Tag: French Polynesia

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Any excuse for a party!

The Tahiti Rendezvous

There is something you need to understand about sailors: they really need very little excuse to do two things:

1)      Sail

2)      Party

So any occasion where an actual legitimate reason exists to do both at the same time is guaranteed to draw a crowd.  Enter the Tahiti Rendezvous, an annual celebration put on by the Tahitian government to celebrate those insane people who are both crazy enough to think that traveling thousands of miles by sail is a good idea and ingenious enough to actually pull it off. 

The short of it is that basically everyone who sailed to Tahiti gets together to have a race to Moorea (her neighboring island) and celebrate the fact that we have actually made it to Tahiti.  Which if you’ve ever spent 3 months traveling to a place, trust us, arriving is something worth celebrating. 

And what better way to start off celebrating arriving at your destination, after sailing for weeks with no land in sight, than to immediately leave land and have a sailing race?

…It’s not like we said, or even really implied, that sailors made any logical sense.

 

Being as our current ride was unable to participate in the sailing race because, you know, due to the lack of the sails and all, we were nominated to be the committee boat and carry the band that would provide the soundtrack to our adventure.  Continue reading “Any excuse for a party!”

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Bora Bora 4th of July

Bora Bora, French Polynesia, South Pacific

What better place to spend the birth of our nation than on American Battle Fortress: South Pacific!?

The Bora Bora yacht club, owned by an American and a Frenchman, (PS – oh yes, there is a yacht club in Bora Bora and yes, we hung out there for a while and yes, we got some official stickers and finally, yes, it is as awesome as it sounds.)

Anyway, they were nice enough to throw us an “as American as we can be in French Polynesia” BBQ.

Some parts were spot on…if not a little odd for the backdrop.

Continue reading “Bora Bora 4th of July”

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Joining FURTHUR

Remember that this is your last chance to enter the draw for the Lonely Planet book:

Click here for the rules to enter the drawing!

And so begins a new era of our journey, with Brian and Motor Vessel FURTHUR!  (Yes, Brian is a Deadhead.  He’s such a big fan, he named his boat after their bus.  Personally, I had no idea that they had a name for their bus, but the tie-dye printing on the stern for the lettering of FURTHUR clues you in that this is going to be a fun ride!)

Continue reading “Joining FURTHUR”

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The Dark Side of Cruising

Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia

After some really great adventures, some terrifying moments and only one major “first aid incident“ it was time to say goodbye to mom and once again become a group of two.

One last piece of Polynesian tourism to explore before she departs though.

Continue reading “The Dark Side of Cruising”

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Bora Bora Bungalow Life

Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia

You know those “beach success pictures” that you see on marketing materials?  Come on, you know what we’re talking about: the person in their swimsuit,

(obviously a very young attractive person because we all know only really hot people go to the beach…)

sitting on the beach with their laptop,

(like it’s normal to use your computer at the beach…)

Looking very excited because, as the picture implies, they have spent their day playing on the sand

(we’re sure it’s not in the water because their hair is always perfect)

and, “oh I’ll just hop on the internet real quick and check my investments…”

(Come on, how many beaches have internet access?  And wouldn’t you be worried about sand getting in the laptop? Or oh I dunno, water?  And by the way, how are you even able to see your screen in the blazing bright sunlight?  Really, who brings their computer to the beach!?)

“…and oh my goodness I’m a millionaire and I didn’t do anything!  You should be like me!”

Yes, that picture.  Being as Greg has a history working in the training industry and has strived to actually help people, he has always had a certain amused infatuation for this type of picture.  He loves the simple ridiculousness of it.  There we were in Bora Bora and we just had to get our “beachside laptop millionaire” photo:

As you can see in the background of the picture, we stayed at yet another overwater bungalow during our time as “normal tourists.”  We did want to have an authentic tourist experience, after all.  There were a few interesting differences from our other bungalow experience: Continue reading “Bora Bora Bungalow Life”

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Bora Bora by Bicycle

Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia

First off, seriously, why is this not a post card?

And the best part is you know the only reason someone went through all the trouble to create that sign was because someone else gave them excellent reason to…and no, before you ask, it wasn’t Greg.

Bora Bora is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world and conveniently, thanks again to the American war effort, there is this really nice road around the entire main island that you can ride a bike on. About 4 hours round trip. It isn’t exactly a large island, being as it’s sinking and all.

We were off to see if the island could deliver on all the hype… Continue reading “Bora Bora by Bicycle”

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Bora Bora here we come!

Onward to Bora Bora, the island you’ve all heard of and dreamed about – we’re actually going there!!!  For our first visit with Tiffany’s Mom, we’re going by plane.  And as we already knew, Tahitians don’t have the same dress code as the rest of the world!  Here’s business casual as defined by the airport attendants:

Yeah, not your typical power suit!

Oh, the Air Tahiti Nui planes have a great symbol on them.  It’s the Tahitian tiaré flower, one of their native flowers that has seven petals.  It smells wonderfully like a gardenia, and can be found growing all over Tahiti.  Tahitians are really into their flowers and “flower language”– The tradition shows that if a flower is worn on behind the left ear means Continue reading “Bora Bora here we come!”

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Fine line between cute and slutty

Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia

(cont’d from previous post)

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”

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So, when are you coming home?

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?”

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How do they get their hips to do that?!

Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia

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?!”

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