Nature and culture

We woke up before the alarm. It’s not really surprising, we went to bed sooooo early.

Breakfast has to be quick today as we need to be ready to go at 7.45am.

Yvette picked us up for our Nature and Culture tour. We hadn’t been in the car for five minutes when she stopped to show us the breadfruit trees – these are part of the Mutiny on the Bounty story that accompanied us today (some of the film versions were filmed here). More traditionally, after each birth, the placenta is buried in the garden and a breadfruit tree is planted. Think about that, and then look around… there are breadfruit trees everywhere.

We drove around Cook’s Bay (Pao Pao Bay ) which isn’t the bay Captain Cook anchored in, of course and then Ōpūnohu Bay.  More driving took us to the Bounty Plateau – the 360° view is simply out of this world. Yvette told us legends about the mountains – king and princesses protecting the islands.

Back at the car, Yvette gives us passion fruit juice she made at home this morning. It is refreshing and cooling. The humidity today – combined with the sun – is a killer.

En-route to our next destination, she showed us many trees and flowers which have multiple purposes – they’re used as medicine, make-up, to make roofs and hats, boats and anything else you can think of.

Next, we visited farms. Pineapples and papayas. All around us are passion fruit trees and avocado trees. We helped her pick up fallen fruits.

Next, we drive to the Belvedere. The view is – well, it’s so easy to run out of superlatives here – not bad. Not bad at all.

For our next stop, Yvette warned us to put as much insect repellent on as we could. We walked in the forest to the marae (ancient temples ). The mosquitoes were so bad that she only let us look at one of them from the car. She explained that most of the cultures and traditions have gone. These were mostly oral and were lost when the missionaries forced them to abandon their culture. These were where chiefs made political, social and religious decisions. One has steps Mayan style. In some cases, sacrifices – human – were made to the war god – Oro. The light in the forest was stunning.

Yvette then took us to the agricultural school. They make jams there – we tried a few and then got sorbets – passion fruit and ginger for me. Andy settled for passion fruit and soursop – a sherberty flavour. And then we had a fresh pineapple juice. Yvette then brought us helpings of the avocado (the fruits are huge here, seriously), papaya and passion fruit we’d collected earlier on.

As we’re ready to go, I went off to have a little chat with a couple of cats. They had a lot to say, and politely answered any questions I had.

At the fruit factory, we sampled fruit juice and ready made cocktails.

This was a half day tour. We packed so much in. I don’t think there was a moment when Yvette wasn’t talking. She loves telling stories about Moorea, talking about the cultures. She is vibrant and a tour with her is priceless. She’s great.

Back at the hotel, we went for a swim in the sea, and then the pool. We seriously needed to cool off. After lunch, we went snorkelling around the bungalows. Andy went further out. I stayed close to shore and even just there, the variety of fish is staggering – yellow ones, orange ones, black ones, stripy ones, silver ones, hoover ones (on the seabed), flat ones, multi-coloured ones, fat ones and big ones (one was so big I did a double-take as it was coming near me).

Back in the pool – there’s hardly anyone there… so here’s a tip, so far the shoulder season has treated us well and if you avoid the weekend, you have the resort more or less to ourself.

We decided to explore the other side of town (turning right as we left the hotel). Many shops, banks, restaurants and another supermarket.

On the way back, we stopped at the Moorea Beach Cafe. The setting is perfect. We have drinks whilst we wait for our take-away goat cheese pizza. Andy had a local beer. I settled on a vodka martini… and I need to say at this point that cocktails here are strong. They certainly don’t skimp on the alcohol.

A great day.

Moorea is stunning. Everything about it.

I think I’m in love.