Rangiroa, Tuamotu Archipelago and Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia
Tuesday, 15 January 2013 – Cook's Bay, Moorea
Rangiroa
We visited Rangiroa, 250 miles to the north yesterday. I had not seen the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia before. The island is really a potato shaped chain of very narrow sand bars called "motus" surrounding a 50 mile long, 15 mile wide shallow lagoon. The Silver Whisper entered a very narrow "pass" in the sand bar and anchored in the bright blue lagoon 5 miles from the main town of Avatoru at the far end of a sorry little road. (We definitely were not going to upset the local hustle and bustle since we were essentially far from ANYWHERE.) The lagoon looks like open ocean as you can't see the other side of the atoll, but sailing across the lagoon would be most unwise and certainly not lead out back into the open ocean .
Our plan was to walk to a nearby beach on the lagoon rather than the pounding surf side of the sand bar and enjoy the bright sunshine and blue skies. We walked, but we got drenched as a persistent overnight thunderstorm stayed over our corner of this godforsaken sandbar. We made the most of our walk by being offered shelter by a retired couple in a remarkably upscale house, then under the ruins of a long abandoned warehouse. Our clothes protected our bathing suits underneath from getting wet. Of course, the fortuitous meeting of some locals and our observation of the ship's song and dance troupe looking for a luxurious hotel , the closest being 600 miles SW in Moorea, actually made this abortive scampering in the surf one of the nicest experiences so far on the cruise. An interesting side note was that our resident hosts told us during our impromptu visit that they had just come back from their second home ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CIRCULAR SANDBAR. It was all I could do to refrain from saying, "Hey, you gotta get away from time to time." We sailed out through the narrow pass in the atoll at 5pm as the clouds cleared and darkness fell.
Moorea
We arrived in Cook's Bay of Moorea in the Society Islands—the group was named by James Cook who never was in this bay as "Society" since there were a lot of these volcanic islands near each other—and anchored promptly at 8 this morning in bright sunshine. The sight from the bow of Silver Whisper of the "Bali Hai" mountain of Mt. Tohiea is iconic. That is, this is the BALI HAI of the film, South Pacific, since the filmmaker matted a still photo of it on Hanalei Bay in Kauai. The wonders of cinema! The view is so spectacular that Tohiea appears on the 100 franc French Polynesia coin, a handy $1 souvenir since nothing in French Polynesia except the coin costs only a buck. We walked down the road from the tender pier located at an abandoned hotel (one exception to the fantastic beauty of this place) to the nearby settlement of Maharepa and enjoyed glasses of freshly made local pineapple juice, each of which cost many Mt. Tohiea's but very well worth it in the 85 degrees/85% humidity early morning weather. Besides the abandoned hotel—not shown above—we passed a curious cement and plastic palm tree—photo added to my collection of artificial foiliage-- that seemed to harbor a un-radomed cell antenna among the spectacular breadfruit, frangipani, and hibiscus and flame trees. This really is a part of France, as you can tell.
At 4pm this afternoon, we sail the 18 miles transit across the narrow strait to Papeete, Tahiti where we will dock before 7pm overnight and until 6pm tomorrow afternoon. Papeete is the only city in French Polynesia to speak of or rather to parlez of, so to speak. More travelogue after that visit and the following day's visit to Bora Bora, the Society Island that was so nice they named it twice. Meanwhile, I had wanted to provide some sharp commentary here on the ship's and the other guests' inanities, the bizarre artificial atmosphere, and any of the possible crew's mindless "form over substance" or pretentiousness of Silversea's style of service. But by and large there aren't any of these things! This cruise—tomorrow marking the end of the small first segment of the ship's (but not our) World Cruise from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale—so far has been marked by fantastically well prepared food, attentive (and almost always appropriate, well almost always) levels and style of service, competent butlers who shine shoes when required and know how to shine them, friendly, apparently happy and very much somewhat recognizable other guests, with virtually no grumps—present company excepted, of course--and only a few well dressed and over hair dressed successful retired businessmen who feel they need to introduce themselves with statements of President Obama's heritage and the doom of the USA due to the abuses of poor people of the "Socialistic" system that somehow crept into our (but by no means their) way of life. Only a few, and even they don't have the heart to keep it up for more than a few minutes despite the ever present Fox News Network on the ship's video system. Barbara and I ask most evenings to be joined for dinner on a four-top and have found dinner conversations to be markedly pleasant and often substantive. Of course, all this can change tomorrow when the relatively light load of 310 or so revenue guests are supplemented by another 50 or 60 folks joining the ship for the next and longer segment to Sydney. I'm sure I'll have better, more cutting, and insightful snide comments by then. Maybe I need a nap and then a number of laps around the ship while going insane over the mindboggling view. As I said before, "it is what it is."
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