers, excellent Chinese, steak, fish, duck or chicken.  In Huahine there were only two roulottes and they seemed to be serving up massive piles of frites topped with steak or fish.  We opted for fish and our plates soon arrived piled high with frites (which we ignored), potato salad, poisson cru and three slabs of tuna.....nothing green in sight.   The poisson cru was absolutely delicious as was the barbecued tuna.  The waitress apologised for the lack of rice – we couldn’t figure out where she would have put it anyway!  The meals came with a huge basket of bread.  As we sat there eating we looked around and realised we were the leanest people there. It is quite sad to think this is perhaps a fairly staple diet for the islanders these days and it comes with a price – obesity.

 

Next morning we set off for Tahaa.  There wasn’t a breath of wind and normally we would have waited.....but Chick and Pete have a deadline and we need to keep going.