Wednesday, March 15, 2017 – Huahine

Today Bill still felt really awful, but we had managed to sleep about 8 hours the night before, which was much needed and made both of us feel more human. We had breakfast at the pension—the usual fare, but this time with different fruit including something that doesn’t translate into English very well, called a star apple, and French Polynesian grapefruit, which is less acidic and bitter and more sweet than the grapefruit in North America. We think it tastes similar to a pomelo.

Breakfast.

Teps' son loves Miri Miri, the kitten, and Miri Miri's mother pictured here.

We walked to the pharmacy and April asked the pharmacist to see if there was anything she could take for her swollen feet and ankles. He said there wasn’t much a pregnant person could take, but suggested that she wear flip flops instead of more constraining shoes like runners while her feet are swollen. He said that the heat and humidity were undoubtedly not helping. He also advised her to drink tonnes of fluids. This is difficult as April already has to go to the washroom all the time as a result of being pregnant.

We walked into Fare, looking in a touristy shop along the way, and then went to the Super Fare Market where April tried on flip flops and chose the most comfortable pair. We also picked up a baguette, drinks, and some lovely French cheese for lunch. We then walked back to the Pension along the beach. We had lunch early at 11 AM. The two pension cats joined us and begged vigorously for pieces of cheese. While the mother cat tried to take the sandwiches right from our hands, the kitten was much more mild mannered, choosing to beg from the floor with the dog. The kitten let us hold him and pet him, which made for a lovely calorie free desert.

Pension Meherio

Another view of our home away from home

One can use bicycles for free

For showering off after the beach.

Sharing lunch.

Miri Miri the kitten (he loves to be pet so they named him Miri Miri which means caress in Polynesian).

Mother and baby hopefully waiting for more food.

The pond by Pension Meherio.

Pension Meherio is surrounded by beautiful flowers that Teps, the owner, planted (his degree was in agriculture).

Tiare flowers smell like a heavenly gardenia.

In the afternoon we fell asleep in our room but were awakened by a torrential downpour and what sounded like a little bit of thunder. We hung around the pension until the rain stopped and the sun came out again. We walked to the beach and turned right to walk the short distance to Treehouse Pearls. We visited this pearl vendor, Ray Marks, when he just had a plastic table and a hand painted sign by the beach 9 years ago. The place is considerably fancier now with a treehouse retail shop that displays various black pearl jewellery pieces as well as loose pearls. This is an obvious increase in overhead, including staff (Ray was not around).

April tried on several black pearl necklaces, however, we left empty handed as the pearls offered were mostly baroque or circled and we were not impressed by the prices, plus there were very few loose pearls available for purchase to create a piece of jewellery (usually a more economical option than buying a pre-made piece).

This necklace, in a lariat style, had 218 black pearls on it.

April felt the first sign of a cold coming on, a very sore throat and a stuffy nose. We rested at the pension after the trip to the pearl shop. It was pouring with rain again and it was very, very humid and hot. We spent some time composing blog entries.

Pouring rain.

You try looking this effortless while perching on a edge of a swinging door.

We did not have to go out to find dinner, as Teps, the owner of the pension, ordered pizza for the guests staying here. April had a shrimp pizza with garlic which turned out to be shockingly good, as the shrimp was cooked perfectly (the chances of this happening at home would be almost zero). Bill had a Hawaiian pizza that he also thought was good. We only made it through half a pizza each and saved the rest for lunch the next day.

A giant hermit crab came into the kitchen at the pension and Teps told us that he has one twice as big that lives under his house.

Pizza for dinner.

The guy on the pizza boxes puts special toppings on his pizza.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017 – Huahine

We had a terrible sleep due to the extreme heat and humidity that did not let up even in the middle of the night. April had trouble getting comfortable and Bill had a terrible cough from his cold.

We had breakfast just after 7:30 at the pension—baguette, butter, jam, and slices of watermelon, and a cup of tea each.

We returned to our room and got ready to walk to town. We took the back road route to town, so we could stop by the pharmacy to see if there was something to help Bill get over his persistent cough and cold. The knowledgeable pharmacist, who spoke excellent English, helped Bill find a nasal spray and expectorant for the cough. April found some temanu oil and some monoi oil with Tahitian tiare flower in it.

We walked to the bank after and managed to get some money out of the machine with a debit card, but for the credit card we had to get the assistance of the bank teller again.

We walked further towards Fare and bought a few items at the Super Fare market, including a popsicle each, which in the mid-morning 30 degree heat melted very, very quickly. We ate our popsicles and had a cool drink, as we sat on a dock and looked out at the turquoise waters.

We looked in an artisan shop and then went to the Restaurant Huahine Yacht Club for lunch. Bill felt very sick and had only a starter salad. while April had the fish burger with salad. We both had coconut water straight from a young coconut served with a straw. One of our cat friends joined us for the meal and took scraps from us and let us pet him.

Fresh coconut water right from the source.

Where's my coconut?

We walked back to the pension, changed into our swimsuits and went to the beach. April spent almost the entire time (a couple of hours) snorkelling. Bill was not feeling well and spent some time lying in the shade resting and then came out to snorkel with April for the last part.

The path between the beach and Pension Meherio.

We went back to the pension in the late afternoon, showered, and had a nap. First, Bill started awake and then April started awake. Individually, we both thought we had imagined it, but when comparing our experiences, it seems as though something jumped on and over us. Given that we have only seen tiny ants and geckos in our room, it must have been a very brave gecko. This may have been payback from the gecko we scared the night before by trying to take photos of it.

We dressed, and walked into Fare, where we had dinner at the the Restaurant Huahine Yacht Club. As they were out of the Mahi Mahi that we were going to eat, we had Oahu fish on the recommendation of the waitress.

The fish was served in a vanilla sauce (vanilla is grown in French Polynesia, including on Huahine). April had her fish with fries and Bill had his with green beans. For dessert, April had warm coconut cake with coconut ice cream (this was absolutely excellent). Bill had mango sorbet, but had trouble eating much, as he had a coughing spell.

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The beach between Fare and our pension.

We walked back to the pension along the beach. We tried to air out our room to make it cooler. So far we have not seen a single mosquito, just some little flies and tiny ants. 

April wrote in her journal, while Bill coughed.

April’s ankles and feet were still very swollen as they have been since the flight. The heat and humidity are probably not helping, but many pregnant women have this difficulty on vacation, especially after long flights. 

We had a cool shower before bed as we were gross and sweaty again. It has not been cooling off at night. 

Monday, March 13 – Our return to Huahine (PPT to HUH)

Today we were up at 6:30 AM. April didn’t sleep badly, but Bill’s cold had turned into a terrible cough and he was up quite a bit. Bill also found the roosters crowing in the early morning annoying, but April didn’t mind it.

We packed and April ran over to the bank machine near to the hotel to try and get more money out. She was only successful with one card and again, only a small amount. We continued to feel confused as to why bank machines wouldn’t accept any of our cards, or if they would, would only dispense amounts nowhere near our daily limits.

Bill checked-out of the Hotel Sarah Nui. We found the hotel to be clean and comfortable. Our only point of confusion was that they said on the website that there was a one way shuttle ride available for free. When we inquired about this, the front desk clerk told us that it had to be from the airport to the hotel and could not be in the opposite direction. Since no one told us this, we took a cab from the airport to the hotel and then had to pay for one to return to the airport.

We took a taxi to the Faa’a International Airport. While there, we tried to get cash out of the previously reluctant ATM… we were unsuccessful as the machine remained as tight lipped as a black lipped oyster (common to these waters.)

We checked in for our flight with Air Tahiti (the domestic carrier, not to be confused with Air Tahiti Nui, the international carrier). While waiting for our flight, we bought a mini-baguette and butter and had that to eat for breakfast to supplement the mini-bananas and protein bar we had at the hotel.

We boarded our flight to Huahine (HUH), after clearing security. It’s funny to do security for such a small flight. This is definitely a change from the old days of flying. On the positive side, check-in for Air Tahiti was far less chaotic than it was 9 years ago. There were only two flights departing and they have implemented electronic check-in kiosks.

At the airport.

The flight to Huahine stopped in Mo’orea, then carried on to Huahine (the seats cleared in Mo'orea were soon filled by new passengers going to either Huahine or Bora Bora- we stayed in our seats while this passenger swapping occurred), where we disembarked, before finally flying on to Bora Bora. A note about Air Tahiti flights- they do not have assigned seats. It's first come, first serve and they try to get people to go to the front first.

On our Air Tahiti flight.

These are symbols used in Polynesia to represent various things such as mountainous islands and atolls. This was on the bulkhead of the plane we were in.

At the Huahine airport, a friend of our host by the name of Marc picked us up, as Teps’ car had broken down. He took us to the Pension Meherio, where we stayed for 6 nights during our honeymoon and were staying again this time around.

We caught up with Teps (the owner) and then went to put our bags in our room. We walked along the beach, near the pension as this is the fastest way to get to the town of Fare. It was very hot and humid. We walked around Fare for a bit and then settled on the Restaurant Huahine Yacht Club where we had had several meals last time we were in Huahine.

Our lunch of fish burgers, fries, and cold drinks was made all the more charming by a little tortoiseshell cat who sat beside our table and begged for scraps. Since she let April pet her, the experience was even more special.

Lunch.

We walked around Fare, which is very small, to see the various tourist shops, but didn’t find anything to buy. We went to the bank, Banque de Tahiti, and at the ATM our cards didn’t work. Since it was a Monday, we were actually able to go into the bank and ask why our cards would not work. The lady in the bank told us that the machine out front of the bank did not take any Canadian cards, including debit and credit cards and that is why we could not get any money out. She suggested that we head over to the Banque Socredo, which has an ATM that would accept Canadian cards.

We walked to the Banque Socredo (on the block behind the main strip of Fare that goes along the water) and tried to get money out of the ATM there. We were successful with one debit card, but the credit cards that we had put money onto so that we could take money off of them while away would not work. We went inside and the bank teller was able to withdraw a small amount of cash from two of the credit cards that did not work in the machine. Due to restrictions from our banks on how much we could take out per day, we knew that we would have to return to the bank to withdraw more cash, however we were relieved to have found a bank that would allow us to withdraw sufficient cash to pay for pensions, meals, and excursions where credit cards were not accepted.

We went to the Super Fare grocery store after our bank adventure and bought a few provisions. We of course, forgot to bring our reusable bag, so we had to buy a plastic bag to take our stuff back to the pension.

We were really hot and tired after our trip into Fare and after walking back to the pension along the beach we changed into swimsuits and walked the very short distance to the beach in front of the pension.

We snorkeled for a couple of hours and tried out our new GoPro Hero 5 underwater. There are so many beautiful and colourful fish and the coral has so many different colours. It is hard to capture nature’s beauty, however (even with the red filter that Bill bought for the GoPro for underwater photography).

We returned to the pension, showered, dressed, and left to walk back to Fare. This time we took the land route behind the pension instead of the beach route in front of the pension. Either route is quite short as Pension Meherio is very conveniently located.

View from the beach by our pension.

We had dinner at a little Roulette that we found along the main road in Fare. We were both going to have grilled chicken and fries, however they only had one portion of chicken left. So, Bill had steak-frites instead. Between the heat and the foetus occupying precious space in April’s torso, she could not eat very much of the dinner, but it was very good.

Dinner.

Our phones said it was 28 degrees at about 8:00 PM when we had dinner. It was beautiful as we walked back to the pension along the beach, looking up at the abundant stars. The Milky Way is clearly visible here due to a lack of light pollution. The stars are much brighter and more visible, so you can see what you’ve been missing back where you’ve been living.

At the pension, we showered again and prayed for it to cool off. It was incredibly humid and the air was extremely close. But, one can’t complain too much when one is in Huahine, which is a lush verdant paradise with a laid back speed of living, turquoise water in which to swim, where there are two lovely little cats at the pension where you are staying.