Warning: I’m about to photograph you to death in this post. But it’s got the prettiest photos yet! Rest mouse pointers over photos for captions.

Paul Gauguin Cruiseline has its own little islet (“motu”) off the island of Taha’a. Can you believe it? A PRIVATE ISLAND. It’s one among the chain of pretty islands on the northern reef edge, and it’s called Motu Mahana. We get there by a speedboat water shuttle (called a tender), running every half hour between the ship and Motu Mahana. There’s chairs, loungers, a BBQ, bar, kayaks on the island, so all we need to bring is our snorkel equipment (which the ship checks out free of charge to each individual guest at the beginning of the cruise. I’m rather attached to my Ocean Master mask and dry snorkel, so I only checked out fins; if I weren’t so afraid of having to clear my snorkel, my packing could be a lot lighter.)


I watched the gorgeous teal ocean lighten to a sparkling clear turquoise as we cleared the reef. The water was unbelievable. Every postcard and photo I’ve seen of this place wasn’t photoshopped! Well, maybe they still were, but mine aren’t.

As this got smaller and farther away…

…this got larger and closer…

…and farther…

…and closer…

We’re here!

Okay, like seriously? Lemme off this tender so I can get in that liquid turquoise! You can see FISH in ankle-keep water!

But first Mr. W wanted to explore the island on foot to find a good place to set our stuff down. I took photos along the way as he trotted impatiently ahead of me. This is the first thing I saw.

The ship’s massage & spa people had set up a massage site on the motu! Wow…

Mr. W did not find the sand volleyball court a good place to lay down our stuff.

Hmm. Not there, either.

I was still busy dropping my jaw at all the colors and beauty around me.

I get distracted easily, I guess.

The vendors on the motu didn’t help my attention deficit for the first half hour or so. (Tahitian vendors and shopkeepers, by the way, are nothing like the ones in Jamaica or China. These Polynesian people are very laid back and let you browse without following you and demanding you buy; they’ll greet you and say a word or two about an object you seem interested in, but they’re not pushy or competitive with each other. Of course, their stuff is pretty high-priced.)

What’s with all the open coconuts? We soon found out.

The ship’s activities directors actually told us to be aware of potentially falling coconuts. They clear out what they could, but there are so many coconuts on trees that occasionally one may fall and bonk a tourist on the coconut. Here a service guy from the ship is hacking young coconuts for our use as alcoholic beverage containers.

We ordered a couple of drinks from the island’s bar, and they were served in what’s plentiful and biodegradable on the motu.

We learned that the coconuts are collected after our use and dried in the sun, then burned.
Ah, this looks like a nice spot.

Cheers!

After a nice BBQ lunch by the cooks of the ship…

…we hit the water in kayaks and snorkels.

Mr. W and I took out a tandem kayak and he thought it’d be a great idea to kayak around the motu for exercise. We soon found out why no one else had this brilliant idea. A part of the water was so shallow and so full of rocks and corals that our kayak got stuck. Mr. W had decided to not wear his reef shoes, so we had to pull our kayak through that area with him walking barefoot and getting cut up by sea life. (I had my reef shoes on.) Those scars are nice cheap souvenirs. =P

Snorkeling went much better.

The water was very warm and clear, and we saw tons of fish, even an octopus. Here are some of Mr. W’s underwater shots from this snorkel trip.


Unfortunately, Mr. W had underwater camera malfunctions at the time we spotted the octopus, so he didn’t get the shots he’d wanted with that camera. However, by dangerously doing this with my non-water-resistant DSLR…

…I got these shots.


The fish weren’t even shy here; amazing considering how shallow the area I was in was, and how many people were in the water.

Awww, I have a little friend!

Hello little guy!

Mr. W watched me from his islandic tanning bed.

We decided it was time to leave this paradise and take the tender to Taha’a and explore the town a bit.

Neither of us must’ve taken our cameras to Taha’a, because we have no photos of it. It was a small town that you can walk from one end to the other in less than half an hour, and we just peeked at some sourvenir shops. We got back to the ship by sunset.


This is where I took many of my shots.

We’re now on our way to Bora Bora, the misty island you see behind the overwater bungalows, and should be there in 4 hours.

Some spent the time relaxing on deck and watching the lagoons drift by…

…others indulged in libations, working the bartenders so hard they were blurs.

I photographed my li’l brains out, despite it being so insanely windy on the height of deck 9 while we were moving, that I had to stand with my skirt tucked into my knees like you see in this photo, which position I only figured out after I’d mooned the entire ship a few times.

These were my rewards:


I wasn’t alone in the activity. Hello, Mr. W’s rear end.

On to Bora Bora, where we’ll anchor for the night and visit in the morning!