Day Three of our trip started out right – upon opening our stateroom door in the morning, we were greeted by the sight of my suitcase! Yay!! What a welcome sight. I’m so glad it arrived, and many thanks to my father-in-law who spent hours on the phone with various baggage reps trying to track it down and get it to me. Skip, we owe you big-time – how about if we get you a grandchild? 🙂
On our first port day of the cruise, we stopped at the island of Moorea. Like Tahiti and Bora Bora (tomorrow’s stop), Moorea is part of French Polynesia, and it was truly a tropical paradise. We have very different days planned at each of our island stops, and for the Moorea day, we were doing an inland tour with a gentleman named Francky-Franck and three other couples from the cruise.
We started things off with a quick intro to Francky and the island of Moorea. Francky was born in France and when it came time to do his mandatory military service, he said he was given a choice – one year of service in France or Germany or two years of service in Polynesia. There was really no contest there, and after spending his military service here, he eventually moved back to Moorea, fell in love, and recently became a father. He only used the latest technology in explaining the geography of the island – a child’s Magic Erase board. We learned all about the fish that inhabit the Moorean lagoons, the island’s two bays (including Cook’s Bay, which is ironically NOT where Captain James Cook arrived), and the island’s culture.
Second stop on the tour was a juice factory, Jus de Fruits de Moorea, that also happens to make specialty fruit liquors. There was a particularly good-looking pineapple sparkling wine, but sadly that is off limits now. As we were leaving, I happened to brush my hand along the top of a wooden tiki statue, and Francky-Franck immediately started carrying on about how now I would have a baby since that was a fertility statue – I just pointed at my stomach and said “Yep!” and he was so caught off-guard. Then he proceeded to guess exactly how far along I was (he was right) and the baby’s gender. His baby daughter is five months old, so he’s just been on this side of things pretty recently.
Knowing that I was pregnant, he let me ride up front in his truck (instead of on padded benches in the back) for the bumpy, steep ride up Magic Mountain for some fantastic views of the sea and the shoreline. It was amazing. The interior of the island is so lush and green, and the water surrounding it was so pristinely turquoise. I’ve never seen anything quite like it – definitely a whole other world.
One of the most interesting parts of the tour was our stop at a botanical garden that also grows vanilla beans. We got a lesson in how the beans made their way from Mexico to Tahiti (the conquistadors), how the plants are fertilized without the bees that take care of that job in Mexico (by hand), and how the pods are then dried into the vanilla beans we see in stores (very slowly, with each bean getting individually massaged along the way). We tasted some delicious marmalades made with local fruits and vanilla, and had the chance to purchase true Tahitian vanilla beans ourselves. Can’t wait to get baking with that!
The tour wrapped up with a visit to an ancient Polynesian temple and a pineapple farm, and then it was time to head back to the ship. Shortly before dinner, the ship set out for the next port, and I started to feel a little queasy. For the duration of the cruise, we are sharing a dinner table with a lovely couple from Canada, Mimi and Robert. Bless their hearts, there is no telling what they thought of me, because immediately after we sat down and ordered our drinks, I was hit with a wave of sea sickness and dashed out of the dining room to get to a bathroom just in time. The rest of the evening was spent with Dramamine, half a sandwich from room service, and an early bedtime.
I look forward to getting to know Mimi and Robert better throughout the rest of the trip, but it was just not happening tonight. Hopefully it will just take a day or two to get my sea legs, and then the rest of the trip will be a breeze. Tomorrow, we’ll be snorkeling in Bora Bora, which is the part of the trip that I have been most excited about. Swimming with sharks, here we come!
