Friday, January 16, 2026
Amazing…just amazing. It has been a most interesting day! We woke up to a massive rainstorm and wondered where have we come to? But after about 20 to 30 minutes, it slowed down enough that I could go for a walk and check out the surroundings on the hotel grounds. These islands are so lush and green! Palm trees and other types of tropical trees everywhere. You have people selling fruit all long the road. Pineapples, Passion Fruit, Bananas, Mango and so on. Papeeté is a pretty busy place. We missed a turn getting to the ferry entrance and it cost us 15 minutes to loop back around and get back to it. As for the ferry….
We were both up early. So we just kinda hung out in our room until around 11 AM when we had to check out. The drive to the ferry was about 10 minutes, max. Our ferry to Moorea was to leave at 12:25 and we were there at 11:25. So we had some time to kill…but it went fairly quick. We were taking our rental car over. So Denise could not go with me in the car and had to board on foot. The boat could probably load 20 cars? I’m just guessing. I was first on…and first off when the time came. The ride over to Moorea took about 30 minutes. And the sea was fairly rough as the winds were blowing pretty good. Upon landing in Moorea, we went to a Champions supermarket to get some supplies, mostly breakfast stuff. We wandered around looking for eggs. We asked many people but none could understand us. Very little English here actually. So I whipped out my translator and began using it. We finally found the eggs and we bought the last pack of them that were on the shelf in the store. Anyway, it was an adventure.
We arrived at our flat that we had rented around 2 PM. The host is a guy from Nice, France but lived a good portion of his life in Chile. He said he introduced Chile to snowboarding back in the day. He lived there over 20 years and speaks very fluid Spanish. His English was ok…but French and Spanish are his strength. Anyway, our home is an average Poly home. Small, some rooms open air with screens. But it has a nice bathroom and kitchen. We will get some pictures before we leave. It has been warm when the sun is out..in the 80’s. And the house was pretty warm. Fortunately there is an air conditioner in the bedroom. That will help us to sleep better. Our hosts name is Jeanro and the name of the place is Fare Manureva and we are in the Juliette flat. There are 3 flats here that he rents out. He has been so good to communicate with us and share ideas.
After he left, we got unpacked and changed into our swim suits. Jeanro showed me how to get down to the beach by our flat. It’s about 50 yards away. He says it’s not a good time due to the rain runoff bringing mud and silt into the ocean. We actually walked on a stream bed to get to the beach but little water was running now. We took our outside table chairs with us to the beach and Denise watched me as I snorkeled. The water visibility was ok…but the coral and sea life was pretty good. I did not see any rays or any sharks as Jeanro thought I might. He says the rays are friendly because the fishermen feed them. As for the black fin shark…who knows. I love snorkeling and I’ll be doing it most days we are here…except Sunday.
After the beach time, we came back to the flat. I showered to get the salt sea water off. Once showered, we went down the road to the ‘BBQ’ place to eat. The place is at someone’s house. The BBQ is an old iron barrel BBQ and all the food was prepared outside. We took it away. The tough thing was that the cost of the food was 29000 XPF and we did not bring enough cash. So I went back to get some. We only had a 50000 bill and the lady said she couldn’t cash it. But then people started showing up and buying food and she ended up getting the cash needed to give us our change. The food portion was huge. We did not dent it. Totally island food, to some degree. We brought the food back and ate in our flat. I think we have enough chow mein for a week!
Last story before I work on pictures…after dinner and just laying around, I looked up and noticed a 6” lizard on the wall inside our place. Soon there was a second one and they began to fight. It was pretty interesting to watch them. Denise decide to close the curtains and one of them kinda jumped down the wall and Denise squealed like a two year old. It was so funny. Jeanro told us that we would have lizards in the flat and that they were harmless and needed as they eat the ‘other’ bugs. Oh my, what an adventure this is going to be.
While driving, we did pass an LDS meeting house and a few miles before that, a couple of missionaries on bikes. I’m sure it is an interesting mission being on an island like this. Ok…here come some pictures.
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