Moorea

After Rangiroa we had a short overnight to Moorea and arrived on time at 8:00 am for the beautiful entrance to one of the most beautiful islands in the world. The ships schedule called for stopping in Moorea until 4:00 pm and then leaving for Papeete Tahiti for an overnight. We had other plans. The week before we decided to book overwater bungalows in Moorea at the Sofitel La Ora beach hotel. We tendered in and got a taxi over to the Sofitel and got some lawn chairs in the shade and proceeded to swim and have some lunch, all the usual stuff we must attend to. At about 1:00 pm we checked into our bungalows where Bill was on a separate wing (dock) from ours. After unpacking (two seconds) we donned our snorkel gear and snorkeled over to Bill's bungalow for a hello. Dawn at one point saw a large eel and there were many large and small colorful fish. We had dinner with a nice setting at the hotel with a local dance show and a french waiter. The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast with all the French items like the freshest breads with Banana jam, fish, fresh local juices, etc. By the way, Monica's author Jude Devereaux is on board again. We later checked out and taxied over to the Ferry Terminal and got tickets for the 14:40 Hours Ferry to Papeete. The ferry has vehicles and passengers and is large and fast. They didn't have any of my favorite "Twistie" snacks but they had "Curlies" so all was well. Arrived in Papeete in plenty of time to walk over to the Whisper and reboard. Dawn "had" to go back out to look at local handicraft so I went with and it was a very short trip. Papeete looks more run down that we remembered but we were not there for more than an hour anyway.

Reef to our side as we enter Cooks Bay, Moorea