Moorea is the last port we visited before returning to Tahiti. It’s a larger, heart-shaped island with a rain forest in the middle, and it’s Mr. W’s now-favorite island in French Polynesia.


My mom said, in seeing our photos, “Your bones are so soft!” I wasn’t even contorted in here. My Wednesday pilates class instructor, by the way, has nicknamed me “rubber girl.”

I thought this mountain looked like a new lipstick.

This is the dock at Moorea where our tender dropped off and picked up.

An archeologist doing some excavations and other projects on Moorea came onboard and stayed the next 2 days with the cruisers to give lectures on Captain Cook’s voyages that led him to discover the Polynesian Islands, and about what REALLY happened with the mutany on The Bounty (the “fake” story, I guess, was made into a movie some years ago; this archeologist recently came upon a series of journals that one of the Polynesian women on The Bounty had kept through decades of this stuff going on, and since he has a specialized degree in social anthropology, he’s the lead guy in piecing this history together). We attended his lectures and took his excursion, “Trails of the Ancients,” in Moorea.

An elementary school kids’ school bus transported us from the dock for our excursion.

This is a view from Opunohu Bay, where Captain Cook first anchored for this island. Ironically, the other bay the cruiseship is anchored at is called Cook’s Bay, but Captain Cook was never at that one.

The archeologist explained that the way we saw this bay is pretty close to the way Captain Cook saw it hundreds of years ago; the family who owned the bay area refused to commercialize it, develop it, no matter how much money was waved in front of them to allow a golf course and resorts to be built on it. They were insistent that the land and the natural life on it belonged to the people and future generations, and needed to be preserved. When the family was dying out, the last son did finally sell the real estate, but not before requiring a stipulation be made in the contract that the land can NEVER be used for commercial purposes, and must be kept in the same natural state. So we saw the original plants, the life-sustaining trees whose trunks became canoes, whose vines were woven to be very strong ropes, whose fruits cure cold sores nearly on contact, whose leaves made something else really impressive but that I’d forgotten cuz I was distracted by the pretty bay.
We stopped the bus to admire the mountain line against the sky. There was some movie that made up a mythical mountain called “Mount Bali Hai.” I don’t remember the name of the movie, it was before my time, but Mr. W watched it as a kid and thought Bali Hai was a real place and always wanted to visit it. Well, they filmed Mt. Bali Hai in Moorea, and the peak on the left (Mount Mouaroa) is what they used for the made-up Bali Hai mountain.

Mr W. was so taken with the fact that he was standing there looking at his Bali Hai, that he kept taking pictures of Mount Mouaroa everywhere he could see it. I don’t even know when or where, along our excursion, he took this picture:

Next, we went up on a high lookout point called Belvedere that overlooks the two bays.

The shape of the sign is the shape of Moorea. See the two indentations on top? The left one is Opunohu Bay, the right one is Cook’s Bay. And here’s what the two bays look like from Belvedere if I turned around from the sign.

Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station is on the west side of Cook’s Bay, and this ecological research center is maintained by UC Berkeley (that’s right, OUR Cal), and any UC student (like I was) could request for a research assignment in Moorea at this station. How cool would it be to spend a quarter here?!
Now is when we started walking the “Trail of the Ancients.” We looked at various excavation sites of temples and houses that our tourguide’s team had uncovered. Here’s the remains of a large temple.

One might assume, as I did, that what we’re looking at is the few rocks and walls left of a formerly enclosed building used for worship. Not true. The native Polynesian religions worshipped things they saw around them (much like Native Americans), so nature was it. They built their family temples (“marae”) to be open-air, facing the highest mountain on the island. The oldest son had his seat in the middle, and the seatback is made from a flat piece of rock.

Seated correctly, the worshippers faced the mountain, which is mother earth. Father sky visited mother earth in the form of clouds meeting the mountain, and father and mother mated, causing rainfall, which makes all things fertile and gives life.

We walked deeper into the rain forest to see other family maraes, as the archeologist explained how his team found various sites, what they saw when they got there, what the purpose of each area was. He also talked about local botanics and how some plants were used medicinally, pointing out the wonderfully-scented flowers of a fruit growing around us. As we sniffed the flowers, he warned us not to eat the fruit because it was so toxic that it would cause respiratory failure in 2 minutes, and this natural toxin is undetectable in the body in autopsies. (Hmm!) The ancients would mix the fruit into dishes when they had to offer food to enemies. One commonly used plant had roots that were chewed and spit out by the village boys, then drunk by the elders during town meetings. The root-spitjuice were hallucinogenic and made the elders high and relaxed, so they could air their issues with each other without inhibition. He pointed to one of these plants growing to the side of a marae and said they are now an endangered species with very strict laws to protect them, the plants are not used anymore, and warned us to be careful not to step on them or damage them…upon which a large oafy American instantly and obliviously dug up the plant in front of the archeologist, pulled it out of the ground and said, “These roots? Are these the roots that you were saying would get them high?” The archeologist calmly said that’s right, took the plant from the guy, got on his hands and knees, dug a hole where the plant came from, and tenderly replanted the plant. Idiot.

You have to keep your eyes peeled walking the trail of the ancients because otherwise, you miss some interesting stuff, like the carvings some women way back when put into some river rocks…

…and cool root systems…

…and ants cleaning up dead gross stuff.

Here’s a really large marae, probably for more public use.

The four corner pillars of the marae are made of heavy rock driven into deep holes in the ground. The archeologist’s team found skeletal remains of young boys in fetal position with crushed hips under these pillars. He explained that when the temples were built, they would put the boys in the hole as sacrifice (usually captured from unrelated tribes they’d been at war with, which the team was able to ascertain through DNA tests of the bones), then drop the pillars on them which killed them. The boys’ youthful and strong spirits would then be absorbed into the temple and bring it luck and protection. We asked what the excavation team did with the skeletal remains. “We left them in there!” the archeologist said. “I don’t like dealing with human remains.” He’d shuddered.

On the walk back out of the jungle, it rained on us a couple of times. So that’s why they call it a rain forest. It did yield some pretty rainbows, tho.

Out of the forest, we walked through a field of pineapples.

The archeologist said that local pineapples are smaller and sweeter than the Hawaiian pineapple we’re used to having (totally true!), and that they’re natively from Brazil. Apparently planting all these pineapples is very corrosive to local land, too.

We saw a pretty sunset by the time we got back to the docks, so we missed our tender to take photos and explore the area instead.

I took my shots from the edge of the pier.


Mr. W’s vantage point was farther in from the pier.

We were anchored at Moorea for 2 days, and the tender to and from the ship ran every half-hour, so we walked the half mile or so to town to look around, not fearing we’d be left behind. Again, virtually nothing was open except for a couple of restaurants, and why pay $45 for a sandwich when we had free gourmet food on the ship? So after admiring the views…

…we went back to the ship.

We got back in time for dinner and the Polynesian dance show with live Polynesian band.

As a side note, Mr. W wanted to sit in the front for this performance on Deck 8. I said no. “Why?” Because they always drag volunteers onstage from the front row, I told him. “They’re not gonna do that, this is their performance.”
more girls
I am rarely wrong, BTW.



Oh, were you looking for me in that video? Sorry, Mr. W was dragged up by a girl right after I was dragged up by a guy, so we were too busy jiggling our hips to take pictures. Be grateful.