Day 13 Huahine

Today marks the last full day of cruise number one. We very much enjoyed not having to pack up and move out of our room. As we are booked on back to back cruises, in the same stateroom, we can simply leave our belongings in the room and stay on the ship all day if we desire. This differs from a cruise in North America - where we would have to get off the ship and get the passengers down to a zero count before you could re-enter the ship for the second cruise. 

So today we visited Huahine and had a tour booked with Huahine Nautique. Today’s excursion involved two snorkels, a visit to a pearl farm and an extended picnic on a motu. 

The first snorkel was at a coral garden with lovely clear water and no current. It was stellar. We were in a boat with 8 other people - and two of them didn’t get off the boat, so we had just 8 snorkellers in the area - no doubt this contributed to our enjoyment!  We took a leisurely boat ride to a black pearl farm. This one had a slightly different method of grafting an implant and some tissue from another oyster than the pearl farm we saw yesterday. This operation checked the shell after 6 weeks to see if the implant was rejected,whereas yesterday the farm would wait two years to discover that information. The Huahine pearl farm had a 50% success rate whereas the Raiatea Pearl Farm had a 90% success rate!!  All very interesting!  Today’s Pearl Farm also sold pottery that looked beautiful- I worried if I could get it home in one piece. 

After the Oearl Farm we did a drift snorkel in another area and the current was nice and calm!  We saw lots of anenome and a couple of clown fish (made famous by Finding Nemo!)

We then made our way to a motu for an elaborate, elongated picnic. Ither boat joined us, and J went for a second drift snorkel. Our guides demonstrated how to make poisson cru - beginning with tearing open the outer husk of the coconut, grating the coconut and squeezing out the coconut milk- added to the fresh tuna, grated carrot, cucumbers,onions and lime juice. It was delicious!

Fresh grilled fish, chicken, green salad and fresh fruit was added to the lunch. After we ate, our guides demonstrated various ways to tie a pareo- the colourful hand painted fabrics fashioned as dresses and beach cover ups. We even had dance lessons for the men and women. 

We then headed back to the ship’s tenders. After a clean up of showers, J and I took care of revising some reservations for specialty restaurants for the next cruise, then offloaded some pictures to a USB stick. We wanted a back up of photos and planned to share the pictures of our trip with our friends from Missouri. 

Sail away was stunning from Huahine. The scenery was breathtaking!

We then had a final specialty restaurant reservation for Red Ginger. We had a table for 8 with our friends from Cruise Critic from Ottawa & Cambridge and our Missouri friends. N from Ottawa said she had been planning this trip for 7 years and kept putting it off till they could afford it and finally this was the year!  J said maybe the real reason it got put off so long was so we could all meet and become friends!  Everybody said cheers to that!  We exchanged emails so that we could keep in touch in this big wide world of ours! But it was a little sad saying farewell to such wonderful people we met just 10 days ago!

J and I went to the entertainment tonight and it was a husband and wife duo playing the violin and guitar and they were quite talented. I believe they will stay on as entertainment for next cruise too!

We are blessed indeed!