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!