We departed Moorea for Huahine just after dark. Why did we wait until just AFTER dark, you wonder. Well, True Blue V showed up just as we were getting ready to go, and before I knew it, I was sitting in Lady Carolina’s cockpit having a drink and catching up. We were still determined to leave, so we pulled away at the last possible minute and let our GPS track guide us safely outside the reef. In truth, it was about as easy as any night departure could be. We had a nice, overnight, mostly downwind sail to get to Huahine. I had a little excitement on my watch in that we were sandwiched between two large cargo ships going in opposite directions. They each passed within 2-2.5 miles of us, so I was really enjoying the AIS receiver right about then.
We arrived at Fare, Huahine just after noon the following day. The town of Fare is nice and clean with a lot of choices for cheap food along the main road as well as a large grocery store with excellent provisioning. In fact, between Moorea and Huahine there was excellent provisioning and if I had known that I wouldn’t have been so hard pressed to load up in Papeete. For future cruisers, unless you have a real reason to go to Papeete, like you have a guest arriving or you need to order a part, I would skip Papeete altogether. You do not need to go there for provisioning and there’s so much to see in the Society Islands it’s not worth getting bogged down in Papeete.
Anyway, back to Huahine. We had an absolutely great family day renting bikes and peddling around the island. We had a bit of a rocky start, though, when Alex and I were racing along at the front of the pack and realized the other two were no longer behind us. So, we pulled over to the side and waited. We had a little bit of water to drink and waited some more. We started half joking about what could have happened to them, and all of our scenarios centered on Brenden doing something crazy, of course. We finally decided to go back and find them, which we did pretty easily. They were stopped by the side of the road because Brenden had totally overheated and couldn’t keep going. After he refreshed he was good to go for the rest of the day, although he just doesn’t have Alex’s inherent stamina. That kid is a machine. I remember when we went to Hawaii when they were 4 and 5, and Alex would walk everywhere without a peep while Brenden would start complaining and usually get Andrew to carry him on his shoulders after about 5 steps.
We stopped at some Polynesian ruins and a museum, but the crew mostly wasn’t interested in any of that and wanted to keep going. We made it as far as the opposite side of Huahine Nui (the larger north island) to a small town called Faie. Faie’s claim to fame is the sacred blue-eyed eels. Every guidebook we have mentions them, so we thought they would be plenty easy to find without much prior research. We were wrong. We sat by the mouth of a stream and ate our lunch and then walked up the stream a bit, but we didn’t find any eels, blue eyed or otherwise. So, we started to head back but then we decided to check up a road that seemed to lead further into town. Here, we were beckoned by some kids who pretty much knew what we were looking for. I guess every white person visiting their village is looking for the same thing. So, they took us to a concrete bridge over a stream, and the girls, who were probably 12 years old or so, walked down into the stream and started grabbing the eels for us to see. Pretty cool, but a little anti-climactic. The best part about this encounter with the kids was a small boy, probably 4 years old, with a small pole-spear who was spearing shrimp. He had quite a pile, maybe enough to feed his family that night. He didn’t act like he wanted us to see what he was doing or as if he were showing off at all (unlike the girls grabbing the eels). He was just quietly going about his shrimping business.
On our way back to Fare we took a detour across and out to the tip of Motu Oavarai. The view of the water and reef on the east side of this motu was spectacular, and it made another nice place to stop and rest. We took the long way back around past the airport this time, and it was the absolute worst part of the ride. The first part was along a dirt road with lots of potholes and then once we got a paved road again it was when we were going past the airport with absolutely no shade, so it was sweltering. And if we stopped, we got swarmed by mosquitoes. So, we pressed on. Back in Fare, we treated ourselves to ice cream bars and relaxed on the wharf. We also had a bit of time left on the bike rental, so the Lady Carolina crew took the bikes for a spin too.
After a few days in Fare, we navigated inside the reef down to an anchorage on the southern tip of the island near a town called Avea. The channel was well marked and very easy to navigate, even if long and narrow. This was a picture perfect spot, and I never wanted to leave. There were a some catamarans anchored in crazy shallow water. It was about 5.3 ft to the surface, which for us would mean about 1.3 ft of water under our keels. I get that this wasn’t really that big of a deal. It’s totally protected by the reef from any sort of fetch and the weather forecast was benign. But I just wasn’t brave enough for this. Yet (stay tuned for the write up for Bora Bora). Here at this location there was excellent running along a scarcely traveled road, and the paddle boarding was great as well. There was a small resort with bungalows and a restaurant, and we met up with Lady Carolina, True Blue V, and Eleutheria for a happy hour that wasn’t so happy. Well, we were happy enough to be hanging out together, but the “happy hour” prices were a bit steep. Some of the gang gave the waitress a bit of a hard time, but in the end we drank our beers and enjoyed the evening.
We returned to Fare for one final night to provision up and meet again with the same crew at a happy hour. I tried to convince everyone that we should stay in Huahine and simply skip Bora Bora, but that fell on deaf ears, and we left in the evening for an overnight passage to the exclusive resort island.
Gresham Family Exodus 