Another (wet) day in Paradise

 Moorea from our veranda 

Today we arrived in Moorea, French Polynesia. This island is a little larger than Bora Bora and has a larger population.  Again our morning started off with the sun trying to peek through the clouds but not as successful as we’d like it to be.  Looks like Al has friends on this island.. everywhere we look we see this:

After asking around, we found out that Albert Herring was a Swedish immigrant who came to the island in 1920 and married a Polynesian woman and had 12 children.. The family still own the company ( and lots of other businesses on the island) . My Al was a happy guy as there is never anyone with his name anywhere! Our tour today begins with a Jeep Safari along the coast and up into the mountains. We are six to a Jeep and were told to expect lots of bouncing.  This was listed as a demanding tour…frankly it was just like driving around in the outer lands of Arizona with poor gravel roads, one lane traffic and the color green. 

Our first stop was at a black sand lagoon

The black sand from the volcano makes the famous black pearls found here. 

Do those Palm trees look familiar? They should.. they have been filmed in all the movies made about Mutiny on the Bounty. Our guide’s sister played an extra on the last one made.. She just wanted to see Mel Gibson! Our next stop was in a botanical garden where we were able to see vanilla plants. Below are the hanging green pods.

In his hand is the bloom. Vanilla is an orchid plant and the flower was a very light green

The plant itself

The garden had a nice observation spot where we could look out over the area.

And there we see our ship anchored!

And shortly later the torrential rains came and the view was gone but not our smiles!

Next we headed to the pineapple fields.

The pineapples here are used in the neighboring distillery to make a pineapple liquor. There are 200 hectares here owned by the government and each family can lease one hectare for their use.

The fields were full of pineapples at various stages of ripeness. You can see a picture of the jeeps we were in. Six people in the back and the driver set in the cab by himself.

Our driver/guide. He made sure we were safe and entertained!part of our entertainment was a stop at the distillery to try the spirits.  The coconut pineapple spirit was 20% alcohol and I thought it burned my throat. The ginger flavor wasn’t much better…but the juice samples were awesome!

The sky is looking angry yet see the beautiful line of blue water

We stopped along the road to see a breadfruit tree. 

Amazing to think this tree is the cause of the greatest known mutiny…If Bly had taken less good care of these trees and given more water to his men there might not have been any story at all!

As we returned to the port terminal you can see the water hitting the ground above.  The rain was torrential and we immediately were soaked through!  After a brief moment of discussion, we bagged our next excursion, a cruise around the island for the comfort of our ship and a hot shower.  

 Since we are very close to Papeete Tahiti, the ship will leave tonight and sail into the port, dock for the night and tomorrow will begin our last day in paradise.

Our last look at Moorea

Hello Papeete! Hello Tahiti! Good night All