Saturday, March 18, 2017 Huahine (HUH)- Lunch in Fare and Snorkeling

We had breakfast at the Pension Meherio. The fruits today, served along the usual baguette, were mango and local grapefruit (which has more of a mild and sweet taste than American grapefruit).

It was pouring with rain all night. April didn’t sleep well due to the nagging stomach pains and cough that she has been fighting off. Bill still has a horrible cough. We sat at the breakfast table and talked to Teps, the owner and two of the other guests.

We went back to our room to work on the blog. When the rain let up, we walked to town and tried to explore Fare a bit more, but after having lunch at the Huahine Yacht Club again (fish burgers and fries for April and cheeseburger and fries for Bill), we found that the whole town was shut down with the exception of the supermarket.

It was eerie how clear the streets were, as it was only 2 p.m. and at this time in Victoria, where we live, there would be lots of people out and about shopping on a Saturday.

We picked up a few supplies at the Super Fare Nui market and walked back along the beach to the pension.

Shell pots for plants outside the Huahine Yacht Club.

The outside of the Huahine Yacht Club.

So delicious.

Fare on a Saturaday afternoon was deserted.

We idled our afternoon away at the pension, as we both felt wiped and April was still having some stomach pains. After a rest, we dressed in bathing suits and went to the beach.

We then walked up to where the lagoon narrows next to the pension (walking towards the beach we turned right and walked up the beach about 10-15 minutes until the reef was close to the shore). We took the GoPro Hero 5 with us and we drifted in the current that took us all the way back to the beach near the pension.

We were snorkelling near to sunset and we saw many different types of fish. It seemed as if it was feeding time and the fish were very plentiful (sunset is around 5:30 p.m. around here). We saw the sulfur yellow coral again and this time knew that it was called fire coral (from our tour), and that if you touch it, it makes you burn. We gave it a wide berth, but admired its beauty all the same.

April saw a reef shark hunting for dinner in the lagoon a short ways away from where we were snorkelling. We were not in the mood to get closer to him, since we just had our fill of sharks the day previous at the feeding.

The current became quite strong and April was distracted by filming the beautiful fish on the GoPro. At some point, Bill and April became separated. April ended up way out by where the yachts moor, as usual, while Bill was near to the dock, closer to shore.

While April was out there, a beautiful leopard ray (also called an eagle ray) came into sight and majestically flapped by her. She was filming with the GoPro, but it is always hard to capture things underwater no matter how good they are. When April tried to follow the ray a little, it suddenly sped up at jet speed and disappeared into the darkening waters. April had only ever seen leopard rays in aquariums before and they are even more beautiful in their natural habitat with their spots standing out in the darkness picked out by the sun glimmering towards the bottom of the ocean.

April looked for Bill, becoming scared that he had become injured or lost. She found him waving at her in the far distance near to the shore. She swam into meet him and we swapped tales (Bill had seen a lovely clump of sea anemones with clown fish). We had swam for about an hour.

Leopard ray at 4:20 of this video.

We felt the first drops of rain as we dried off. As we walked back to the pension, it really started raining. As we showered, it poured with rain outside.

We had a local grapefruit from the market and worked on the blog. We finally posted the first day of our trip. We have noticed that internet is definitely not as fast here as it is in Canada (not that that should be a surprise, as Canada has some of the fastest internet in the world).

Teps told us that the woman who was going to deliver from her roulette to pension that night was unable to do so that evening, but he had made arrangements with the yacht club for them to pick us up (they usually don’t pick people up, but Teps gave them some kind of sob story about how it was raining and April was pregnant). We weren’t thrilled that we were going to be eating there once again not six hours after we previously eaten with them, but were happy arrangements were made. Plus, there are not many options for meals in Fare.

One of the yacht club employees picked us up at 7 p.m. and drove us to the restaurant. We had mahi mahi with vanilla sauce, green beans, and fries. We shared a large bottle of water with dinner. The water at our pension is drinkable from the tap, but it never gets cold, so a cool bottle of water in a restaurant is lovely on a hot night.

Dinner at the Huahine Yacht Club.

Rather than get a ride home, we walked the short distance back to the pension along the beach. We looked up at the plentiful stars, including the Milky Way. We tried the chocolate and coconut ice cream that we had bought to share a desert earlier and had some fizzy water that we had bought from the store earlier (Teps lets us use the fridge and freezer at the pension).

We felt wiped before 9 p.m.. There’s something about swimming and a very early sunset to make one want to retire early.