AdventuresAboardAvatar: Huahine South and secret beach

After a few days in the town and the North end of Huahine, we motored down the channel inside the reef to the SW corner of the island. It is real important to pay close attention when doing this. If you vary at all from the channel you will be aground! Even in the channel you have to pay attention. I took a photo of the depth sounder to show how it goes from 140 feet to 20 in no time at all!! And not just once, but several times. We passed several lovely homes on this side of the island, which is the leeward or dry side. The sun was setting and making a lovely orange colored light. Our friend Rick from Calypso was our welcoming committee and took a nice photo of me. It was great we finally caught up with them again.

Anchored in Baie de Avea, our friends informed us of the great internet from the hotel Mauarii and gave us the pass code. Finally internet right on the boat with out having to take the computer to shore!! Yea! We might not have spent as much time “plugged in” as we did, except it was very windy and squally for two of the days we were there. It really is kind of sick how when internet is available like that we can hardly turn it off. But when we are out of range and have no internet life is just wonderful not knowing all the stuff going on in the world! We met Rick & Jasna at the hotel restaurant for a happy hour pina- colada, the best one yet in French Polynesia! The view from the beach was so pretty and they have kayaks and paddle boards for their guests to use.

We decided to walk down and check out Marae Anini on the Southern most point of the island. On the way we saw so many beautiful flowers. There was a tree spilling beautiful Plumerias (I think) with pink and yellow colors all over the ground. Another bush had Hibiscus flowers, some red some orange. The last one was a lovely orchid, but I don't know what its name is. As we approached the point we could see the Marae getting closer and the incredible turquoise color of the water beyond it. One area of rocks looked as if it could have been someone's grave. At Anini the rocks surrounding it were very tall, maybe up to 7 feet. But at the other end they were much shorter and the inside of the box of tall rocks was again filled with many small rocks. All of these rocks are actually big chunks of coral. They were pretty good at fitting the big rocks together, but where they did not quite come together, they filled the gap with little bitty rocks. On the way back to our dingy at the hotel, we came across an area surrounded by big rocks as well and obviously wet lands which were filled with lily pads. There were two types, one with white flowers and the other with beautiful purple and golden lilies.

Once the squalls passed, the sky had amazing high cloud formations. We headed back north up the channel and stopped in at the “secret” beach, Hana Iti. It is considered “secret” because there are no roads to get to it, you have to arrive by boat. The government put in 3 free mooring balls for boaters to stop and stay there for a while. Ziggy is the guy who comes every morning to clean and monitor the beach activities. He comes to work in his Va'a (outrigger canoe). There was a hike that we did not do because we heard it was pretty mosquito infested from the recent rains. But our friends Steve and Lili on Liward had one of the moorings and they invited us and two other boats to a beach fire pot luck. The pyromaniacs, Steve and Miguel, got the fire going quite well and they brought a grill grate to cover it with to cook our chicken on. Ziggy of course had to show us how his ancestors used to walk on fire, but seemed a bit hot to us! The other two boats were French, but one of them spoke some English too, so we had some interesting conversation. It was a tranquil place and the setting sun over the distant islands of Riatea and Taha'a was spectacular. Sunset always seems to be the time when the locals are out practicing their paddling and this guy went right thru my sunset and made it perfect!

The next morning we took a dingy ride around Baie Bourayne. This is where the two parts of the island are connected by the longest bridge in French Polynesia (maybe 1/4 mile long). We saw some guys fishing from their va'a and many pretty homes, all different styles. We even saw our first “Le Truck” which is a wooden bus built on the back of an old truck. In all the old tour books they talk about these everywhere, but they are no longer used in Tahiti or Moorea and this was the first one we had seen. He had just turned around at the end of the road. At the mouth of Baie Bourayne is Motu Vaiorea. There are nice houses and the water surrounding it was quite a brilliant blue.

We took the boat back to Fare Village for one more stop at the awesome grocery store before we make the day sail over to Riatea.......