Baie Faaroa
01 July 2014 | Raiatea
Colin
Our 20 mile passage across to Raiatea was uneventful. The few squalls that we saw missed us and we pulled up into Baie Faaroa on the SE side of Raiatea about midday. This is a long, deep bay typical when a "largish" river flows into the sea. Although these types of bays are quite deep, if you go all the way back to near the river mouth you can usually find good holding in mud/sand bottom. Shortly after setting the anchor an enormous catamaran (s/y Hemisphere) anchored right next to us. We had seen this beauty on the quay in Tahiti where one of the crewman told me that at 44 m it was the largest sailing catamaran in the world. Needless to say, they had all the toys. Still, we were quite comfy on our boat and the rain fell on us both as we shared the same views. When the rain let up a bit we went for a jungle cruise in our dinghy up the river Faaroa (just like Disneyland!). We met a local guy named James in his kayak and he gave us a quick tour and sold us some fruit from his farm. The next day it was calm, so we took a long (6 mile) dinghy tour down to a special Marea that was supposed to be the mother of all Marea... literally. Apparently, all the other Polynesian tribes had to take one stone from this Marae back to their islands and use it to build their own Marae, with all the appropriate sacrifices of course. I tried to pry a stone loose for our own Marae, but Wendy wouldn't let me keep it. I told her we could skip the sacrifice, but she wouldn't budge. We spent 3 lazy days in Baie Faaroa before moving north inside the lagoon to the town of Uturoa.