The Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous

Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia

Well, now that we got the whole troublesome sailing bit out of the way, let’s get to the partying…

…by getting in an even smaller boat, but this time with no means of automated propulsion and in the rain!

(We don’t get it either dude…)

The first thing we did was participate in the national sport of French Polynesia by competing in 4-man Polynesian canoe races.  As we had actually sailed to Tahiti with our friends Allan and Alison, they cross-recruited us into their canoe and coconut shucking team.

Difficult to paddle and almost impossible to steer; how the heck did these people colonize the South Pacific in these things!?  Thank goodness we were given a local to help us otherwise the competition would have been who could pull the most outrigger doughnuts before passing out from sheer exhaustion.

A come from behind to second place run ain’t too shabby for a bunch of people used to using bedsheets for thrust instead of paddles.  We woulda taken it too, just ran out of racecourse.  (hey, it’s true, at the end of the video we ended up in front of the other boat, which means we had more momentum.  Well, it does! 😉  Next up was the coconut shucking where a local showed us how he uses a common stick to rip the husk off the coconut and strike it with some sort of Tahitian Karate chop to pop it open.

HOLY FREAKING COW ARE YOU KIDDING US RIGHT NOW!  (Yes, CAPS.  Yes, we yelled.  Bolded even)  Information we could have used months ago!  Did you Tahitians just teach us this now simply for some kind of sick pleasure in the knowledge that we now realize 5 hours of our time spent bashing a stupid coconut with a dull machete could have been spared us simply by picking up a stout stick and using that instead?!?  Would it have killed you to put a manual or something in Hiva Oa?  Freaking sadistic much?

The last part of the party was put on by some professional Tahitian dancers.  It is interesting to note the differences between the pros and the dance students we saw perform a few weeks ago.

 

And to cap it all off, a little segment the dancers put on that Greg is pretty sure is the primary reason the HMS BOUNTY had that little change of management soon after leaving the Tahiti… 

…and the reason grass skirts and coconuts will never go out of style…

For you viewing pleasure we give you “uncoordinated white men with Tahitian dancers”…