AdventuresAboardAvatar: Huahine East and Motu Mirimahora

Finally with all of our ducks in their rows, we sailed off toward the Leeward Illes of the Society group. It was an overnight sail from Moorea to Huahaine. We left just before sunset and arrived a few hours after sunrise. The entrance thru Passe Farerea to the east side of the island is thru the reef and by a cute little motu with some people living on it. Basically, just a sand spit, but how lovely when no storms are blowing!

This island is like the country side. Some of the houses are big ranch style homes and many people survive on raising coconuts and fishing. We anchored behind Motu Murimahora, which is quite long and offers the most gorgeous colored water we have seen yet. The white sand bottom creates the turquoise blue, and the light green and dark spots are where the water is either coral or very shallow. We took the dingy up to the southern most point of the motu and saw an area where tourists are taken daily to have a picnic lunch, complete with picnic tables in the water! Everyone living on the motu has to have a boat to get anywhere. Some of the houses had great screened in porches and others had wild tree roots growing in front. Looked like a lovely place to live.

A well known local, Paul, who is deaf, is the welcome committee. He comes out to your boat in his proa, when you arrive and asks you to sign his guest book. He is already on his second one, with so many boats now visiting this area. For signing his book he gives you coconuts, ready to be opened and drank. We refrigerated ours and then added a little rum to the coconut water, and wow refreshing!! We asked Paul if we could get a tour of his property, so he told us a time to meet him ashore. He must read lips, because we had easy conversation with him and understood most of his sounds and hand signs (not sign language). He told us he was the middle of 15 children and all of his brothers and sisters now live either in Fare (the main town on the island) or in Tahiti. He chose to stay here and take care of the family property where they all grew up. We guessed him to be in his mid 40s. He has done amazing work here. He built all of the walled in areas and built up the shore line with rocks to protect it. He has a huge copra shed where he dries his coconuts and he has about 100 trees or more! He showed us one tree that gave the biggest coconut anyone has ever seen! Huge! It was a very old tree and the father of many of the sprouts turned into trees on his property. On the outside of the motu (yes he owns all the way from one side of the motu to the other!) he has a great white sand beach with very little water between the beach and the reef. He collected many shells for me and told me to make some bracelets or other jewelry out of them. This is a new skill I need to acquire!! We also enjoyed watching the hermit crabs play. We had to be careful that we did not pick a shell with a crab in it! The stone work he has done to protect from erosion is very impressive. He has 3 different boats. One is a big flat bottom barge type that fits under the bridge between Huahine Nui and Huahine Iti (you'll see that later) which he takes his copra to town for shipping and can bring back heavy loads to his property. He also has a small speed boat and of course he is very proud of his bright yellow proa. He has satellite tv and all the comforts of home, maybe not as fancy as the others we saw, but simple and sweet, like him. He gave me many flowers to take home which I put in a vase on the table. They smelled heavenly. On the way back to the boat, I knew it was full moon, so we were waiting for it to rise. What a spectacular site to see the full moon in a purple sunset! It got brighter as it rose up in the sky.

We spent about 4 days here enjoying the tranquility (we were the only boat there for 3 of the 4 days!) and the turquoise blue water.