Wednesday, July 7 - Exploring Raiatea

Up at seven, still under way. We found the breakfast room, Restaurant La Veranda, and sat with two other retired community college teachers from So. Cal. Afterwards we bumped into Hilary and Ann and set off to find restaurant reservation for tonight...group of eleven! Both reserveable places were all booked, so we reserved the next two nights and settled on L‘Etoile, which doesn’t take reservations, for 7:30 tonight.



Then Hil and I went to pick up our snorkel equipment. We went down to Deck 3 at the stern of the ship where two young French men were fitting people of all shapes and sizes to fins and masks in a rather sweltering un-ventilated hold, but were very charming nevertheless! We finally emerged with net bag of equipment which we hope to use soon!

While we were down in the bottom of the ship, and most of the other passengers were at a lecture on coral, Bob smartly went up on deck as we approached the island of Raiatea and watched as we maneuvered in to the wharf and tied up. Out of our cabin window we could see this lovely island with its small port and a population one tenth that of Tahiti. Out to sea we could see a white line of crashing surf on the atoll and the turquoise waters inside.



We had a tour scheduled for 12:45 so we walked up to Le Grill on Deck 8 and from the buffet got a duck salad, celery root remolade and a ratatouille soup and a mint meringue! We sat outside and were buffeted by the refreshing trade winds

At 12:45 we assembled in the conference center and after roll call were directed to a bus on the dock for our tour of the island. Arnie and Anita were taken by 4-wheel drive to Faaroa River for an outrigger canoe ride and jeep tour, whereas we had a tamer trip. Our guide was a San Diego surfer girl who had visited the island and fallen in love with life here and with a local dude, so she provided interesting commentary on the local culture from a foreigner’s point of view.
The bus took us around the southern coast, stopping at a couple of cultural points of interest: rocky structures and wooden carvings assembled by the indigenous peoples. We saw amazingly brilliant turquoise waters, palm-covered motus and finally stopped at a small house where the owners served us coconut and other fruits on large green leaves - the local disposable paper plate! We returned to the ship at five and met up with Curry, Eric and Lydia who had had an adventurous day 4-wheel driving on Tahaa, an island only 20 minutes away by boat and our destination for tomorrow.

I went to the pool bar for a rum and coke and then went down to the internet café on Deck 5 to sent my blog. Showered and changed and Bob and I met the others at Restaurant L’Etoile where Hilary had snagged a table for eleven. We had an amazing meal of oysters, moon fish with an amazing sauce, beef, gnocchi, local coconut sorbet intermezzo, crepes for dessert!