Moorea is Tahiti's next door neighbor -- it's so close that you can easily see it from the west coast of Tahiti. We took a short ferry ride from Pape'ete and arrived in Mo'orea less than an hour later. The island is smaller than Tahiti, but it has a very distinctive profile from the water -- the mountains are steep and jagged. On our first day it was raining but later in the week we took a drive up to the Belvedere lookout for great views of the landscape.
It was great to have a car and explore around the island. You can drive the whole perimeter in about an hour and a half without stops. But we made sure to make plenty of stops along the way. Here's what the mountains look like from the Pao Pao Panorama viewpoint on Cook's Bay.
On Monday afternoon, we went on a half-day whale watching excursion that also gave us some excellent views of the island's rugged mountain interior.
Our guide for our whale tour was Dr. Michael Poole, a marine biologist who has spent his life studying whales and dolphins. We learned so much about whales in just one afternoon, especially about how they communicate and behave in the breeding waters of French Polynesia. We were lucky to spot a group of three whales -- a mother, her calf, and a male adult trying to court the female. Dr. Poole was very respectful and kept the boat a safe distance away from the whales but our group was able to get in the water with snorkel gear to hopefully be able to see the whales in the water. Unfortunately the whales were on the move and we humans are nowhere near fast enough to keep up with a swimming whale. So technically we did not get to swim "with" them. But we were definitely close enough to hear the male singing underwater, which was ethereal and beautiful. During our boating years we saw whales many times but it is still always absolutely amazing to see them up close.
Our Airbnb on this island has been great -- it has a huge garden and is right on the water. We've been able to snorkel right from the backyard.
If there's a tropical fruit or flower, the owners have managed to plant it here. They've got pineapples, bananas, citrus, coconut palms, passion fruit, hibiscus, plumeria, and on and on -- we've been able to have fresh bananas with our cereal every morning.
The place is set up perfectly for indoor-outdoor living. In contrast to the furnace of Arizona where we couldn't survive the summer without full A/C throughout the house, here they typically only air condition the bedrooms at night. But with the windows and doors open, you get a wonderful ocean breeze through the rest of the house. Of course with all that open-ness, come the bugs. And behind the bugs come the geckos. Yes, we have several gecko roommates who have set up house behind the picture frames on the walls. They do a decent job of keeping the big bugs out. But we learned a hard lesson about ants when we left our breakfast cereal and a box of raisins out on a shelf overnight. There was a trail coming in from the bathroom window, up above and around two doorframes, across a wall and down to the isolated shelf that we thought was safe because it was nowhere near a window. Ooops! From now on we will definitely be putting any and all food into the refrigerator. You'd think with all the sweet fruit in the yard the ants would have plenty of easily accessible food already.
Most of the big resorts have some kind of Polynesian Dance show for their guests. But because we have only been staying in Airbnb's, we haven't had a chance to catch any shows. Luckily here on Mo'orea there is the Tiki Village Polynesian Cultural Center. They put on a buffet and show twice a week. We gave the buffet a skip since we have already eaten several Polynesian meals at this point, but we were able to get show-only tickets and enjoyed watching the different Polynesian cultural dances (the hula, the haka, etc). It was very similar to what we've seen at luaus in Hawaii, but it was nice because there was a much smaller audience so you could really see what was going on.
What I was less happy about was being pulled up onstage to perform a hula dance. I generally avoid that kind of thing, but the persistent coconut-bra-wearing lady just would not take no for an answer. You can tell from my expression that I won't be changing my life's motto to "Dance Like No One Is Watching" anytime soon.
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