The Turquoise Waters of Mo’orea

The sun was shining when we arrived in Mo’orea and it was even shining when we left! We had a perfect day for our island drive, catamaran boat ride, motu lunch and snorkeling tour.

Sailing in to Mo'orea

If you've seen the movie version of 'South Pacific', you might
recognize Bali Hai...

The island drive was really just a way to get us to the catamaran boats, and the couple of stops we made were rather crowded. We weren’t used to that, since our previous ports had been what you might call ‘off the beaten path’, by quite a long way. But as we stopped for a photo opp of the ship, we could see how beautiful the island is.

The view out over Cook's Bay, named after Captain Cook. Apparently,
he actually landed in the other bay, but the name stuck here.

Is that a brochure shot, or what???

Our catamaran boats were moored at the Hilton Mo’orea Resort, and once we were on board, we started off for about an hour’s ride out to a private motu.

On board our motorized, covered catamaran boat at the Hilton Resort.
Looks very nice!

During a stop, we were even visited by a 'Booby-bird', cousin
to the Galapagos Blue-Footed Booby

The view from our motu toward Mo'orea

Once we arrived there, one of our guides demonstrated the preparation of the French Polynesian favourite dish of Poisson Cru, which is very much like ceviche with a little twist.

Very fresh tuna, cut into bite-sized chunks, is mixed with salt and lime juice. Toss it for about 2 minutes with a fork until the tuna starts to ‘cook’ from the acid in the juice and the outside begins to turn grey. Discard the juice, add chopped onion, red pepper, cucumber and carrot, as well as some coconut milk, mix to combine, and there you have it! We will definitely be making this when we’re at home.

As we were cruise ship passengers, and we hadn’t had a meal for at least 3 hours, there was a barbeque lunch included in this tour. To save time, the meats had already been prepared, but those, some Poisson Cru and a salad bar were all we needed.

Rice, Poisson Cru, barbequed chicken, fish, and sausages,
along with bread and a salad bar. It was a delicious meal

After that, Monica went into the water to see what she could find. The motus are really islands in the coral reef, and there are channels running in between them. These channels all have currents that can be fairly strong. The guides suggested that we walk along the beach for about 500 yards, get into the water and let the current bring us back down to our picnic area.

The local stingray population is actually harmless, unless you
step on their tails! And they're also very curious, as you can see.

The water was beautifully clear, but the current moved quickly
enough that it was hard to stay in one place to get a good photo.
There had been a gorgeous parrot fish here only a minute
before.

At least we have this colourful guy to make up for it!

The stingrays were quite happy gliding among the swimmers.

We headed back to the boats after about an hour, motored straight back to the tender pier, and from there took the tender back to Serenity.

A last photo before reboarding the catamaran.

Couldn't resist this photo from the tender.

 Another lovely day. Looking at those over-water bungalows, it would seem like a great way to spend a week, but you really do have to be a ‘water baby’ to get the most out of it. A few days, perhaps, and in a time of year that doesn’t get quite so much rain, would be a wonderful break.

Our next stop was so far away that we had a sail-out and a sail-in in the same cocktail hour! We left Mo’orea around 6 p.m. and arrived at Pape’ete, Tahiti at about 7:30.