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| Our anchorage in Teahupoo.....not bad ! |
When we arrived here in Tahiti, we braced ourselves for crowded conditions. As New Zealand and Australia are not open, we knew (or thought we knew) there would be a glut of cruising yachts in Tahiti. Papeete (the large town) did not disappoint in this regard, as it was very hard to find a place to anchor there amongst the multitude of French boats used as low income housing. Both marinas are operating at near capacity. Not liking marinas anyway, we have begun a slow circumnavigation of Tahiti's small bays, nooks, and crannies and surprisingly, we find ourselves........by ourselves.
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| Tom with HMS Victory in our swimming hole |
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| Kirstin on her paddle board looking very "islandy" |
We've found a paradise here of botanical gardens, dive spots, places to swim, and fantastic waters to kayak and paddle board. And the best part is that we usually have the anchorage to ourselves. It's confounding that there seems to be virtually no-one cruising Tahiti; the locals use boats in and around Papeete as affordable housing- many don't even have sails. They just sit in the marina or the mooring fields and occasionally break free from their bouy, pin balling around the anchorage. A friend in one of the small marinas struck up a conversation with their neighbor on a very small sailboat - "how long have you been sailing?". The young French woman's answer - "Oh I don't know anything about sailing but work here as a nurse and this is cheaper than an apartment". Oh well...
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| The botanical garden in Ataiti; lots of weird plants |
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| The pond just inland from our boat |
Provisioning has been good, if unconventional. We walked a mile to a gas station with our wagon and got some strange looks as we lumbered back to the dinghy schlepping 20 gallons of diesel and 10 gallons of gasoline down the street. Likewise, the locals find our wagon amusing in the local supermarket. We get a lot of stares and some advice from English speakers as we are pretty obviously not from around here. But we've found Tahitians and French folks to be uniformly friendly.
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| No shirt, no shoes, no problem - local grocery store |
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| Food truck in the jungle |
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| Feeling like a colonial explorer with restaurant access |
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| Why sit inside when your church has this view? |
Today is day 6 of Teahupoo. We are on the southern coast of Tahiti, anchored in 60 feet of turquoise blue water behind a barrier reef with 15 ft breakers and in front of breathtaking mountains.
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| Our backyard, for now |
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| Another lonesome anchorage. Where have all the cruisers gone ? |
All day and all night we hear the waves breaking; kind of a dull roar that becomes white noise. The Billabong International surfing championship occurs here in a few months but based on the waves we see, we hope paramedics attend. These waves look unsurfable.
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| As close as we are getting to surfing the waves here |
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| A houseboat in Phaeton; quite comfortable looking |
We have started diving again, this time making use of our new dive compressor. The strange thing about diving "off the grid" is that reef fish seem to avoid traveling to other areas. Thus Teahupoo's fish, having no dive shop nearby, have never seen divers until we blew into town. Whereas in Bonaire and other dive locales, the fish ignore you when you come up to them, here they usually scatter quickly. They've obviously not seen anything like the bubbling, hissing, ponderous spectacle that we make under the water.
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| Paddleboarding paradise |
We continue to try to live each day making a minimum of plans. When are we leaving Teahupoo ? Not today, not tomorrow. That's the extent of our planning. We are both still in a kind of disbelief that we are here in Tahiti. After planning and trying hard to get here for the better part of 3 years, it's strange to have made it. Not having any goals is refreshing; we recommend it. Enjoy the pictures.
