My first look at my iPad this morning shocked me. Holy hot dog, why did all these "to-do's" pop up today? Then I remembered...we were supposed to have gotten home yesterday evening, and I had all sorts of things lined up that would need to be done right away. I wasn't sure whether to feel concerned that they weren't getting done or relieved that I didn't have to do them; I decided the latter felt a lot better and decided to go with that. ;-) While I sorely miss being home (after having every intention of not spending this Christmas on a cruise ship), I do not miss the crass commercialism of the holiday in the US. I actually had to laugh this morning when one of my emails announced, in all uppercase letters, 'THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN!!' Well, only if we let it. It's all more sedate on a ship and especially in this part of the world where people (the general population, not the tourists who have plunge pools behind their overwater bungalows) live so simply. And sedate is a good thing at this point. Once again I woke up thinking I could spend another 8 hours sleeping. Still, no fever, so I think I can rule out Chikungunya and self-diagnose fatigue due to extreme cruising.
We weren't certain of our plans for today. We had originally thought we'd rent a car and tour the island, but when we phoned the car rental in Fare from Papeete yesterday, all four of their cars were already rented for the day, as were all their scooters. Seems there was a wedding or something on the island today. It wasn't a particularly pretty day for photos (no rain but almost constantly cloudy) but it was comfortably cool and breezy. We decided a land tour of the island was in order, as we've seen pretty much everything in Fare and done two boat trips already.
When we got to the tender pier, a family of five was talking with the only taxi there, and since he had room in his minivan for 7 passengers, we decided to join them for a several hour island tour. It was a great decision...driver George (who has lived in Huahine for 22 years by way of South Vietnam and France) was an excellent guide and high on patience, which was good, because the family of five included three teenagers (well, almost...18, 15 and 12). I can't tell you how much fun their antics added to our day (as I'll explain later). And, we discovered, we are surrounded by their three cabins in our dungeon down on Deck 3. (I thought I had heard the squeal of a 12-year old girl last evening!).
Huahine is actually two islands, Huahine Nui (Big Huahine) and Huahine Iti (Little Huahine) connected by the Maroe bridge over Maroe Bay where the Pacific Princess is anchored. (See map on October 26 (Day 8) blog entry). We basically drove around the islands in a figure 8 fashion, first heading up the northwest coast toward Fare, where we stopped at the supermarchė Super Fare Nui (which, again, is the best we've seen aside from the Carrefour on Tahiti).
The town was bustling today...the high school kids, who are all flown to Raiatea 25 miles away for school for 3 or 4 weeks at a time, are home for the holiday, and there was an outrigger canoe race taking place on the beach by Fare. The Super Fare Nui was packed with people shopping for Christmas meals. G and I bought TWO bags of Lays potato chips and three liter-sized cartons of fruit juices (pineapple, mango and banana-vanilla) and were good for the day. Our accompanying family (for simplicity's sake, let's just call them the Kranks, which is how they referred to themselves, as they had decided to cruise over Christmas) stocked up on water and leis and sequined Santa (excusez-moi, Père Noël) hats, which Mom Krank insisted the kids wear in several subsequent photos, which was harious.
Back at George's van, we continued around Huahine Nui in a clockwise fashion, stopping first at a sacred marae at Maeva. Here, each of Huahine Nui's ten district chiefs had his own marae and huge stone walls were erected to defend Huahine against aggressors from Bora Bora. This entire archeological site actually extends up into the nearby hills, and its several structures were restored in the 1970s by Professor Sinoto of Hawaii.
Most of the maraes, which were open temples, resemble little more than a pile of rocks but still hold sacred significance to Tahitians.
We next visited a vanilla factory in the village of Faie. The vanilla factory sold ice cream cones, and G had a coconut one and I had a taro one, which was fascinating. It was lavender in color and absolutely delicious though I could not tell you exactly what it tasted like. It was probably closest to vanilla or honey, but neither really describes the faste, which was uniquely delicious.
Tour guide George shows us vanilla beans on a vine.
Our next stop was to see the famous Huahine blue-eyed eels below a bridge in the center of Faie. Legend says that it was huge eels that brought fresh water to the village. As much as the whole idea of blue-eyed eels was fairly repulsive to me, I couldn't help but want to see them before we left French Polynesia. Yes, there they were, in all their blue-eyed glory, and they would have been nothing more than a quick photo op but for the Kranck kids, who quickly crawled down into the little ditch/stream which brought out some local kids and all of them alternately laughing and screaming made the stop so much more fun.
We continued south then, across the Maroe bridge with its great view of the Pacific Princess at anchor, and then drove counter-clockwise around Huahine Iti. Along the way, George explained the state of Chinese (since the Chinese came to French Polynesia many years ago to work in the sugar cane fields), French and Polynesian relations and it's all quite fascinating and, needless to say, fraught with conflict and periods of love and hate. He also pointed out all the fruit and flowering trees we were seeing on the thickly lush island hillsides.
The kids were dying to stop at a beach by then, which was fine with G and I, although we hadn't worn swimwear. We stopped at Chez Tara, a small restaurant on the beach where the kids purchased ice cream and the Krancks snorkeled and swam and G and I lounged in the most simply perfect loungers, curved fiberglass sitting right on the ground. I wanted to steal one to take to the Hotel Tiare Tahiti to sleep in.
At 2:30pm, we climbed back in George's van and finished our drive around Huahine Iti back to the Pacific Princess tender pier. A tender was waiting for us when we arrived, and we returned to our cabin, for once without a lot of beachwear and toys to rinse out. G wasted no time going up to a hot tub and I started this blog post (love it when I can do that prior to 10pm!) and showered before he returned. We were up on Deck 10 for sailaway and then in the Elite Lounge at 5:30pm. Despite our potato chip snacking, we had skipped lunch and were hungry.
Dinner with Jose and Justin was salad and a seafood skewer, with three scoops of red currant sorbet for dessert. We caught most of guitarist-comic Dan Riley's 7pm show and stayed to listen to the Pacific Princess orchestra, once again complete with four musicians. G still has energy tonight, and is out and about, but I am trying to finish an e-book before it goes *poof* off my iPad (it's an Overdrive book due in three days). I returned to the cabin tonight to find- horrors- our disembarkation form to be completed. This form asks us what time we will be disembarking the Pacific Princess on December 28th. I will complete it by writing in "You can expect to start to attempt to possibly pry my fingers off the ship's gangway just after dinner time" and turn it into Passenger Services tomorrow.
;-)