The sister islands of Raiatea and Tahaa

From the time we cleared the pass on Huahine, by the village of Fare, it took us about 4 hours to sail the 18 miles over to Raiatea. It was trading off sun and rain as several clouds passed over us. We had Pass Teavamoa (the Sacred Pass) in our sights, when a downpour came and the island disappeared in front of us. So we took down all sails and motored slowly, waiting for the rain to pass. Once it did, we had sun again and could see the channel markers we needed to go between. But behind us was another cloud so we pushed the motor a bit and made it in while the sun was still shining. There was a small hut on our starboard side and a guy in a boat fishing nearby. Looked like he caught a fish as we passed him.

We came in the sacred pass because we wanted to see the “father of all Maraes” Marae Taputapuatea. This was the largest Anthropological sight in all of the Society islands and the opening in the pass headed directly at it. We looked around for a place to anchor, but it was 100 feet plus everywhere. We saw a few boats nearby, but realized they were on moorings and none were open. So we followed around the shallow water until we found a 70 foot spot in Baie Faareparahi (that is a mouth full!!) with a mud bottom and is protected from those squalls coming in from the South East. As we were backing up to secure the anchor in the mud, we realized there was a coral shelf all around us at about 3 feet deep. The water depth goes from 70 feet to strait up to 3 feet!! We decided to re-anchor a bit farther away from the coral shelf! By this time it was raining again, so we stayed below and I baked a cake.

The next day was sunny again, so we found a place to lock the dingy close to the road and we started walking back toward the Marae. It was a Sunday and we saw only 3 cars, all going the other direction. Suddenly a “Le Truck” appeared and stopped to pick us up. Everyone was dressed in their Sunday finest. We smiled at them all and said “Iorana” which means hello in Tahitian. We stopped in front of a church, where I expected them to get out, but we picked up an elderly lady and no one got off. Must all go to a different church?! She spoke a bit of English and asked where we were going. She got the driver to stop and let us off at the proper spot. When we tried to pay him for our ride, he would not accept any money. “Mauruuru” we said, which means thank you in Tahitian. As they drove off, 3 young girls in the back said in perfect English “good bye!”. We smiled and waved. The people here are SO nice!

We explored the Marae while we waited for our friends Eric and Leslie from the boat Kandoo to join us and pick up some mail we brought them from Tahiti. The guide book says this was the most important Marae in all of French Polynesia. The big blocks of coral were taken from the reef at low tide by lighting fire to them to make them crack. The stones were quite large, as is the whole site very impressive. Back in the day, Captain Cook visited here and the information signs show some of the drawings from his naturalist that showed what the scene looked like when they were here. The Lonely Planet guide book (thanks Katie!) describes the big vertical stone in the middle of the courtyard as the “stone of mana”. Mana is a person's power or energy. The Mata Rahi was known as the “great eye” stone.

This was all very interesting, but when Eric and Leslie arrived we got a different story! Eric had sailed to Raiatea as a boy with his Aunt and Uncle and had even spent 2 years in high school here back in 1970's. Now they have decided to stay here and put their two boys in school here, walking in their father's foot steps. Eric told us the stories he had been told by the local “Sorcerer” who had given him his first tour of the place back then. This was the headquarters for the believers in “Oro” the God of War. Back then Sorcerers had to sacrifice a human life to keep their power or mana. This had to be done once a year before the anniversary date of their becoming a Sorcerer. He said the one big black vertical stone had been misplaced when the site was rebuilt. (The missionaries had all of these sites destroyed in the early 1800s, but with a rejuvenation for their history, the locals rebuilt them in the late 1900s.) The big stone used to lay horizontal so the flat side was up and the sharp edge at the top was used to cut heads off! They were left their to drain their blood into the courtyard as the Sorcerer somehow absorbed their mana.

Now to find the person who was going to be sacrificed was another great story. Normally they chose a person who was generally annoying or a trouble maker for political reasons. If they could not find anyone on Raiatea, the took their canoes over to Huahine to find someone. The code was “do you have any broken gourds?”. This meant, “do you have anybody who is worthless we can take home to kill?” Now you did not want to kill a person who was old or sickly, they had already lost much of their mana, so it had to be a younger or stronger person. Eric showed us the “grater” stone too. If a person was pale or green from the ride back in the bottom of a canoe from Huahine, they would use this stone to make their skin red and rosy, so it looked like they had more mana, before they chopped off their head for Oro.

Once the body was done bleeding out, they were buried inside the tall stones at the head of the courtyard and covered them with the small rocks. How many maraes have we been to and did not know why there are always tall rocks in a square at one end?! Eric said you knew there really were bodies buried in there because sometimes you could find teeth outside of a crab hole near the marae in the crab's discarded dirt from his hole. He said he had found a tooth here as late as 1994! Who knows if any or all of this is true or fiction, but it does make for a good story!

Over by the big rock Mata Rahi at the other courtyard, Eric explained that the use for this big rock was to protect the chiefs. All chiefs wore big protective belts and shields over their chests, but when they entered the sacred Marae they had to remove it to show respect to Oro and his deities. So as not to be killed by an arrow or spear, they hid behind the rock while they were praying or listening to the Sorcerer speak. Eric really made this place way more interesting than the tour book!! Right now the locals are trying to make this a World Heritage site to protect it from ever being destroyed again. I guess what amazes me the most, is how fearful and murderous these people were 200 years ago and now they are the sweetest people you have ever met! At least there was one good thing that came out of those missionaries!!

Later that night, back on the boat, I saw one of the most beautiful things ever. It started raining again, so I went out to moved the cushions to a dry spot and noticed the water was lit up like a Christmas tree. There is so much phosphorescence in the water that as each drop of rain hit the bay, it glowed green! Down deeper you could see every fish swimming as he made a bright glow deeper in the water when he moved. It was mesmerizing and beautiful!!

The next day we headed North inside the reef towards the neighboring island of Tahaa. Both Raiatea and Tahaa are surrounded by one big reef system. As we went past another pass through the reef, a Proa paddler was resting near a green marker, but when he saw us he took off to surf in our wake. It is kind of like drafting the car ahead of you. He was quite studly and kept up with our 6 knots of boat speed for an hour! It was hot, so Mike used our hand shower sprayer to cool him off. When we got the camera out to take his photo, he showed off by popping a wheelie, which is tipping his outrigger up out of the water. As we followed the channel markers to cross over to Tahaa, he waved bye and said thank you, as he paddled back to the top end of Raiatea.

We zigged and zagged thru the reefs inside the channel markers to the West side of Tahaa. We anchored near Motu Tautau, which we had been told has great snorkeling. This motu has a big resort on it, but there is a small pass between two motus that they call the Coral Garden. My friend had said it was so shallow that if you had big boobs you had to breath in so you did not drag them on the coral! Yikes! The next morning we donned our suits and snorkeling gear and dingied over. They have a line of floats to mark it, so we anchored just outside the floats closer to the smaller motu. There were big coral heads everywhere, but there also was a channel thru them that was a bit deeper. Here the fish swam right up to us, totally unafraid. We realized they obviously feed the fish here and they wanted to know if we brought anything with us. Oops, we did not know. We were swimming along slowly when suddenly I saw the biggest Moray Eel I have ever seen in my life. He was at least a foot tall and over 6 inches wide. He came out of his hole completely swimming after me. I was SCARED!! He was at least 6 feet long too, when I got to see his whole body. I grabbed Mike's fin in front of me and pointed rapidly. “Holy Crap!” I could hear him say thru his snorkel. We swam away rapidly. Then we came upon a group of tourist with some new fangled snorkel gear. I had never seen these type of face masks before that cover your whole face and have a snorkel at the top, making them look a bit like aliens. I guess it is only good for shallow swimming, as if you wanted to dive down to look at something deeper, there is no way to hold your nose to equalize your ears. Then I realized that these tourist had a crazy French guide with them and he was feeding another big Moray eel, then petting it while it ate! None of the tourists did this, but we all watched the crazy Frenchman. That was when I realized the guy chasing me was just looking for food too. But at the time I thought he was thinking I was gonna be his food!! We followed the tourists and headed back to the dingy and boat. The only bummer about this whole episode is I forgot to take my camera!!

We were anchored next to one of those cool house boats, like the one Coco the boobie bird lived on over in Huahine, so I took a photo of it. Never did see anybody on board, but it sure would make a great living platform out at the Magote in La Paz!! That night was clear as a bell and we sat out on the deck staring at the zillions of stars in the Southern Sky. We are working on learning the new constellations we can see down here.

The next day we woke up to fog and rain! We could not believe it! Not the best conditions for snorkeling, so we motored over to the village of Tapuamu on the main part of Tahaa. The water again was too deep to anchor, so we picked up one of the moorings. When the rain finally cleared, we decided to go ashore and check it out. All the houses had so many pretty flowers in their yards. I love the way people use bushes and shrubs to separate their property instead of fences and walls. We had heard that this town has a local rum distillery and we finally found it. After a short tour of the place, we bought some rum at a pretty high price, but it was 50% alcohol. No need to use much of it! I love their label with the double hulled sailing canoe and the stars they navigate with.

We could see Bora Bora in the distance and were ready to find our Bali Hai as soon as the weather cleared. We sailed there the next day.

Pass Teavamoa at Raiatea

Here we leave red markers to the Left when entering, note the fish traps

hut to starboard entering the pas

fisherman with fish on

Baie Faareparahi

entrance to Marae Taputapuatea

wandering through the overgrown courtyards

interesting plants

Mike and the Banyan tree

wandering through the grounds

the beach area

note the circles on the rock on the right

the end of this marae drops right into the water

The courtyard of the Rock of Mana

Eric demonstrates on his wife Leslie how they chopped of heads

The sacrifice rock

one of the description signs showing what it may have looked like

Captain Cook being shown how they don't just eat white people

The altar at the rock of Mana

close up of wood carving looks like King Neptune to me

some of the offerings at the altar

statuette at altar

many small shells buried in a coral stone at the altar

the back side of the marae

Mata Rahi Marae

drawing from Capt. Cook's naturalist of what it looked like when they were there.  

Note his ship in the background

offering my respect before entering where many people had died

Thinking this was the rock of Mana, I tried to feel its power

Pass Teavamoa looking out from the Marae

Mata Rahi

round coral rocks at the head of the Mata Rahi

The "grater" rock where they made rosy faces

Tree growing out over the lagoon

smaller Marae right on the water

what the big sea going double hulled canoes looked like

looking out at a motu on the reef

small plants growing strait out of a moss covered rock

Possibly fisherman Paulo's burial site

His headstone at the front

fish rock inside burial site

Mike on the other side, do you see the fish rock?

being tailed by a Va'a paddler

popping a wheelie in his canoe

the big mountains of Raiatea

a marina on the NE side of Raiatea where our paddler left us

boats anchored between the two islands

stay between the channel markers!!!

the fancy resort on Motu Tautau

a modern day double hulled boat house, I want one to take home to La Paz!!

What they used to look like

Mike admiring someone's yard in the village of Tapuamu in Tahaa

brilliant red flowers

flower hedges for privacy

fruit stand on side of the road with Pomplamoosse for sale

More privacy plants

red flowers on the side of the road, note the water drops from all the rain!

Tiare flowers, the official flower of French Polynesia

Fuchsia colored orchid

purple house

Land Rover defender a little dilapidated like the house it is parked by

crab is cleaning trash from his front porch

many fishing boats and their boat houses

Avatar on a mooring in the distance, nice dock!

muddy river water flowing down from the mountains

looking back at the village

locally made Tahitian Rum!!  Love that label

sunset after a rainy day

The sky is on fire!

Bora Bora in the distance and Motu Tautau in the foreground and some charter boat

the reef on Tahaa as we are heading for the pass to go to Bora Bora

Satellite photo of Raiatea, Tahaa and Bora Bora