Moorea, French Polynesia

Today was one of those days where nothing went as planned, but it all seemed to work out anyways (thankfully!).   Approaching the island of Moorea took my breath away, the peaks of the island are beautiful in a jagged, rough way.  Our plan for today was to rent bikes and ride them around the island (37 miles). After disembarking we made our way to the nearest village and located a bike rental place. As we were about to seal the deal, the guy tells us he’s closing in a half hour (it’s Sunday and most businesses close early).   I’m not exactly sure why he didn’t start off with that information - it sure would have saved us a lot of time!  We had been warned about “island time” and chalked it up to that.  By the time we got to the next bike rental place, all the bikes had been rented.  Oh no!  On to Plan B. 

Plan B was to head to the nearest beach to swim and snorkel, which is what we did.  The beach was beautiful, but a tad on the windy side.  Moorea is a small island and has only 14,000 inhabitants, most of which live on the other side of the island from where we are.  It is part of French Polynesia, which is made up of some 130 islands, of which Tahiti is the best known.  The Bali Hai parts of the movie South Pacific were filmed here on Moorea and it’s no wonder; everything we’ve seen so far is drop dead gorgeous.  We hung out on the beach and had a couple of beers, which helped to ease my disappointment at not renting bikes (I could definitely use the exercise after all the eating on the boat!).  After the beer, I promptly fell asleep on the beach (this life of living on a cruise ship is totally wearing me out!  J).  In the meantime, the clouds came in and the wind got worse – it started to rain and then pour.  At this point I was actually thankful that we weren’t able to rent bikes; we probably would have been halfway around the island when this storm hit.  What a miserable ride that would have been – high winds and pouring rain – ugh.

After it let up a bit, we walked from the beach to the boat dock.  Lots of locals offered to give us a ride back to the ship – such truly nice people.  We politely declined because:  1) we needed the exercise, and 2) we wanted to see as much of the island as we could while we were there, rain or no rain.  It was a nice walk and even though it was raining, it was warm.

Before entering the ship they always have employees passing out cool washcloths to use before boarding.  I passed on the washcloth, feeling cool and wet enough, when Daron told me I’d better get one because I was covered in sand and dust.  Um, okay, what?  I touched my cheek – yep, he was right, it was totally gritty!  How embarrassing!  I’d been chit-chatting with a bunch of people we met on the boat and I must have looked like I’ve been rolling around in a sand dune all day.  Erg.  I’m guessing that when I fell asleep on the beach and the wind picked up, it must have blown a bunch of sand on me, which promptly stuck because I had a layer of sunscreen glue on me.  Daron said he didn’t tell me about it because he didn’t think I’d be able to get it off (it was stuck pretty good) –I’m  not sure what to think about that excuse!    Besides me becoming human sandpaper, it was a good day. J