Post #734911 by Club Nouméa on Sat, Jan 10, 2015 11:59 PM

A Day on Moorea

The ferries sail from Papeete's ferry terminal several times daily, starting at 6 am and ending in the late afternoon.

Most visitors to Moorea fly there, catching a domestic transfer directly from Faa'a Airport once they arrive bleary-eyed from their long-distance international flights. Although the flight, which takes only a few minutes, is convenient, it is one of the worst decisions a traveller in French Polynesia can make. Nothing can beat landfall on Moorea by sea, even if it is just via the ferry from Papeete:

The 35 minute crossing is entrancing and Moorea looks magical. Your anticipation builds as it gets closer.

My thoughts went back to what various 18th-century French and English sailors must have thought when they caught their first glimpse of the island after spending several months sailing from Europe.

By the time the ferry reaches the gap in the coral reef, the ferry port of Vaiare is visible:

Many years ago, I was told by a matriarch from Moorea that there is a legend concerning the gap in the reef; if a young mother from Moorea brings her newborn baby home to the island from Tahiti or abroad for the first time, she will watch the water anxiously to see what accompanies the ferry: if she sees sharks following the vessel, the baby will have a cursed life; if she sees dolphins leading the vessel, the child's life will be blessed. I knew she had spent most of her life working away from her home island, so I asked what had happened to her. She smiled and said she had seen dolphins.

The ferry terminal at Vaiare is a lovely old wooden building. You can get rental cars in Vaiare but it pays to book in advance. I was hoping for a rent-a-bike outfit, but none was visible during my short stroll up and down the main drag. On the topic of drag, I was mooned by a teenage mahu (transexual) while I was taking this panoramic shot from the wharf:

I was using an iPhone to take my panoramic photos, and you basically hold up the camera, press the button and rotate on the spot until you have taken your photo and press the button again to stop. Fortunately I caught sight of the offending rear end (to the right of the white post) out of the corner of my eye before the camera caught it for posterity.

Moorea is roughly 60 kilometres in circumference, and so you need some sort of transport to get around. Quickly putting my phone away and ignoring the cackling mahu, I traipsed back to the ferry terminal where there were a couple of taxi vans. In the back one, an elderly Polynesian fellow was chatting to an elderly European (Popa'a) lady in the back seat. I asked in French if he was free and, much to my surprise, the lady (who I thought was his fare), hopped sprightly out of the back seat and led me to the front van.

She was surprised when she found out I was from New Zealand given that I was talking to her in French but she soon got over it. I explained I wanted to head up to the Belvédère (look-out) above Opunohu Valley, on the northern side of the island, and have a look at the marae site up there too. No worries!

I was momentarily distracted by this concrete triceratops on the roadside as we drove to Opunohu Valley. My driver's name was Elisabeth, and it turned out the man she had been chatting to was her husband, still working at the age of 82. She was in her 70s and she told me she had moved to French Polynesia when her parents decided to leave her homeland of Switzerland when she was a little girl. This was at the time of World War II and it was clear from what she said that her parents had decided that bringing up their children (her and her older brother) on Hitler's doorstep was not a desirable option.

So while war raged in Europe, they settled on Moorea, and bought land in the Opunohu Valley, not far from the legendary Cook's Bay, where Captain Cook moored his ships during his voyages around the Pacific in the 1770s:

The peak in the middle of the photo is known as the "Sacred Mountain" in Tahitian and is a burial place for countless generations of ancestors, with bones being interred in the nooks and crannies all the way up to the top. Consequently it is tabu, and it is forbidden to climb on it.

Elisabeth had spent her entire life on Moorea and had never been back to Switzerland. She explained she had travelled to Bordeaux to visit her daughter once while she was a student in France but she hated it; it was too cold. She said she liked New Zealand better and had been there three times. She had been working as a taxi driver for many years and had fond memories of shuttling around the stars of the 1984 version of "Mutiny On The Bounty", saying Anthony Hopkins was a charming man, as was Mel Gibson. As she also recalled the arrival of the crew and cast of the earlier 1962 version, I asked her about Marlon Brando, but she was not willing to talk about him for some reason...

We were just driving up the Opunohu Valley when she suggested a detour to the left to visit the local distillery - Hell yeah!

The Manutea Distillery is not particularly photogenic, but the visitors' centre and shop does have a nice looking tiki to greet visitors:

I partook of a free sampling of various products at their bar, including the classic "Tahiti Drink". God bless them; it's Mai Tai in a cardboard milk carton!

I had actually had this stuff before and while it is not as good as the real thing, you can't beat it for convenience, and you've got to love a place where you can buy bulk Mai Tai from the corner store cooler.

I also tried the new formula Tahiti Drink, but it didn't do it for me. Then I proceeded to bore poor Elisabeth and the bar lady by pointing out that the Mai Tai was from Oakland, not Tahiti. They took it gracefully...

Here's their Website for further information:

http://www.manuteatahiti.com/

And Manutea has a Californian distributor:

http://enchantedisleusa.com/?age-verified=751384a5d2

Quite relaxed after the free drinks and having bought some liqueurs (I recommend their banana liqueur), we climbed back in the taxi van to head up to the look-out. On the way, we were zooming past the territorial agricultural college when I yelled out to Elisabeth to hit the brakes. I even had the temerity to ask her to back up a bit so I could bet a better shot:

A very fine piece of carving, about 2 metres tall, with a Pop Art twist - nice!

The "Lycée Agricole", as it is known in French, draws students from all over French Polynesia. One of their major challenges is how to grow usable and commercially viable exotic timbers for construction and various domestic uses. The problem with growing trees in that climate is that the wood gets very knotty due to rapid growth in the tropical heat. Elisabeth pointed out to me that a good many houses on Moorea were built from timber that had been shipped from as far away as Australia and there were major development stakes involved in French Polynesia being able to set up its own sustainable forestry.

A few minutes later we reached the look-out, which offered an unbeatable view of the northern end of Moorea:

Opunohu Bay is to the left, with Opunohu Valley in the foreground, the Sacred Mountain is in the middle, and Cook's Bay is to the right.

While we were up on the heights, Elisabeth told me about how, shortly after her family arrived in Opunohu Valley, back in the 1940s, her father told her and her older brother to go out looking for eggs - he was hoping that some local ones would be edible. Up in the hills, her brother found what he thought was a monkey skull in a crevice under a large rock, so he brought it home to show his father. When he was informed by his father that there were no monkeys in French Polynesia and that the skull he was holding was human, he dropped it onto the floor and it shattered into little pieces. His father visited the local metua (tribal elder), presented the remains and explained the situation. He was told not to worry as the skull had been found on was on land that was not tabu and that there were a lot of dead people up in the hills whose origins were unknown. Nevertheless, Elisabeth's brother took fright and would not go out at night for many years afterwards.

We then drove back down the road to visit the pre-European marae site. Maraes in this part of the world are quite different from the ones I have visited in New Zealand; nowadays they are meeting places for the community to gather. In pre-European times in the kingdom of Tahiti (Moorea was one of its dominions), maraes were gathering places for the upper class; the aristocracy, priests and their attendants. They were also places of horror.

At the top of the site were archery platforms (archery was a sport restricted to the aristocracy), while the main platform with the white circle beside it was where sacrifices were made to the gods.

Elisabeth enjoyed pointing out all the gruesome little details to me. Here is where the sacrifices were made:

Each sacrificial victim was forced to kneel and place his or her head in-between these two stones:

Once beheaded, the victim's head was placed in this trough for the blood to drain:

Although greatly romanticised by Europeans when first visited by French and British explorers in the 18th century, the societies of Tahiti and its various islands were not as idyllic as Diderot and his ilk imagined.

Elisabeth also took me down the hill to the most secluded part of the site; the platform where the chiefs and priests held council meetings:

On the way we passed a dodgy-looking crew of young Moorean guys, sitting around a smokey fire to ward off the nonos (mosquitos). Elisabeth said something to them in Tahitian which made them all sit up with a start as we passed. Not choosing to translate for me, she waited until we were out of earshot and then quietly said to me in French: "Don't turn around but I bet those two big sacks they have by that fire are full of harvested dope." She was a feisty old gal!

I said farewell to Elisabeth when she dropped me off for lunch back in Maharepa, not far from Cook's Bay.

After lunch, I took a moment to photograph one of Moorea's most distinctive features:

That's not a tree; it's a cell phone tower. They ring the entire island and blend in nicely, offering an example of French engineering ingenuity and a lesson in environmental friendliness for various telcos the world over.

The café where I dined had this tiki nearby:

I then went and relaxed on the beach for a while:

The beach was quite lovely, but was quite small, only being a kilometre or so long. It also happens to be the only public beach on Moorea. All the rest of the coast, all 60-odd kilometres of it, is private land. One of the blessings of growing up in New Zealand is the legal concept of the Queen's Chain, which basically states that coastline is public property. Unfortunately no such distinction exists under French law, and private landowners blocking access to beaches is a curse throughout various parts of France and its overseas territories.

Still having plenty of time, I wandered back up the road a couple of kilometres to Cook's Bay to visit a derelict hotel Elisabeth had pointed out as the oldest one on the island:

I was magnetically drawn to the place and had no compunction about trespassing. Elisabeth had said the hotel dated from the mid-20th century and I knew I would find some there. Sure enough:

Tiki Island!

The tikis at water level had seen better days:

The pink ones on land were in good condition though:

Although some were getting their view obscured by encroaching greenery:

While not exactly authentic, these gaudy pink Marquesan-style tikis are probably some of the oldest ones on Moorea.

The hotel has gone through three failed attempts to revive it, but the competition from newer resorts just up the road proved too stiff. It looked like various people were squatting in the hotel so I did not bother trying to snoop around the building itself.

I also cheekily invited myself in for a quick look at the competition back in Maharepa; Moorea Pearl Resort and Spa:

The toilets were very well-appointed:

And featured their own welcoming tiki:

I paused for a brief rest but did not stick around as I noticed one of the desk staff was looking quizzically at me. Having already once been escorted off the premises by security for gatecrashing Club Med Nouméa many years ago, I did not want history to repeat and headed back to the road.

I walked most of the 15 kilometres back to the ferry terminal, pausing to take a few photos on the way. This is the cheapest stilt hut tourist accommodation in French Polynesia, just a few kilometres north of the ferry terminal:

As I walked, I contemplated what Elisabeth had told me about how much the island had changed during her lifetime. Although those huts are pretty, they do not look local. She told me there are only two traditional style huts left on the island. Nowadays most of the houses are in a Mediterranean, Spanish or even Swiss style. Moorea still remains a strikingly beautiful place though.

Tahiti, as seen from Moorea.

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Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-01-11 01:36 ]

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-01-31 05:35 ]