French Polynesia

9 hours after boarding a flight in San Francisco in the cool fog we stepped off the plane in Tahiti to a wall of moist heat.  The kids noted it was hard to breathe, the humidity 70% and the temperature close to 80 at 8pm.  We were in the middle of the south pacific and there was no mistaking that we were no longer on home soil.  Welcome to Tahiti.

We chose French Polynesia as our first stop out of North America because we wanted somewhere on the way to New Zealand, somewhere tropical with good snorkeling that would be a special place to spend Christmas, and the final reason that tipped this country above other magical islands in the south pacific was that it is a french speaking country.

We were picked up by a sweet Tahitian guy named Morgan who runs an airBnB out of his house.  We chose it for the ease of location to the airport as we were only staying the night, and for the pool.  Both were great decisions as we sunk into the pool as soon as we arrived, letting our bodies settle into this new environment. 

The added bonus was that Morgan was a budding beekeeper and backyard farmer.

In the morning he took us around his yard showing us all the fruit trees and plants and bees.  We ate fresh starfruit and sucked on cocoa seeds from his garden as he showed us plants we had only read about.

Later in the morning we headed to the ferry and loaded up for the short crossing (17kms) to the island of Moorea, where we were going to spend the next 3 weeks.

The picture below is not one we took but the aerial view shows you what makes the island of Moorea so spectacular.  It is surrounded by a reef a few hundred meters off the shore, so the entire shoreline is a gentle lagoon, perfect for lazing about in the placid water, there are coral heads doting the lagoons to snorkel, just off the beach, and the mountains in the centre of the island are towering spears of verdant lush rainforest.  

As we approached the island it became clear that this island is truly like one of the pictures you see in travel brochures.

On the ferry to Moorea