Polynesian Post

Sailing west from Pitcairn Island last week, we encountered the first of three island stops in French Polynesia - Tahiti - and our ship docked in downtown Papeete, the capital. With nearly 200,000 residents the city is quite large. Next to our ship, the Amsterdam, was another cruise ship, the Marina, owned by Oceania cruise line favored by Tom's sister Anne and husband Bill. Since it was Sunday, only a few stores were open and so we walked to a large Market in the City's center with small shops inside. And then we walked to some sights nearby (including one of the 5 McDonald's on the island) before returning to our ship where we left on an afternoon tour of the island's natural wonders.

The next island was the beautiful Moorea, which truly looks like the picture we had in our minds of what Tahiti must look like (but doesn't) ha!  We anchored in Opunohu Bay, the setting for most of the scenes from the 1984 movie, The Bounty, with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.  The photos below hopefully share a sense of the beauty of this island, which was our favorite so far.  You might spot our ship which is merely a white speck in the middle of the bay (seen in the 4th photo below) that we took from high above while on our tour of the island.

The third island we visited in French Polynesia is the friendly Bora Bora = a small island surrounded by a lagoon three times as large as the land portion of the island.  We toured via the ubiquitous Le Truck, which has a flat bed outfitted with seats for about 30 persons, no a/c but the windows open catching the breezes off the lagoon.  The lagoon is made of coral and is bordered by smaller islands called motus (moe-toos) where many of the most expensive hotels and resorts are located.  We swam at the white sand beach near Matira Point and the water was still shallow and crystal clear about 50 yards from shore.  And we visited "Bloody Mary's" the bar whose namesake was a character from the movie, South Pacific, where Steve got a t-shirt and sampled the well-known drink.  Islanders surfed the wake of our tender as we returned to our ship, and said "goodbye" after we have spent nearly a week in this paradise known as French Polynesia.  The good news is we will visit one of the Cook Islands in two days before sailing south to New Zealand.  Good night!