It's actually the day after Huahine, but after a long night's sleep, I am in a much better mood to give our excursion yesterday in Huahine its due, and report on our fabulous day there.
We didn't set an alarm, because we knew that at least one of us would be up and about before the Pacific Princess even arrived in Huahine, and, naturally, we both were, but not at the same time. In fact, G was already on Deck 11 forward watching as we entered Maroe Bay (which I've been pronouncing MAH-row Bay, but I found out yesterday that the locals say Mah-ROW-ay Bay). But, however pronounced, we arrived about 7:30am, and I woke just before that and saw that G had quietly laid out his snorkel items for the day before he left. I did the same, and then went to the Club Restaurant for breakfast. Following our well-developed routine, he soon joined me there, and we fueled up for what we knew would be an active day.
By 8:30am, open tender was already being announced, and we were walking down to the tender platform on Deck 3. It was another sunny day (how lucky can we get??), and once we had taken the short tender ride to the pier, the Huahine-Nautique boat was already there waiting for us. We booked, online ahead of time, the snorkel, pearl farm and motu picnic excursion through Marc, which was highly recommended on Trip Advisor and Cruise Critic. We were to meet at 9am on the tender pier and return at 3:30pm, so we knew this would be a full day.
Honestly, after having done the excursion, I have no idea who Marc actually was. Is he the man we paid before left (9500 CFP or US$ 100 per person)? Because that's the only guy whose name I didn't get, and of those several I did, there were no Marcs among them. No matter, because everyone whose name we did get was wonderful and added a great deal to making it a really fun and worthwhile day.
Paka was our boat pilot, and called the excursion to order by blowing into a shell to get our attention. He had a map of Huahine on a board and held it up so we could all see exactly where we'd be going and what we'd be doing. Our first stop was to cruise under the bridge connecting Huahine Nui and Huahine Iti and go around the western side of Huahine Iti near the beach we had visited our first time in the island (with the Princess excursion). We stopped there for a nice, long snorkel. The water was extremely clear and gentle, with no current, no more than 15 feet deep (though, if you have to stand on the bottom to snorkel, you need to use floatation because doing so damages the coral). There was a lot of fairly healthy coral and several varieties of fish (I saw no sharks, moray eels or turtles anywhere yesterday). There was a lot of blue coral that looks just like ageratum flowers at home, and these add a nice color to the reef.
Eventually, it was time to move on to the pearl farm, which isn't a farm in the traditional sense at all, but, before I get to that, we had a most pleasant cruise back under the bridge, into Maroe Bay and out of it, going by the little motu around which the Pacific Princess has to maneuver every time it comes to Huahine, and, from water level it looks quite inviting and like someplace where I could stay forever, providing it had electricity and running water and high speed internet. Especially high speed internet. ;-)
The pearl farm, as I said, was not a farm at all. In fact, it wasn't even on land. But, before I get into what it actually was, I have to inject this: Tahitian pearls are big business down here. They are everywhere, from monumentally expensive ones shown in strands in highly lighted store windows to cheaper ones available on canopied tables on the piers where the tenders come in. But what is amazing (to me) about them is how expensive they are. And, after visiting a pearl farm, I understand a bit more about why that is.
First, about the pearl farm: it's a platform in the middle of a lagoon...period. Hanging under the water underneath it are the nets which hold the percolating pearls. But there's not much to see above water, either, which is why they have conveniently put a black pearl store on the platform and have some musicians playing local music (they were quite nice) and, there was a demonstration table to show us just how black pearls come to be.
Each pearl shell has to be manually "impregnated" by inserting a mollusk from the Mississippi River (really) and a graft into the pearl's sac, or gonad (at this point I was quickly getting all squeamish about this whole pearl thing because it was seeming a lot less 'natural' than I had imagined it would be). They are set in nets underwater for 45 days at which point a determination is made whether each is going to be a viable (and valuable) pearl. The shells that produced good pearls are used four times, each time being 'primed' with a consecutively larger mollusk starter, and the large pearls take 18 months to develop. Suddenly, single pearls costing over $1000 didn't seem quite so outlandish (just a little outlandish).
The progressively larger Mississippi River mollusks (above) and the grafts
The net sack into which each shell is placed and submerged
These pearls cost 60000 CFP each (about $650 each)
These larger and more perfectly shaped and colored pearls cost 100000 CFP each (about $1050 each)
After any misconceptions we might have had about the 'totally natural Tahitian black pearl' process had been straightened out, it was time to move on to truly totally natural things, like iridescent blue water and motus and snorkeling. This is the motu where Marc's (whoever he is) BBQ takes place, and we pulled up there in our motorized outrigger canoe to drop off those people who didn't want to do the drift snorkel, or who wanted to start drinking right away (G was on the latter group), and the rest of us were dropped off between the mainland and the motu for an incredible drift snorkel that seemed to go on forever, but probably lasted about an hour in about 25 feet of water but with coral heads that were so large that they reached almost to the water's surface.
Back on the motu, the grilling portion of lunch preparations was underway, but the poisson cru (raw fish with lime juice and coconut milk and fresh veggies) was prepared after we arrived from snorkeling.
Squeezing coconut milk from freshly shredded coconut onto the poisson cru
This hermit crab wanted in on the action
We had a wonderful lunch consisting of the aforementioned poisson cru but also grilled chicken, mahi mahi and tuna, and salad and a really good rice with saffron and all the rum punch or Hinanos or juices or water we could drink (and we could drink a LOT). And we sat with a honeymoon couple from New Zealand and another couple of about our ages from Australia and had a most enjoyable time talking.
After we were done, Armando put on quite a show demonstrating pareo tying techniques and showing the various uses of the wild hibiscus tree, which provides everything from an antibiotic salve to dinner plates to toilet paper to rope and, finally is used to make grass skirts, which aren't grass at all but part of the bark of the wild hibiscus tree. Who knew?
Finally, it was time to get back on the motorized outrigger and make our way back into Maroe Bay and the tender pier. It was 3:45pm by the time we boarded a tender, and after 4pm when we got back to our cabin. Luckily, we stayed on task and got things rinsed and washed and were ready for the evening and on the open decks for sailaway just before 5pm. It had been another very sunny day, but a misting rain shower passed over just as we entered the open ocean. We went to the Elite Lounge and then dinner with Jose and Oleksandr, and that was the end of our evening. Seven port days in a row had caught up with us; we were asleep before 9pm.