We can see this has been the case the past three days in port, by all the standing water in puddles that it has poured rain just before we arrived. J always says I bring the good weather with me after 26 + years of travel with me!
We have also had guides tell us that normally the best weather is September October and this past fall it was very poor weather.
Today, we pulled into Nuahine and there was noteworthy cloud cover with a bit of sun shining through on occasion. We packed for a bit of everything and took a tender ashore. Once ashore, we asked if anybody would boat us to our one preferred coral garden to snorkel - but found no takers. Huahine Nautique would take us on the full motu picnic excursion- but I didn’t really want to endure the vanilla plantation, pearl farm visit and another 3 hour picnic just to get in two snorkels.
So we found a taxi driver to drive us around the island to visit the Maeva archeological sites, see the blue eyed eels and we tried to go for a snorkel - but it appeared the beach was not open to us when we arrived. I couldn’t quite understand why. Another lesson learned when negotiating with your taxi - ask the person selling you the trip if they will be your driver! We negotiated our tour, then were handed off to the person who would be our driver. The driver spoke no English, and more Tahitian than French - so more challenging to communicate with him. Still we didn’t have to endure what Nick and Katie experienced - and that is their driver kept picking up hitchhikers? friends? And dropping them off as they toured around!!
Nevertheless, we got a flavour of the island, and supported the local economy (and I believe that is important when we travel), then returned to the ship. We then spent the afternoon packing up as tomorrow is disembarkation day :(.
We did go for high tea in Horizons on the 15th floor forward.
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