12/16/21: Moorea's Temae Beach

This drop-dead gorgeous view of Cook's Bay greeted us each of our five mornings on the island of Moorea.

We found out on our last day that the owners considered this stone figure that had been made for them their talisman who guarded the property. Don't you love the "hair" on top?! 

As you can no doubt imagine, we only drove up this steep driveway to our rental unit the first day to drop off our bags! From then on, we made sure to park at the bottom of the slope.

Even though Steven and I had already spent quite a bit of time snorkeling and playing around at Matira Beach on the previous island of Bora Bora, we still looked forward to seeing what was considered the best beach on Moorea, Temae Beach.

It was a little surprising to see a number of banners on the rocky, unpaved road to the beach decrying the possible development of the public beach for tourism. I'm guessing that the authorities didn't like the dissension as this and other signs were removed the next time we visited the beach. 

The longish hike to the beach itself:

Michiel, Colleen, and Peggy: I thought of you and our fellow mermaid friends in our water aerobics class back home in the Denver burbs as soon as I saw these people water walking in the turquoise water off the beach.

As soon as we noticed the dark spots, we figured we had come to an ideal place for more snorkeling which had become my favorite activity since arriving in French Polynesia.

It's a bird, no, it's a plane! Since we'd arrived on Moorea by ferry, we hadn't realized the airport was so close to the beach. But there weren't that many planes to create any sort of bother.

I really appreciated my Denver friend Gail telling me these were common mynah birds. She said most people consider them to be thieves and pests but they seemed pleasant enough to me!

The Moorea Green Pearl Golf Course was the only one we noticed on any of the islands in French Polynesia.

Being a true blue Canadian, there was no way I would miss the opportunity to take a photo of this Canadian restaurant!

After a torrential downpour, we were treated to spectacular views of the jagged peaks surrounding Cook's Bay. I couldn't swear to it but I think the first photo is of Mount Tohiea and the second is of Mount Mauaroa, also known as Shark's Tooth!

Next post: Exploring marvelous Moorea!

Posted on January 29th, 2022, from a gorgeously sunny day in Denver's hills. We're not fooled, however, as another winter storm is coming soon to make this the snowiest January on record. Steven and I are so glad we made reservations a year ago to head to Phoenix in a couple of days for the entire month of February for some much warmer weather.

12/15/21: From Bora Bora-Tahiti-Moorea

Before leaving Bora Bora, I wanted one last chance to do some souvenir shopping so Steven and I biked back toward Matira Beach where I'd seen a shop that was always closed when we'd been by the previous times.

The White House had a great selection of interesting carved Polynesian wooden figures, unique hats, and Tahitian jewelry at mostly very reasonable prices. As I suspected our youngest son back home in Denver would likely want a couple of items, I immediately sent him photos of hats, tiki sculptures, and other things via WhatsApp. Thanks to the great technology we use for free all over the world, I was able to get him exactly what he wanted.

These shells looked beautiful but, at $89 a piece, they were way more than I would pay for just a shell.

I know I mentioned in the previous post how surprised we were about the quality of living in Bor Bora. Even after spending several days on the island, we were still struck by the level of poverty we noticed. 

After riding back to our rental property and dropping off our bikes, we took a taxi to the harbor of the island's main town of Vaitape where we caught the catamaran to Bora Bora's airport on Motu Mute.

Last views of Bora Bora as we crossed over the lagoon to the motu where the airport was located:

Even though we'd already taken the catamaran from the airport when we arrived a few days earlier, it was still a lark doing it in reverse!

We'll never forget this iconic Welcome to Bora Bora sign!

The short flight over to Papete'e on Tahiti:

I guessed we'd soon be taking the large ship over to the island of Moorea, our last of the French Polynesian islands we'd tour on this adventure. 

Every member of this family had beautiful floral garlands on arrival at the airport. 

We would have thought that there was a shuttle to the ferry terminal but nope, none. So, a taxi ride took us there where we purchased tickets on the next ferry or navette to Moorea. Since it wasn't leaving for a while Steven and I decided to walk to a souvenir stand we'd found at Place Vai'ete when we first arrived in Papete'e. 

If there were 20 passengers on the huge ferry, I'd be surprised.

Photos of our ferry ride over to Moorea:

Moorea in the distance:

Wouldn't you know that just moments before we landed on Moorea the heavens opened and it poured cats and dogs?!

A map of Moorea:

More beautiful garlands!

The Moorea harbor terminal:

A sign that was apropos for Covid: just click on it to make it bigger so you can see the cute captions.

After we picked up our rental car by the ferry landing in the south of the island, we began driving west, toward Cook Bay where our rental was located.

A local elementary school:

The local produce stand looked very familiar after seeing them on each of the other islands!

More about these two churches in an upcoming post:

Our rental had just stunning, stunning flowers everywhere we looked as you'll also see! Initially, I must say we weren't too enamored with the rental upon being greeted by the owner's two very noisy large dogs, their poop by our unit, the kitchen (or at least most of it!) outside the unit, and lots of other idiosyncracies.

However, the view overlooking Cook's Bay from our rental couldn't have been more spectacular and that almost won us over all by itself.

Next post: Another Polynesian island, another beach to explore!

Posted on January 26th, 2022, from our home in Denver's foothills as we await yet another snowstorm tomorrow. Help, gotta get out of here soon!