Most of the guidebooks about Moorea will at least mention feeding the sting rays.
Typically, you would need to rent a boat or hire a tour guide to go do this but since our old friends on FLY AWEIGH pulled into port a few days ago they offered to give us all a lift out to the reef.
We expected to see some rays at a distance and toss them a few fish. The rays had other plans and were happy to educate us on how this whole thing actually worked. Continue reading “Feeding the Wildlife”
Finally, the Polynesian dance school also had a group of little girls, which were there either because they were in fact learning or just because they were ridiculously adorable.
How the heck do they get their hips to do that? It like they dislocate their spines from their pelvic bones or something. It boggles the mind!
One of the things we found interesting was just how young some of the kids who were learning the Tahitian dance were. One little girl was only five! It was something of a culture shock to see such young kids learning a dance with such sexual overtones to it! Interestingly enough, we did not find ourselves completely repulsed like we are when we seen pre-teens in the States wearing push up bras or hip hugging skin tight jeans. So what was the basis for the difference? Continue reading “Fine line between cute and slutty”
Tiffany: Last year Greg had a birthday post all to himself so he’s decided to keep the tradition alive this year. Please indulge him…
Greg: We have started being asked fairly frequently when we’re coming back, so I guess using that as a gauge, we’ve been gone long enough to be missed 😉
Again a year has passed and we’re still out here in the South Pacific. New island though so that counts as progress right?
Yes it’s a palm tree, but it’s a different palm tree!
This year was an experiment: Would it actually be possible to maintain a twice weekly text & video travel blog while sailing around the world? Well as we’re about to hit our first full year doing integrated entries yes, reckon it is. We are way more surprised than any of you that we’re about to post our 100th page of the new format. Lost count of the videos. According to WordPress it’s something around 400+. It’s been a BIG lift.
And now that we’ve done that, there is so much more to do! Again, you will see massive upgrades in the coming year. As we have learned in business and now blogging, start with the basics and build up as you go. Here’s a preview… Continue reading “So, when are you coming home?”
So uh…what else do normal tourists do? Dance shows! Yes, tourists go to Tahitian dance shows!
We ended up at the Bali Hai hotel in Moorea for our obligatory Tahitian dance show which ended up being quite wonderful! Every Monday night this hotel puts on a free beachside show at dinner time. Figured we’d fall for the ploy, buy dinner and have a good time. As we’ve come to expect,the food was not cheap but at a show alongside it made it easier to rationalize. Also, this show was cool because it was put on by a local Tahitian dance school.
Instead of seeing paid professional performers, the idea was that we were supporting a group of locals and immigrants who were learning Tahitian dance in order to rebuild and preserve their dwindling cultural heritage. This is totally something we can get behind. Also, we thought watching students instead of tourism professionals would lead to us seeing more authentic dances than just the gussied up shows for the gringos…not that they call them “gringos” here but we are unfamiliar with the Tahitian translation. (Mostly due to the fact that we don’t think the islanders we’ve encountered so far think of tourists in this way.)
It was a great show. So you kind of expect the ladies right? Because basically what the average person thinks of when they hear the words “Tahitian dancer” is a young Polynesian woman. Continue reading “How do they get their hips to do that?!”
Continuing our exploration of the heritage site we found the ruins of a marae (altar/temple) and evidence that perhaps Mr. Morse was a bit premature in taking credit for his code…also perhaps Greg is better at “tourist-ing” than he first let on…
Our final stop on the tour was a series of scenic viewpoints in the mountains. The roads were very, very steep. While this was something we had previously experienced, the truck added a new twist. Namely, the road was too narrow to allow us to turn around at the top. So the driver had to decide: was he going backwards on the way up or the way down? Continue reading “Further experiments in tourism”
Like we said, we’re moonlighting as “normal tourists” in the Society islands. So what do normal tourists do? No, that isn’t rhetorical or a clever way to intro this blog entry. Really, what do they do?
While we are, at this point, arguably at least relatively well traveled, we really haven’t done a lot of “tourist-ing.” (is that a word?) Packaged tours aren’t really our forte and why pay for a walking tour of Venice when you can wander around it all by your dang self to find the local’s dance club? Our method of exploring a place is best compared, in Greg’s twisted gamer mindat least, to a random encounter roll. A hold over from his Dungeons and Dragons days…
Tiffany: “Oh, look Greg, there went half the freaking audience in three words or less!”
We’ve all heard of beach bungalows before and until now, we really had no idea what to expect from this iconic South Pacific icon of the good life. We had no preconceived notions here except waterside and a bed. Which leaves a lot of variables shrouded in mystery when you stop to think about it. Is it like a normal hotel room? is there a kitchen? Outhouse or running water bathroom? Does it come with one of those dancing hula-girl statues you see on people’s car dashboards? What’s it really like to live in a classy hotel’s overwater bungalow in French Polynesia? Well, it’s like this: Continue reading “Bungalow living”
At only 10 miles from Tahiti, way less populated and with regular 5 times a day ferry service from the capital city, Moorea is seen quite literally seen as Tahiti’s garden-esqe backyard. We got a good look at the place when we took one of the regular busses around the island to our over-water bungalow. (sounds classy huh?)
Oh look! A slide show! Now that is classy! 😉
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
While it doesn’t hold a candle to the Mexican bus service, the fact that Moorea had a regular bus service at all was pretty spectacular and yet again evidence we were no longer on an island that is unaccustomed to vacationers. In addition to the beautiful scenery, Continue reading “What do you mean sinking!”
Our expectation on the quality of ferry service was not too high. So Papeete is the major commercial port for the region. Come on, the second largest commercial port in the region had guys on outboards bringing in fruit and a grand total of one cargo ship that goes about 8 knots best speed. So it can’t be that much more advanced right?
The distance between Tahiti and Moorea is not much more than a stone’s throw in island terms, a little over 10 miles to the rest of the world. Add in the docking, loading and unloading process and we figured it would take us about four hours to make the transit.
Our first hint that we had underestimated the situation was that the 5 passenger ferries that service this route (!!) are each bigger than the one resupply ship for the rest of this country…and not by a little bit.
Our second hint was the nicely upholstered airline style lounge area aboard with the flat screen TVs showing old black and white island TV.
But what really convinced us was when the 4 jet turbine engines kicked in (they have those here!?) and we hurtled across the channel between the two islands at about 25 knots!
