Yesterday, after touring the Parc Guell and passing up a visit to the Miro museum (see previous posts), we ended up in Las Ramblas, a busy, touristy section of Barcelona about a 15-20 minute walk from our hotel. We picked a Tapas-oriented place at random and ended up at El Choquito Restaurante, a busy restaurant with mostly tourists as customers, although we did see some locals at the Tapas bar on the way in. Service was brusque - just a slight bit above the sort of service one would get at Dick’s Last Resort back in the U.S. - a chain which prides itself on rude servers.

Fortunately, the food was a bit better than the service, but nothing great - mediocre and expensive would be a better description. We had a blend of tapas and entrees, none of which really stood out, although the patatas bravas were pretty good.

Bas particularly enjoyed his Chicken paella, although I was a bit put out by the lack of saffron flavor and the use of frozen vegetables. However, it’s been pointed out to me that each region in Spain has its own version of paella, with different flavors - but whether that was the reason for the flavor of the paella here or not, I don’t know.

The only thing that was distinctively good was the Cava-based Sangria - Cava is Spanish sparkling wine - and normally Sangria is made with red wine, but it was close to US$35 for one liter of Sangria with Cava.

There’s no question in my mind that El Choquito was a tourist trap. Cost for lunch was about 160 Euros (about US$250) for the six of us - pricey for what we got. I give El Choquito Restaurante a 5.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

As some of you may know, the three older Richters are foodies. Bas is slowly getting more adventurous too, and for an 11 year old boy, does well (his favorite foods include mussels, snails, and steak tartar), but he doesn’t hold a candle to the rest of us.

As foodies, we try to explore the local cuisines of areas we visit, and here in Barcelona, there are three overlapping cuisines we were are working to sample and experience: Catalan, Mediterranean, and Spanish. That’s in conjunction with some excellent Spanish wines, of course, as well as with another wine-based concoction: Sangria.

As mentioned in my previous post, dining times here in Spain are a bit unusual from an American perspective. Most local restaurants are open for lunch until about 4pm, and then re-open around 8:30-9pm (some as late as 10pm) for dinner. Back home we usually have lunch between Noon and 1pm, and dinner starting betweek 6 and 7pm). I’m hoping jet-lag makes the whole adjustment to later dining times easier.

So far we have dined at four restaurants, with a failed attempt to dine at yet one more.

Our two lunch experiences have both been at places which offer a popular form of Spanish dining, namely something called “Tapas“, with the restaurants serving Tapas frequently referred to as Tapas Bars. Spoken quickly this sounds like “Topless Bars”, a misunderstanding which is a source of frequent amusement to us.

Tapas Bars in the U.S. are bars (as in alcohol bars) which serve Tapas, while here in Barcelone, they are bars more along the line of Sushi Bars - you can set at the “bar” and select from a variety of Tapas shown under glass at said bar.

So what are Tapas? Well, the term refers to small plates of a particular food item - it might be a cold food, like marinated octopus or ham on small slices of bread, or hot food like skewers of meat or patatas bravas (chunks of potato with a spicy sauce).

The plates either comes as individual items for one person or as a slightly larger small plate featuring multiple portions of the ordered item, ideal for sharing with others at your table. Our experience with Tapas in the U.S. so far had been with the latter approach - you typically get enough for sharing with one or two other people, and make a meal of ordering a half dozen different Tapas items which are all shared.

Our first restaurant was Txapela (pronounced “Chapella”), a couple blocks from our hotel, right near the busy intersection of Passeig de Gracia and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. While the weather was still a bit brisk, it was a beautiful afternoon, so we sat outside at the cafe portion of the restaurant. Our waitress did not speak English, and our Catalan and Spanish were minimal, but thanks to a pictographic menu of Tapas, we were able to order our Tapas-based meal without too many complications. The tapas at Txapela were the first single portion size tapas we had ever experienced. We ended up ordering two or three of each of the kinds we wanted to sample (about ten different kinds overall), and enjoyed them all. We accompanied the meal with a couple of pitchers of sangria, a blend of wine, fruit, fruit juices, and as we discovered in this case, a heavy dose of sugar too. While the food was good, service, while friendly, was a bit spotty. For the six of us, the bill came to around 120 Euros (about US$190). Based on what we’ve been seeing of prices here, that’s not unreasonable, and certainly eating outdoors was a pleasure (albeit a bit cold for those of us with thin blood) as we could do all sorts of people watching. Txapela gets a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Day 7 of our Pacific Journey - Bora Bora
October 26, 2007

Our second full day aboard the Pacific Princess commenced with anchoring at Bora Bora, a larger atoll and island located some hundreds of miles northwest of Moorea - we sailed (if moving under propeller power can aptly be called sailing) about 15 hours to get here.

One of the geological differences between the atoll of Bora Bora and that of Moorea was that Bora Bora had many things in the atoll lagoon referred to as a “Motu”, or motus in plural. A motu is a small piece of land between the barrier reef of the atoll and the main island at the center of the atoll. The motu land is typically a volcanic substrate with some exposed coralline rock, and because of the volcanic soil, can be covered with lush vegetation, as was the case with the motus around the island of Bora Bora.

The Hawaiki Outrigger Race

After breakfast and the now-usual tour group congregation, we were ferried over by tender to Vituape, the nearest port. Port traffic was hopping, as was island traffic in general, and we only learned later that this was because today was the final day of the Hawaiki Outrigger Race, in which many contenders in outrigger canoes (a long canoe with a pontoon on one side and about a half dozen rowers) had been rowing diligently for the last three days between several islands. It was kind of like the Tour de France, but with outriggers and teams instead of bicycles and individual riders and held in the water instead of the lands and mountains of France. Okay, so maybe not quite like the Tour de France, but the local populace was pretty excited about the whole thing - so much so that people cut out early from work and clogged the sole around-the-island road.

The Island Circle Tour

Anyhow, we were guided to a set of three vehicles that at first glance looked like buses, but in fact were trucks onto which bus-like structure had been added on. This structure featured rows of office chairs bolted onto wood frames, and also had a woven reed roof. Very innovative, but not particularly comfortable. We ended up in bus 2, with Virge (”Vihr-zheh”) as our driver and tour guide Enua (”Enn-ooh-ah”). Enua was quite an interesting character - a blend of French arrogance, island charm, scolding parent, and I’m-Big-Mama-don’t-mess-with-me (and she was a big woman too - that helped support that attitude). I don’t believe I liked her much. And, while I felt she was talking down to us during a fair bit of the tour, there was never any one thing I could point to to support that feeling on my part. Linda’s take is that Enua exuded a not-so-subtle sense of having better things to do than shepherd a bunch of cruise cattle. I certainly enjoyed Sandy’s more down-to-earth tour guide style on Moorea. That’s for sure.

This was my first experience in a long time of being in a large bus (or bus-like-thing) with a large group of people, and I did not really enjoy it much at all. Enua kept having us stop in various places for 5 minute breaks - I’m not sure if that was for us as tourists (because the places we tended to stop did not seem particularly noteworthy for the most part) or for her so she could take a cigarette break. Something, like her lighting up as soon as we had all removed ourselves from the bus, leads me to believe it was the latter. The part I really did not care for was that with all of the older folks on board, it took longer to get off and back on the bus than we actually spent at a particular 5-minute break location.

Our first real non-break/photo stop was at a pareo “factory” - basically someone’s house with a big backyard where the pareos were made. A pareo, as I pointed out in my previous post on Moorea, is much like a sarong. While the pareos on Moorea were basically just tie-dye-like patterns on cloth, on Bora Bora they had come up with an interesting way of incorporating recognizable designs, such as shells, sea turtles, and the words “Bora Bora”.

This was accomplished by taking the freshly dyed (and still damp) pareos, laying them out on a flat surface, and then putting linoleum forms and shapes over them. These linoleum forms would be cut in the shapes of shells, sea turtles, and the words “Bora Bora”, for example. As the sun dried the exposed parts of the pareo and faded it a bit in the process, the parts under the linoleum would dry more slowly and not fade, thereby highlighting the pareo with the shape of the linoleum forms. A human analogue would be when people are sunbathing, the parts of their bodies that are exposed to the sun turn one color (brown, but more often pink and red), while the parts that are covered by bathing suits, bikini tops, or thongs, remain relatively pale. We call the intersection of such burned tanned areas and the untouched areas a tan line. What the Bora Bora pareo makers do, in effect, is give their pareos tan lines too.

The ladies at the pareo “factory” greeted us with fresh fruit - pineapple, grapefruit, coconut (not really a fruit - it’s a seed, I guess), and papaya, and then proceeded to demonstrate pareo-making and pareo-tying. They also had a nice special of “buy five, get one free”, so we did, and got a couple of small tridacna clam shells as a bonus. This made the kids happy, and Bas was so thrilled with the pareo that he picked out that he wore it as a cape for much of the rest of the day.

Along the way, we did learn a few things from Enua. First was that the major export of Bora Bora, and in fact, many of the surrounding islands, was something called “copra”. Copra is dried coconut meat (the white part of the coconut), and when it was a major trade item in the Pacific, starting back in the 1800s, it was used to make coconut oil. Copra continued to be actively made from harvested coconuts until the end of the 1900s, with the coconut husks being used to fuel Bora Bora’s power generation, but as the pay for work in the service industries, especially in tourism, improved, copra production became less attractive as a means of livelihood and has since faded away as a cash crop. And the power plant is now fueled by diesel instead.

We also saw a Marae - a sacred place of power for those who believed in the so-called old Gods of the Polynesians. Enua told us that human sacrifices used to be made there. The marae we saw, indicated by a stone with a carving of a turtle on it, still stands because it is “tapu” (taboo) to build anything on the land where it resides.

Land crabs were another feature of our tour - we saw them lured out with green leaves and fighting over that leaf. There were holes all over the shoreline where these crabs live. The crabs will eat most anything they can get their claws on, which means that island residents have to take extra measures to prevent the crabs from destroying their crops. That includes putting metal bands on palm trees (which keeps the rats away from the coconuts too). The land crabs are edible, but only once they have been “cleaned” for two weeks with a diet of coconut, mango, and papaya.

Enua also made sure to tell us about every hotel we passed by. For some reason, hotels and resorts were perceived to be tourist landmarks, a thing we found both curious and annoying at the same time. Sandy back on Moorea did the same thing, but as they only have three big resorts, it didn’t grate upon us as much.

One of the sights we did enjoy, but from afar, were the multitude of motus surrounding Bora Bora. The turquoise waters around the motus were stunningly beautiful. But almost all of the motus were privately owned, and only accessible by boat. Interestingly, Bora Bora’s airport also sits on a motu.

After several more “breaks” - which were actually sorely needed because the road conditions were horrific as a result of lots of pot holes and no real suspension in the bus to speak of, we ended up at a tourist trap fine local bar and restaurant called “Bloody Mary’s”. We assumed it was a great place, because lots of world-renowned celebrities who likely knew nothing at all about Bora Bora had visited the establishment and had apparently agreed to have their names listed on a board of patrons. The $12 house special strawberry daiquiri was a real treat, and worth at least one-sixth that price.

We had to bypass one final stop, namely at a pretty beach, because it was intensely crowded with people awaiting the arrival of the outrigger canoes in the aforementioned Hawaiki Outrigger Race, returning instead to the small village of Vituape.

Fine Dining on Bora Bora

While our search for local cuisine was not quite as thwarted on Bora Bora as on Moorea, our choices were still rather limited, at least within walking distance of Vituape (and we really did not care to go back and eat over-priced burgers at Bloody Mary’s either). After some wandering about we settled on a local “snack”. Much as on Bonaire, a snack is a local eatery where food is typically ordered at a counter for take-away. Some snacks have a larger counter where one can also eat the purchased food on site, much as we did at a little place called Fare Poulet. Fare Poulet featured mostly modified oriental fare, using some local ingredients. Krystyana had a fish dish, I had pork in oyster sauce, and both Linda and Bas had chicken in tamarind sauce. All quite tasty and filling (and no ill results the next day either).

While we enjoyed our snack fare, we found the lack of nice sit-down restaurants a bit troubling. As best we can figure is that most of the resorts are either all-inclusives or make it very difficult for their guests to leave by being on private motus, and as such demand for fine dining is too low to support a breadth of fine dining establishments. Again, for us this was a stark contrast to Bonaire, which, while having an abundance of snacks, also has a great selection of sit-down eateries within easy walking distance of the piers where cruise ships would dock.

We wandered about the various tourist-oriented shops in Vituape for a bit, and also checked out the local grocery store where we encountered a geriatric stock boy dusting the shelves as he filled them, wearing nothing more than sandals, shorts, and a duster (he wasn’t actually wearing the latter, but did have it in hand).

Diving Dry

We were supposed to return to the dock for a 1:50pm pick-up to go on our afternoon excursion aboard a submarine, but it turns out that that time was a typo on our tickets, and in fact were supposed to show up at 2:50pm. We were a bit disgruntled, but ended up using our time to view the outrigger canoes which had finished the race and were being packed up to be taken back to their homes - locally and on other islands) and followed that up by some ice cream and a French puff pastry at a little café we had stumbled across.

At just before 3pm we found ourselves with Sebastian, the pilot of a small, fast boat heading out beyond the barrier reef encircling Bora Bora. We approached what at first appeared to be a yellow spot on the horizon, but soon grew to be the submarine we had reserved space on. Along with us was an older couple, for a grand total of six passengers - the maximum the submarine could hold.

We boarded the submarine with the assistance of its captain, Alan, a Frenchman filled with enthusiasm for his job (truly!), and embarked for our journey into the depth’s of Bora Bora’s waters. Awaiting us, on the other side of 9 centimeters of plexiglass, were a bevy of remoras. Remoras are the fish which are usually seen clinging to large marine creatures, like sharks, whales, and manta rays. They are also known as shark suckers.

After the submarine’s hatch closed, and our ballast tanks were loaded with sea water, we started to slowly descend in a rocking motion, first pitching forward for a while, then backwards, until we had descended to nearly 20 meters (66 feet) below the water’s surface. Alan waxed on with infectious glee about the various fish we were seeing outside the submarine, providing an on-going commentary about how the submarine operated, where to look for the most interesting fish, and what we might expect next.

Bas, who was initially rather filled with trepidation by the whole concept of going underwater in a submarine lost all his worries and started joining Alan in pointing out various fish species (he and Linda had been studying some fish guides we brought along with us after they snorkeled briefly in Tahiti at our hotel there).

One thing that attracted the fish to the submarine was a small exterior hatch that was well stocked with frozen, aged (stinky) fish. The opening to the hatch could be popped open temporarily, and Alan used this feature to create small feeding frenzies for our viewing pleasure.

Over the course of the 45 minute dive, we saw dozens of species of jacks, snappers, butterfly fish, angelfish, several coronet fish, a trumpet fish, black tipped reef sharks, lemon sharks, a school of young barracuda, triggerfish, and many more. And the mildly eerie cyan lighting permeating the interior of the sub as the colors of sunlight were filtered by the depth of the water in which we found ourselves only made the experience more interesting.

All in all, the enjoyment of our submarine ride far outshone our disappointment with the morning’s circle island tour, and Bas stated he would love to go down in a submarine anytime the opportunity arose again. Definitely a convert to the underwater life. Now we just need to remind him he can see all the same things and more when he goes scuba diving with us.

We returned to the pier at 4pm to catch the penultimate tender back to the Pacific Princess. Once on board I headed off for another spa treatment (this time with Karen and a men’s facial). And at 6pm we took our first “formal night” in stride with the best clothes we had brought with us, and dined in Sterling Steakhouse Grill, one of the two specialty restaurants on board. The meal was good, as was the service.

After dinner, Krystyana and I went to see the evening show put on by the ship’s entertainment staff. The show was entitled “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”, featuring rock music of the 60s - clearly targeted at the median age demographic of our fellow passengers. But we knew most of the music as well and enjoyed ourselves. I was pleased to find virtually no lip-syncing going on (a contrast to my first and only prior big-ship cruise on Carnival about 20 years ago) - the performers actually did their own singing (and dancing, of course). That show got Krystyana hooked on attending the evening performances as well, much to our amusement.

Conclusion

As might be apparent from the above, we were less than charmed by Bora Bora. It seemed overly busy, and not particularly friendly to visitors (other than wanting to part them with their money at places like Bloody Mary’s). Others who had visited Bora Bora before told us that our day was unusual, mostly because of the Hawaiki Outrigger Race, and normally Bora Bora was a sleepy, quiet place. Bora Bora might be worth a return visit at some point, but it’s definitely not very high on our list, especially in contrast with Moorea. I will note that first impressions, when you have but a part of a day to experience a new destination, are critical, and our bus tour was our first (and negative) impression. If the people giving you your tour don’t exude enthusiasm and delight over their own lands (or island), how can visitors expect to be delighted with their visit? Food for thought, even for our friends back on Bonaire, which is seeing an influx of cruise tourism itself even as I write this.

And so ends day 7 of our Pacific Journey.

Photos from this day can be found here.

Day 6 of our Pacific Journey - October 25, 2007

Our first night on board the Pacific Princess went smoothly (now that we had our luggage), although we all woke up pretty early - around 6am, due to the increased rocking of the vessel. The Pacific Princess is a pretty small ship as cruise ships go, and that means it is more prone to ocean motion than a truly large cattle boat cruise ship would be.

Today’s stop was an exciting one for us - the island of Moorea. Moorea is actually the center part of an atoll. An atoll is basically a volcano that at first poked up through the water, and then gradually over hundreds of thousands or millions of years sank back down, while at the same time coral reefs grew at the outer edges. The end result as far as places like Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora are concerned is that there is now a big ring of coral encircling a lagoon, and in that lagoon are chunks of land - some large, some small (the small ones hereabouts are called “Motus” - more on those in the Day 7 installment). And Moorea is one of those big chunks of land. (I uploaded a wide panorama to the photo gallery showing the part of Moorea we anchored near, in Opunohu Bay - see link at bottom of this post.) Incidentally, “Moorea” means “Yellow Lizard”. We did not see any live yellow lizards on Moorea, however.

From the ship, Moorea looked lush and green, again no surprise considering the volcanic soil and ample rain fall. And, as with Tahiti, fires to burn off excess trimmed vegetation were visible and odiferous noticeable in numerous places (see photo in link at bottom of this post).

We partook of the large buffet breakfast, walked about the ship a bit, and then like good little passengers, found ourselves in the Cabaret Lounge along with all of our other fellow “Tour C - Moorea Island Tour” participants, waiting for someone to tell us where to go next.

That turned out to be a few flights of stairs down to where we boarded these little mini-ferry boats which have been given a delightfully touchy-feely name - “tenders”. I’m not sure of the origin of the word in this context, but undoubtedly it stems from the idea that its passengers are well tended to, tenderly so, that they tend to get off in a different place than they got on, and perhaps some other double entendre. Note to those who get motion sickness easily - do not, I repeat, do not, sit in the very front of the tender. Bad idea - I barely survived.

Once back on stable, solid land, in the coastal village of Papetoai (means “Water which does not move”), we milled about a bit until our cattle herders tour leaders pointed us to a couple of buses to board. As we lagged the rest of the crowd, which was mostly geriatric, we ended up on a smaller bus with only six other people. Sweet!

I should mention here that we estimate the median age of our fellow cruisers to be around 62. The few exceptions to that are a few sets of younger honeymooners, and another family with a baby. When we boarded yesterday, we did encounter a pair of 8-year British twins, but they must have been part of the out-going crowd of former-passengers-to-be. As best we can tell, outside of the one or two babies (they all look alike to us), Bas and Krystyana are the only other passengers below the age of 25 (those being the honeymooners). It’s also been a long time since Linda and I felt so relatively young in a crowd.

The downside to this lopsided age distribution is that everyone else moves really, really slow. The upside is that they are all very nice and polite, and actually appreciate the kids, including Bas, as they remind the older passengers of their grandchildren or even great-grandchildren.

Our bus driver was a native Moorean by the name of Sandy, and whose Polynesian name was Heimana (pronounced “Hey Mah-nah”) and rarely used.

Tiki Theatre Village

Our first stop was the Tiki Theatre Village, a recreation of sorts of a tribal Polynesian village. Here we encountered the tribal gift shop (where I ultimately purchased a nice Tahitian Shirt made in Indonesia - in contrast to nice Hawaiian Shirts made in China), the tribal tattoo parlor (yes - tattooing was in fact something that was part of tribal culture - each island has its own distinctive designs), the tribal tiki carving hut, the tribal pareo making hut, the tribal basket and hat weaving hut, the tribal pearl jewelry store, and the tribal live performance amphitheater. All guaranteed to be original and authentic, of course. Oh - and there were authentic tribal bathrooms too.

The first place we visited in earnest in the Village (other than the authentic bathrooms) was the tribal pearl and jewelry shop, run by a company called Virgin Pearls. Here we met Tihoni, a very nice young gentleman who told us he sold pearl jewelry by day, and danced at the Tiki Theatre by night (photos of Tihoni are in the photo gallery - click the link at bottom of this post). Tihoni explained that Polynesian pearls are graded when harvested based on luster, color, shape, and imperfections, in grades ranging from A to D. Grade A pearls are the best and most expensive, with only 2% of all pearls being graded that highly. Grade B pearls account for 7% of harvested pearls, while Grade C make up 53% of the mix. The rest are Grade D pearls and used for cheap jewelry.

Polynesian pearls can range in color from a rosy opaque to a dark shade reminiscent of the mineral hematite, and take up to six to eight years to be harvested. A lot of transplanting of mother of pearl from the inside of the pearl oysters occurs, to be used as the “seed” for new pearls, and typically the color of the mother of pearl will be similar to the color of the final pearl when harvested. In terms of shape, there are round (rond), semi-round (semi-rond), semi-baroque (round with a slight tear drop shape), “cercle” (almost ovoid, egg shaped), and baroque (more full tear drop shaped). A photo of these differences is also in the photo gallery.

After this educational lesson on pearls, we headed out to the nearby theatre and watched a number of musical and dance performances, as well as a pareo making demonstration followed by a pareo wearing/tying demonstration. A pareo is a large sheet of brightly dyed fabric, akin to a sarong. And in case that’s not clear enough, a sarong is a brightly dyed fabric akin to a pareo.

Pareos can be worn by men or woman (although frankly, I think they look better on women - just my opinion). Also worn exclusively by women at this tribal experience were coconuts - or more specifically, one coconut per woman, cut in half, with each half used as the cup of a primitive brassiere. No doubt this is where the term “a lovely pair of coconuts” stems from.

The dance numbers featured fire dancing - quite impressive. A female tourist in the audience commented on how the guys doing the dancing were hot! And no doubt they were, especially if their grips on their flaming torches slipped. And, of course, we had the obligatory dance-with-the-tourist-dance, where nubile (or at least more flexible) female native dancers plucked unlikely male tourists from the audience and got them to gyrate in amusing ways. At least we were amused (especially since they had not picked me to gyrate with them). It’s always easier to laugh at the foibles of others, right?

One of the lovely coconut-clad lasses took us back over to the pearl shop, and we were shown how to cut open a pearl-bearing oyster, and find the pearl. It was a small dark colored pearl (photo in gallery), of which Bas ultimately became the proud owner. That would be because his mother became the proud owner of a beautiful necklace featuring three Grade B pearls in three distinctly different shades, with diamond chips, on a gold chain, and his sister received a gold charm with mother of pearl backing in the design of a turtle. We were told that the turtle symbolized “Arenui”, which means big wave from the deep ocean (a tsunami?). Bas received the pearl from the oyster that was opened for us, while I got a polished oyster shell for my troubles (troubles which involved proffering my American Express card and signing the cheque).

After a few more native demonstrations and another examination of the authentic tribal restroom facilities (to ensure they were authentic, of course), and a pass through the gift shop, we were back off on our way around the island of Moorea.

Moorea, Moorea, We Love You Moorea (or at least like you a lot)

Moorea reminded us a lot of our home island of Bonaire, at least in terms of the ambiance and the people. Everyone was friendly, traffic was light, the water was beautiful, and there were no stop lights anywhere (at least as far as we could see). Of course differences arose too - the natives spoke French (and did not speak English well for the most part); Moorea is lush and green and tall, while Bonaire is mostly flat, arid, and filled with cactus and thorny plants; and it’s possible to drive across Bonaire instead of only around it, like on Moorea.

The beauty of Moorea made our hearts ache, and filled us with remorse that we had not known to bring our snorkel gear, for we truly wanted to explore the amazingly clear turquoise waters of the lagoons of the atoll of Moorea (check out the pictures of the Sofitel resort’s on-water cottages in the photo gallery - breathtaking!)

We also learned that “Bali Hai”, a place which was made famous in the musical South Pacific, was a mountain on Moorea. Made the place seem even more idyllic.

Fruit Juice Ferments Well

Our tour with Sandy nearly over, we stopped in at the Jus de Fruits de Mo’orea (Moorea Fruit Juice Factory), where, with Sandy’s help we sample several kinds of fruit punch (rum laden, of course), coconut cream liquor, coffee cream liquor, vanilla cream liquor, ginger liquor, banana liquor, pineapple liquor, and several more things we no longer recall (but are sure they tasted good). They even had some non-alcoholic fruit juices for the kids. We left fully loaded (in more ways than one).

A Lack of Dining Options For Lunch

As previously indicated, we try to check out local eateries wherever we go. And we tried to do that on Moorea too for a late lunch, but unfortunately, in Papetoai we had no options (other than a place that served hamburgers from a small wheeled trailer). We then looked to try and rent a car to drive ourselves around the island in search of better fare, but the only car rentals were from AVIS, for a paltry sum of US$104 for a four hour rental. We sadly decided that was not worth the effort, and joined our fellow cruise ship tourists in heading back to the Pacific Princess for a buffet lunch. That, combined with our great unfulfilled desire to snorkel or dive Moorea’s waters, left us a bit saddened.

As penance, we spent the remainder of the afternoon doing laundry, and then attended the mandatory safety drill, where we were taught where to go during an announced emergency on board the ship, as well as how to don our life jackets. They tried to make it as fun as possible for us, interjecting jokes about style and other things into the lecture, but it still was a bit tedious. But safety first, they always say.

The Evening

We had booked for the first seating for dinner (there were two - one at 6pm and the second at 8pm), and had the pleasure of meeting three of our four dining companions for the rest of the cruise. Joanne and June were merry widows from Wisconsin, while Richard was a retiree from Florida. Richard’s wife Rhonda was unwell, and so did not join us.

I followed dinner with my first spa treatment, a 50 minute reflexology delivered by Cecilia from South Africa. Oh my.

Conclusion

In case it was not apparent, we all were enthralled with Moorea, and it is now definitely a place we must visit again, for a prolonged period of time. Sandy, our driver, told us we could rent a waterfront home for around $600/month, much better than the $1500/night for an on-water cottage at some of the hotels. Now we just have to figure our when and how we can get back.

Thus ends day 6 of our Pacific Journey.

Photos from this day can be found here.