After seven blissfully relaxing days at Huahini we had a quiet sail across to Raiatea. The eastern passe through the reef was well marked and the inner channel around the island was easy to follow. The small town of Uturoa, the second largest in French Polynesia after Papeete, was strung out along the lush green hillsides on shore. The first night we anchored off the Uturoa marina. Ashore it seemed like we were in a somewhat rundown district. We later learned that this was "downtown", and we were a bit concerned that we were not in the typical paradise we had come to expect in French Polynesia.

Being spoiled by continuously surrounding beauty, the next day we moved down to Faaroa Bay on the eastern windward side of the island. This was a deep bay with the ubiquitous steep intensely green hillsides we were more accustomed to, but with a deep valley leading back in towards the center of the island. It was easy to pick up a mooring at the head of the bay, and we were once again in paradise.

The Aoppomau River was a small very quiet river which penetrated several miles back into the valley with just enough depth to allow the dinghy to pass through. As we slowly dinghied up the river we noticed small farms laid out every quarter mile or so on each side of the river.















The dense foliage gradually covered over us more and more as we proceeded up the river. Near the end we encountered Andre, a farmer up in the valley. He waved us ashore and gave us a tour of his four hectare farm on which he grew fairly well groomed bananas, coconuts, breadfruit, guava, papaya, ginger, squash, cucumber, taro, limes, potatoes, and about ten other tropical fruits the names of which we could not understand. There were also a number of gorgeous flowers.





Obviously the soil was very rich with plenty of water. Basically anything planted seemed to grow well. We departed with quite a bit of fresh fruit to take back to the boat, and Andre seemed very pleased to have been able to give us the tour of his farm.

That evening we sat out on the back of the boat and played music and practiced our harmonies as we watched the sunset over this most tranquil bay. The following morning we motored back around to the western side of the island and picked up a mooring off the Apooiti Marina. From the Hertz office nearby we rented a small car and drove around the island, which appeared much like all the other French Polynesian islands with a constant amazing variety of startlingly green plants and trees covering every inch of ground except the backing steep volcanic cliffs. Being the dry season there was only a small amount of water coming down the waterfalls. The fringing reef around the island filled in with stunning shades of light and dark blue, green, tan, brown, and sometimes white water leading up to shore.

Back in town there continued to be Polynesian dancing and singing as part of the final days of Heava. We had two excellent gourmet meals at the Ixora and Raiatea Lodge restaurants.

Our last day in Raiatea we went to a supermarket for supplies. Outside was a polynesian musical group that was fantastic.



After re provisioning we took the boat to the Shell Fuel Dock in Uturoa. They were very nice and helpful there and we had no difficulty filling our four diesel tanks. We then motored over to the adjacent island of Tahaa within the same reef of Raiatea.