Taha'a

Fortunately I was starting to feel better today, because we had things to do. We woke up as we arrived at Taha'a. In these polynesian languages you tend to pronounce each vowel individually. So it's "ta-ha-a".

Anyway, the important thing is we're back in the Society Islands group. This includes Tahiti, and we're within view of Bora Bora, where we'll be tomorrow. Unfortunately that also makes it the last section of the cruise.

We had a 7am breakfast - early for us - then went ashore for an island tour. This was about 30 people on benches in the back of utes. We landed on the east side, at Fa'a'aha Bay, then they drove us up the mountains to a viewing point.

From there we went down to the west side of the island and drove clockwise. Stopping at a pearl farm where they explained the process for culturing pearl and (naturally) then tried to sell people pearls. 

Next we went on to a vanilla farm, where the same cycle happened. The vanilla bean process was fairly interesting, but honestly just riding around the island was the best part.

We were then taken back to the bay and boated out to the ship. We had a quick lunch, then got changed and went by boat out to the small island, Motu Mahaea, which the cruise ship had set up for the afternoon. A barbeque, bar, deck chairs and various watersports equipment. The logistics was quite impressive.

It turned out to be fairly windy and there was a bit of a current. So the only thing we could really do was go snorkelling off the south side of the island (right side in the picture above). Which was great. Typical of things we've seen before, but very pleasant.

We got back to the boat mid afternoon to freshen up and rest. At around 5 the boat unmoored to make it across to Bora Bora in the evening where we could spend the night at anchor in calm water.

Rather than leave the reef where we were, on the east, the ship motored south, between Taha'a and Raiatea and up to the west side to a channel there. Then it's a short hop north west to Bora Bora.