AdventuresAboardAvatar: Sail Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous in Papeete

Cousins Mike and Katie visit!!

Mike and Katie arrived on the 22 of June on the 5am flight. Not sure why, but all flights from LA seem to arrive at either 5am or midnight. Must be because of the 5.5 hours it takes to get here! We still working on the mast project, which we had hoped would be done before they got here. Since Pedro was there to help Mike, I took the cousins up to the downtown market and we did the tourist thing. What fun showing them around. By Thursday afternoon, the project was done and they helped to put the boom and sail back on. We bought lots of food for their stay at the market, and Friday we carted the gas jugs down to the station to have filled. We were all ready to sail across to Moorea by Friday night when the Rendezvous festivities began.

Having signed up for the Pacific Puddle Jump while still in Mexico, we were invited to participate in the Sail Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous put on by Tahiti Tourism, Latitude 38 magazine and several other sponsors. It sounded like a lot of fun, so we planned Mike and Katie's visit around the event.

The Tourism office is right next door to the downtown Marina Papeete. We walked over and picked up our sign in package, which included T-shirts for the whole crew and lots of brochures and sailing travel info. Stephanie Betz and her company were in charge of the whole event. She gave us a nice lecture with large paper charts and slide show, telling us about some of the highlights of sailing in the Society Islands. It was all the stuff you wanted to know as a cruiser, like where you can and cannot anchor, when ever possible pick up the government moorings so not to wreck the coral with our anchors, some of the highlights of each island and fun things to do.

The director of Tourism gave us a nice talk, and every single person there got a real flower lei!! They were very lovely and smelled like heaven. Next was the dance show, which we had all been waiting for. These dancers performed the Marquesan dances with big drums, beautiful costumes, and many of them had amazing tattoos. It was very tribal and thumped in the chest. Then they get the women to all come up and learn the “Bird dance”. It was quite fun and somewhat humorous as we all waved our arms in the air following our dance leaders. Then they get the men to come up and learn the “Canoe dance”, where they slapped their legs and swung their arms like paddling. I am sure everyone very much enjoyed themselves. At the end we were all allowed to take their photos with us. Nothing like standing next to a muscular sexy sweaty dancer!! Oh yea and the gals were lovely too!!

After the show they fed us wine, juice and hors d'oeuvres. After a few drinks and shopping at the trinket tables, we went next door to the park, where the “Trucks” serve food. This as a cool thing to do in Papeete and one of the least expensive ways to eat out. The park has many spaces and food trucks move in around 6pm and stay until about midnight. We had steak, Chinese food and pizza with Patsy and her crew, which was her daughter, son in-law and granddaughter. All for about US$20 each. And that is a cheap meal out here! This is why we provisioned the boat and ate on board for most of the trip!!