Monday, July 12 - Exploring Moorea

We could see the beautiful jungle-covered mountains of Moorea from our room this morning. We wandered up to La Palette on deck 8 and had a lovely continental breakfast of pastries made in the kitchen we had seen yesterday! The disembarkation instructions are rather elaborate: we have to leave our suitcases outside our cabin tonight and leave the ship at 12:40PM tomorrow on a bus back to the Radisson where the cruise has booked a day room for us to use until our flight at 10PM. As there are so many cubbyholes in our room and bathroom, we have to really canvas the entire room to make sure we have everything!


We were scheduled for a tour of the bridge at 10 AM this morning, but got a call that it was canceled. I tried to call Hilary to see if she wanted to take the tender to shore, but couldn’t find her, so Bob and I grabbed the next tender to the pier of the tiny town of Papetoai and walked a couple of miles along the pleasant main road , saw some lovely Fairy Turns, and returned to the pier. The Paul Gauguin had set up a table with cold juice and water, flowers, chairs and shade for us to rest until the next tender arrived…they think of everything!

We returned to our room and ordered up salads and steak sandwiches on baguettes from room service and at 12:45 boarded the tender again for the “Legacy Tour of Moorea”. We met Hilary, Ann, Kent and Alice on the pier as they had come ashore to shop. We set off on the bus tour lead by Frank Murphy who splits his time between being assistant director of the UC Richard Gump South Pacific Research Station and running a touring business. We drove to the station where he explained the work being done there, including that of UCSB’s Russ Schmidt and Sally Holbrook. The research station that I helped them ship from Seattle to Moorea was up the hill. We then drove to the house and gardens of Mari Kellum. Her parents moved here in the 20s, bought some lovely land on the bay where Captain Cool landed in 1777 and raised their family. She still lives in their house and showed us indigenous artifacts and plants. We concluded the tour with a drive up a steep slope to Belvedere Lookout from which we could see Cook’s and Opunohu Bays.

We returned to the ship on one of the last tenders, cleaned up, started to pack and then went up to the pool for the Captain’s Farewell and snagged a couple of Pina Coladas while Les Gauguines (the cute Polynesian girls who sing, teach native crafts, etc.) danced and we sailed away from Moorea towards Papeete.