Returning with Ruth after a few weeks, we stayed for about 2 weeks in Tahiti. This blog entry covers our time there, including our attendance of the yearly Heiva festival, some hikes, and a day trip to Moorea by ferry.
Prologue
As told in earlier blog entries, I arrived to Panama from the South of France, with the plan to cross the Canal and to continue through the Pacific towards either Australia or New Zealand. However, my spouse Ruth does not fancy long passages, and did not agree to join me on the very long passage from Panama to French Polynesia. She did agree, and was even enthusiast, to join me in Papeete, on Tahiti, in French Polynesia, to join me for the rest of the journey across the Pacific, because in that part of the Pacific the islands are spaced much less far apart, and passage times would be much shorter.
I had found other crews to get the boat through the Panama Canal, and all the way to Tahiti. As one can read in the previous blog entries, I passed through the Panama Canal on April 1st 2023 and in the end arrived with the boat to Tahiti on June 19th 2023, and left the boat there to make a short visit home.
Arrival to Tahiti airport (8-Jul 05:15)
On 8 July 2023 Ruth and I arrived to Tahiti and were welcomed at the airport by a band playing local music.
Vid 001
Exploring Papeete
Hotel for 2 days (TEA Tahiti)
We stayed in a little B&B in Papeete town for 2 days before moving into the boat which was still lying in the Papeete Marina, having been looked after well by Chris in my absence.
In that time we cleaned the boat thoroughly , including washing sheets, towels, etc. etc.
We did some sight seeing such as visiting the Papeete closed market 8-Jul:
It is a charming building, with people selling their wares (fresh tuna, fruits and vegetables, handicrafts).
We walked the length of the very attractive waterfront park, and visited the Papeete City Hall, trying to get some maps for hiking the Tahiti interior (unsuccessfully).
We went to the Carrefour and were again amazed at the variety and high standard of goods offered.
I particularly loved the large chunks of frozen "white" tuna filet (at about 7.50 Euro per kilo).
Note also their display of more exclusive fish - in this case two large Mahi Mahi's (green).
We visited a number of nice restaurants:
In the waterfront park:
In the Taina Marina:
And the one with the nicest views - on the island of Moorea, also in the area of Taina Marina:
Wow!
Balloon to lift catamaran out of water 12-Jul
Between things I noticed this method of lifting (part of) a large catamaran out of the water in our marina, to perform maintenance in the propeller area (a very large balloon was inflated below the boat):
Chris leaves
At some point Chris left us, and transferred to another boat not far from ours in the Papeete Marina, as he and the captain of that boat had already planned a long time ago. Chris had been a great crew member, and we wished him all the best, and hoped to stay in touch.
At the same time we were quite happy to have the boat for ourselves for a while, at least while cruising the Society Islands.
Walk in Fautaua river valley and visit to Belvedere Restaurant 13-July
Finally my curiosity about the interior of the island was somewhat satisfied - we made a walk in the Fautaua river valley, which was supposed to end at a waterfall.
The first part of the hike is through an area from which drinking water is generated, and was very well kept.
The small river is very pretty in many places:
And the vegetation beautiful:
We were pretty satisfied with ourselves on the way back.
Even though the hike was not very impressive on the map, and not penetrated very far into the interior, for us it was challenging enough, at least towards the end, where we decided to turn back before reaching the falls, as the path became very unclear, and the going pretty difficult.
From there we went to the Belvedere Restaurant, as the bird flies very close to Papeete, but lying at an elevation of almost 600 meters, and accessible only through a very long narrow winding road. An incredible place with an incredible view.
We got the best place on the terrace and enjoyed the marvelous views:
This must be the rest room with the best view in the world!
The restaurant has several levels, and everything about it is beautiful.
As we stayed on, towards sunset the views became even more dramatic:
And here the island of Moorea. Closer in one can see the yachts anchored next to the airport...
Pre-Heiva visit of the Heiva Arena 14-Jul
By now we were very much aware that we were lucky enough to be in Papeete exactly when the main yearly cultural event is held - the Heiva Festival.
One has to read up about the history of this festival (here is a link to the official Heiva website), which was started (under a different name) in 1881 when France annexed French Polynesia. At that time, it was held on the July 14 Bastille Day. Now the last day of the festival was on July 15th, presumably not accidental.
As the Heiva festival is held nowadays, it is a time when all the islands in French Polynesia send delegations to Papeete. In the course of several weeks each delegation presents itself in singing and dance, and maybe also in several sports (see later), culminating in a grand final on the July 15th.
We were lucky enough to gain two seats on the final eve. We didn't know really what to expect, and being curious decided to walked over to the Heiva festival area, through the park along the shore, the day before the 15th.
Here some pictures of the sundown along the way:
We got to the terrain of the Heiva:
Even though we hadn't purchased tickets for this evening's events we could enter the area freely and came upon this group which were either practicing, or just having a good time together...
And even could look into the central performance area and see what was going on.
We stayed on a bit longer, and made some further pictures:
Museum of Tahiti and The Islands 15-Jul
The next day we went to the main Museum of Tahiti history and culture, the "Museum of Tahiti and the Islands", which houses an excellent exhibition showing a multitude of aspects of Polynesian history, cultures, geology, and more.
The museum grounds also host the yearly Heiva sporting section, consisting of traditional Tahitian sporting competitions, such as climbing coconut palms, lifting slippery stones, throwing javelins, coconut husking, copra harvesting, fruit carrier races, traditional wrestling and more (a good video about these sports can be found here).
The museum.
The museum has a large number of exhibits each of which presents a certain aspect of the Polynesian islands. Each one good presentational text material, as well as physical exhibits of high quality. This is the only picture I took there. I guess I was in a bit of a hurry to go outside, see the sports...
The sportive competition
Already from the inside of the museum one could observe the wrestling competition going on outside, I went outside and continued filming:
We came into the events at a late stage. The spear throwing was over, and the participants were collecting the spears:
The results of the coconut husking were already collected for disposal:
People were just siting around and discussing ... whatever...
The grounds were lying in a beautiful location, near the sea:
The Heiva Festival Main Event 15-Jul
That same evening, we went to the Heiva finale event.
I must say that it is a very special event, a bit similar to Carnaval in that it is a serious event by and for the local people, not meant as a touristic attraction. There are many tourists (estimate 10-20 % of the spectators), but you are really watching some internal Polynesian event, and I think few of the tourists, really understand it. I admit that I don't. There is a huge investment here by the participants from all parts of French Polynesia, both in costumes and in rehearsals. One can see from the faces of the participants how serious and important an affair this is.
Ruth had dressed up in style, with a flowery dress and a flower in her hair.
A few pictures of the activities we saw immediately outside of the arena where the performances were held:
This is a recording of what we saw inside, up to the moment where a guard reminded me that it is not allowed to take pictures...
Of course, in such events refreshments are an important part of the fun. The local public was dressed at its best....
So that was our Heiva - a memorable event!
Concluding our stay in Tahiti
By now we thought we should be moving on soon in our journey across the Pacific. We considered moving on to Moorea, which is very famous for its beauty, and only 5 nm from Tahiti, and anchor there, rent a car etc, but we decided that it was more practical, as well as less effort, to use the rental car we already had and take a ferry to Moorea for a full day, and then return to Tahiti in the evening. So that's what we did - booked tickets for the ferry to Moorea on the 17th of July.
Trip around the island including a visit to, and a hike next to, the Vaipahi Water Garden 16-Jul
I wanted to show Ruth around the island, and also try to make one more nice hike, and we chose the area of the Vaipahi Water gardens, on the coast in the South East of the main island.
The botanical garden itself was charming, a modest affair, but the hike was very pleasant and of low to moderate difficulty (300 meter height difference), and gave some great views. The track of the hike is shown here:
Some pictures during the hike:
One of a few modest waterfalls:
The local reef (see also track of the hike above):
A view on Tahiti Iti:
Day trip to Moorea 17-Jul
We had booked the first ferry from Papeete to Moorea, which left around 5:30:
On the way out of the Papeete harbour we saw this impressive sailing ship
When we arrived to Moorea it had already become light
The ferry was as modern as can be:
We had made no special plans or preparations for this trip, so we decided to make a tour around the island, in an anti clock wise direction.
See map below (downloaded from http://weltrekordreise.ch/):
What awaited us was a series of really great views.
So here's the first - a view back on Tahiti:
There is also a resort in that location:
Our rental car in a picture worthy of a classy car sales brochure:
This looks like we are in a big crater, but actually, it is just a small sub crater in a corner of Moorea:
This is one of the two big bays on Moorea - the Opunohu Bay:
From there we drove to the Belvedere Lookout. This is located in North side of the big central crater of Moorea. On the way the views on the mountains surrounding the crater were very remarkable:
Here a mountain with a hole in it ("Pierced Mountain"):
Here, other parts of what remains of the crater walls:
Culminating in the Belvedere Lookout view on the Opunohu Bay and the Cook Bay, with Mount Rotui between them:
The views in the area don't stop presenting themselves:
We ate in a nice location (I think on Cooks Bay):
With a lovely view on the other side of the bay
From where we even saw the 4 master we had seen in the morning in Papeete harbor, sailing in the direction of the Leeward Society Islands, as we would be going a few days later.
We then made a trip around the perimeter of the island, which was. I admit, a bit disappointing. Meaning that from the road one just sees the entrances of an endless array of properties located on the see front, but from the road there is nothing special to see. And so, towards the evening, we took the ferry back to Tahiti.
Provisioning 18-19-Jul
We made arrangements to leave Tahiti 3 days later, on the 20th of July, for the Leeward Society Islands (Tahiti and Moorea are the Windward Islands), specifically towards Huahine, a distance of a bit over 100 nm, i.e. about 20 hours sailing. In the next days we did mostly provisioning and last repairs to the boat.
Street Music 18-Jul
At some point we came upon a group playing very charming street music:
Cycling along shore 20-Jul
On the last day, we decided to do some cycling through the park along the shore:
Cycling along shore 20-Jul
Departure for Huahine
Towards the evening we left our berth in the marina, with no one waiting for us to leave to take our place. We left reluctantly, we had had a great time in Tahiti.
Comments