Mo'orea

Only 30 miles away from Papeete lay a little island called Mo’orea. There are two big bays that boats can anchor in and cruise ships stop there as well. Our journey there was really smooth, we motored the whole way from lack of wind, which was a bummer. The first bay you come upon in Cook Bay and we only spent a day there. The next is Opunohu Bay. Both look very similar because lushes’ peaks surround you. We anchored so far back in the valley that no wind or waves could reach us so it was like a lake all around us.

 

I had read about a turtle sanctuary near this town called Papeto’ai which also had a stingray feeding ground near by so we though lets just go check out the area with the boat and see if we can find a place to anchor. 

We found a nice little anchor spot in 3ft of water in a sandy lagoon. The perks of having a Catamaran ;) Our spot was right in the hub of the area. There were kite boarders zipping by us doing all kinds of tricks. I’ve always wanted to learn so I swam ashore and found a teacher.

Later that afternoon two kite boarders came and hung out with us. Their names were Toarea and Tamatoa. Tamatoa Gillot is a professional kite boarder and has traveled all over the world for it but his true home is Moorea lives here most of the time. Toarea ended up showing us all kind of cool things in the lagoon. He showed us how to get clams and green turbans.

Which are super yummy and showed me how feed fishes the clams so they will swarm around you. Tamatoa ended up taking me tandem kiteboarding and than gave me another lesson the next day. I am addicted to this sport now.

One of the days we all went out on Tamatoas little boat to see the stingrays. There were tons of sharks, fishes, and stingrays everywhere, which really freaked my mom out. The trick to getting the stingrays to rub all over you is to hide a piece of fish in your hand and they sniff all over you. They don’t have teeth but very strong flat jaws.

I was sad to leave our new friends and such an amazing little town but you gotta keep going or you’ll never experience all those other cool places. So we left for Huahine