Hibiscus

We slept in late today. I didn't get up until 8:30, sleeping like a baby as it rained on and off all night.

Mike was at the helm motoring north to Hamanee Bay. It was raining enough to soak through the towel I had wrapped around me while helping navigate. There were definitely some tricky sections where a couple of markers were changed from the charts that we had and low visibility from the rain made distinguishing a red and green mark difficult. At one point I was sure glad to be up on deck as we headed straight for coral keeping a green mark far to our left instead of far to our right.

But we made it to Hamenee Bay less than two hours later and moored in front of The Hibiscus restaurant. Mike did pretty well motoring right to the mooring buoy and I snagged and tied it, all while a Moorings catamaran full of Americans watched on. They later told us that they were impressed with our skills. Ben later told me as I suspected from the engine sounds that Mike was doing "the all or none" throttling at the helm. But for his first time it was a great job.

We had shrimp ramen soup for lunch which ws great. I gotta say, for something so easy to make, instant noodles really hit the spot while sailing.

While cleaning up, I sent Mike with Jennie and Shannon to check out the Hibiscus restaurant and ask about the excursions that they had there. A lot of new things for Mike today. You could see Shannon was really nervous with Mike driving the dinghy.

With this sailing trip, Mike talked to me about taking lessons in London and maybe getting into sailing himself. If he can find the time, I think that would be pretty fun for him. On this trip, I think he's seen and done a lot. We've done plenty of sailing, and all of this morning Mike got to motor and navigate through the lagoon. He brought along an intro to sailing book that he was reading. He thought the toughest part was knowing what all the ropes do, which is true. I thought back to three years ago in Vancouver Yacht Club crew circle not knowing what anything did except the jib sheets.

Fortunately the rain let up in the afternoon and we went in for a vanilla tour. There are two commodities for which Tahiti is supposedly famous: black pearls and vanilla. The island of Taha'a is the main vanilla producer.

We went with the Americans to La Vallee de la Vanille. The proprietor Brian, a Danish ex-French legionnaire, drove one truck and his friend Richard took four of us in another car. Chantelle was in the front with her sprained ankle, and Ben, Shannon and I in the back. Chantelle chatted away with Richard and we learned that he used to live in France and was now retired in French Polynesia.

The welcome to the vanilla plantation was very nicely set up, and more than I expected. Brian gave us each a refreshing juice and had a plate of pineapple and bananas along with crushed coconut. He showed us the vanilla plant, how it was cultivated and harvested, how was dried and had to be massaged to release the vanilla flavor. Brian's farm was one of the few organic farms unlike those that we saw in greenhouses. Apparently, there are two types of vanilla. One that we commonly buy from several countries and can be found in our local grocery store. The Tahitian variety of vanilla was produced only in Tahiti and very difficult to find elsewhere. You may find some in Paris but would cost you something like 15 euros a bean. It was also extremely potent, with a quarter of a leaf flavoring two pots of rice or pasta.

We all bought a couple of packages to take home. It cost 2500 CFP for 10g.

Throughout this excursion, our driver Richard was the cutest man. I think he really liked Chantelle. He took a lot of photos of the tour group with his cellphone, and picked flowers for Chantelle and Shannon to put in their hair. Driving back to the restaurant, he stopped and picked a couple of hibiscus flowers for the girls. By the end of it, Chantelle and Shannon had three flowers each adorning their heads.

We went back to the catamaran and all of us had a swim in the bay before showering off for our dinner reservations at 6:30.

The Hibiscus Restaurant was run by Leo and Lucinda. It had some bungalows across the road, and I think is called a yacht club as well. It was older than the Bora Bora Yacht Club, the latter having been rebuilt since the cyclone several years ago.

There was no one in the restaurant but us but Leo served up an amazing dinner with salad, jackfish and creme brulee. There was no menu. It was about $60 per person including a beer.

It had started to pour again so we hung out in the restaurant trying to wait out the rain. We bought some pearls, Mike four, and Shannon and Chantelle three each for earrings and a pendant, at what I thought was a pretty good price, $30 each, considering how much the Italian couple paid at the Champon Pearl Farm. How do you tell if they're fake?

Then Richard suddenly made an appearance with his Polynesian guitar! He sang us several songs and made quite the hit. We found out Leo and Lucinda's daughter was Miss Tahiti 2004, and signed their guest book, which they had volumes and volumes of.

When the rain briefly let up, we were sent on our way back to Arearea.

I woke up this morning to rain, rain, more rain, and the scent of vanilla on our boat. It is actually pouring quite hard and didn't look like it was going to let up any time soon.

Raining our last day. I can't really complain actually. It sounded like we arrived at Le Taha'a just missing some bad weather and now only at the end of our sail is it really starting to rain hard. That's the risk of shoulder season though. Imagine what it would have been like if our entire ten days was like this!

I think we were very lucky in other respects too. Just listing off random things like the cardiologist at Bora Bora Yacht Club after our mountain hike, the free vanilla and pearl tours, great restaurants, nice sailing, James the river guardian and Richard at the Hibiscus. No mechanical problems, and by the book cruising. All in all, I think a fantastic first charter.