Our luggage was already waiting underneath some tarp. It had rained the night before, and as we waited outside for our transportation to a day room at the Radisson, the sky opened up and large drops of rain drove against us sideways. The side of the tarp blew open and luggage on the edge were instantly drenched. I was impressed by some ship boys, on their way to town for some rare free time, who came running back to the tarp and hussled to resecure the tarp and protect the luggage. They moved luggage around to bring them into some protection, and climbed large metal bins to refasten the ropes that held the flapping shelter together. Soon our shuttle to the Radisson came and we jumped in.
Tahiti is very different from the other islands. It’s been built on and commercialized, like a downtown city. Highrises, street vendors, shops, restaurants, banks, traffic, concrete, paved roads. I didn’t think to take photos on the car ride there because it was so dirty and unattractive to me. We did pass something interesting, tho — something that looked like a carnival or county fair with many people attending. “What’s that?” we asked our shuttle driver. She said it was a biannual street mart. We, along with another couple who was on the shuttle, decided to taxi back and visit this street mart for cheap souvenirs. First we checked into the Radisson.

What a day room is, is a hotel room given you only for the day and not for overnight. Our ship kicks us out at 10am, our flight leaves at midnight, so what were we to do in the meantime? Our travel agent arranged for us a room where we can keep our stuff, take a shower and a nap, hang out by a pool, etc. But check-in was at 2pm so we just let them hold our luggage and asked the front desk to call us a cab to take us back to the street fair.
Here was where things got weird. The receptionist seemed genuinely unaware of what event we were speaking of, but said the cab drivers should know the city well enough to know. She described the affair to them, and told us the cab knew what we were talking about, and that they’d be here to pick us up. When the driver got here, she didn’t know what street fair we were talking about and called her manager on her cell phone. They spoke in whatever language Tahitians speak, and then she passed us the phone, saying, “My boss want to talk to you, he speak English.” I heard Mr. W describe the affair, and then pass the phone back to the driver. The driver spoke to her boss a bit more, then hung up. Mr. W said the boss said that the street fair was really a public real estate convention, and that if we wanted shopping, then the place to go was all the way back to Papeete at the dock. When we’d driven by the fair, there were way too many people attending, and people bringing kids, to look like a real estate convention. Also, going all the way back to Papeete was 3000 Francs, whereas where we wanted to go was halfway, so it would’ve been only 1500 Francs, but we consented, figuring they knew better. The taxi took a turn to go on a street parallel to where we knew the street fair to be, and we never drove by it. We think she was instructed to bypass it for more fare money. Anyway, she dropped us off in a ghetto open-air market and we did end up buying souvenirs and random stuff. It’s remarkable how a place like that in the US would be selling dollar items, and in Tahiti, everything was still $20+. A keychain ran $15. Crazy. A vendor in a booth took pity on me when I bought souvenir keychains for my coworkers, and gave some money back to me, so I still walked with a great deal, considering. We took another cab back and that driver took us on the same route as the shuttle earlier that morning, and we went right by the street fair. We saw bouncer houses, kids with packaged toys in their hands, people eating cotton candy, etc. It was SO not a real estate convention!! But at least when we went back, we were able to check into our awesome room.

We had an ocean view room. Straight ahead is a separate HOT TUB room. The slats on the walls open up and you’re on the balcony with the ocean waves crashing behind you.

This is the giant bed.

The bathroom was pretty awesome, too.

When I took this photo from the balcony (which was so big it was really a terrace), Mr. W was in the hot tub next to me watching me thru the slats.

Here’s the view from the patio table on the terrace. I couldn’t get a good shot of how close the ocean was, tho.

So I walked to the edge of the terrace and took another shot.

Kids were playing on the surf and boogie boarding. Mr. W watched for a bit from the terrace before turning around and realizing that he was mooning everyone in the rooms above us, who were on their balconies looking down at our terrace.

We passed the time checking out the pool bar, exploring the hotel shops, watching TV, eating $24 paninis (everything was overpriced! we were so glad we had the cruise cuz we couldn’t afford to vacation on our own there), and soon it was time to meet our shuttle to take us to the airport. The shuttle driver (who had greeted us upon arrival with fresh flower leis to take us to the ship) put shell leis on us. “We say hello with flowers, and goodbye with shells,” she explained. My shell lei was itchy in the humidity, and it still rained off and on. Our flight ended up being almost 2 hours delayed and we didn’t board our 11:55p flight until almost 2am.
I love Air Tahiti Nui, tho…they feed you such great hot meals on their flights. I still didn’t take advantage of the free alcohol. Mr. W bounced away from his seat next to me into an empty center row before people had even finished boarding, more eager to lay down than to spend time next to me. But that means that once again, I had the two-seat window seat to myself, and I controlled both TVs. I kept one on a movie, the other on our flight progress.

8.5 hours later, we were passing over Catalina Island near home.

When things go gray and ugly, that’s how you know you’re in LA.

I snapped this cuz the building border reads “Welcome to Los Angeles.”

Here we are, landing at LAX just past noon. It was FREEZING in the mid-70s, we were so used to a constant muggy 85F degrees, day or night.

Yay. We’re home. What a contrast. At least Mr. W climbed over and sat with me when we started our descent, so I didn’t feel quite so abandoned by 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.”

I am rarely wrong, BTW.

THE INSANITY PROJECT. The makers of the P90X workout, Beachbody, listened to people complain about not having the pull-up bar or dumbbell equipment to do the intense-but-effective sessions, so they came up with Insanity. Every bit as psychotic and vomit-inducing as P90X, Insanity uses only one’s own body weight and gravity for resistance. Sounds great, but I think Insanity may be even more hardcore than P90X because it’s designed for a 60-day cycle, instead of the 90 of P90X. That both scares and excites me. I have the kit at home and am about to begin. I’m also counting on this to get me prepared for the Marine Corps Obstacle Course Challenge in September.

THE BABY PROJECT. I haven’t talked about this in specifics, yet, so here it is, for the benefit of my obsessive record-keeping and because when I searched for information, I found very little of it, so this may benefit others in our shoes. Some years ago B.C. (Before Cindy), Mr. W lost his mind (or perhaps he was being mind-controlled like a zombie) and had a vasectomy. I didn’t take our relationship very seriously initially because marriage and kids were not part of the equation for him. It wasn’t that I was set on getting married and popping out children, but I wanted the option, as I had explained to many friends that first year Mr. W and I were “hanging out.” On our 1-year anniversary, Mr. W started talking about wanting to give me “a real commitment.” I told him that was unnecessary as I didn’t believe he was any less committed as my boyfriend as he would be as my husband. The man was committed from day 1, more so than I was, except for some computer games but that’s a whole other addiction. Year 2, he started talking about possible children together. My parents were, of course, pushing for some sort of outcome to this relationship because they didn’t want me to die alone (I know, Asian fatalist gene). Mr. W’s thoughts were about artificial insemination by a family member, and one of his brothers seemed amenable to it. That way, he figured, the genetics would still be the same, or similar enough. I was not thrilled about having the conversation later in life when I would have to tell my kid, “Dad is really Uncle W, and Uncle X is really Dad, and Cousin Y is really half-sister Y, but I’m still mom…” It’s hard enough to have to re-assess and re-identify one’s own parent(s) (I think it’ll happen involuntarily), but an entire extended family, too? This kid would go nuts for awhile. Mr. W seemed to understand this and appeared open to an anonymous donor. Around this time I happened to have dinner with two doctor friends, Lily (radiologist) and Arnold (cardiologist). I blubbered about this obstacle, and both just stared back at me across the booth at Claim Jumper. They didn’t see the big deal.
“But he had a vasectomy!” I repeated.
“So?” Arnold said lightly. This is when I found out that he had taught fertility prior to going into cardiology. Apparently (apparent to him, not to me), modern medicine and technology have found a way to just go into the scrotum with a tiny syringe, before the area where the vasectomy had disconnected the vas deferens, and extract some swimmers. What happens after that was unclear to me, but I was hoping they could just use whatever they extract and put it in fluid like a donor sample, and “turkey baster” me (I think that was how Arnold characterized it). He did warn me that a smaller percentage of men, especially if they’ve had the procedure done awhile back, develop antibodies to their own sperm as a way for the body to get rid of free-roaming critters that have nowhere to go. Arnold’s lack of being impressed by our predicament gave me (and Mr. W) hope, Mr. W proposed at the end of Year 2, I accepted, and we were married on our 3rd year anniversary.
I dragged my feet on the baby thing, enjoying my lifestyle too much. Mr. W enjoyed our vacations as well, but time was more pressing for him because of the age difference. He told me a few times that I better figure out whether I want a baby because he’s not getting any younger. So somehow, we figured that we’d take our last two kid-unfriendly vacations this year (the hedonistic Polynesian vacation was #1; high-adventure Australia late fall would be #2) and then have a baby. We would be married a little over 2 years then.
I’m going to get into detail about the fertility process, so if you’re interested, click “more,” below.

April 12, we went to a highly-recommended reproduction medical group; we know some couples who have successfully conceived with that clinic’s assistance. The initial consultation with our fertility doctor cost $250, but that opened up our file, assigned us our doctor with whom we had an extensive conversation about our issues and concerns and potential treatment plans, and ended with a vaginal ultrasound. We learned through the ultrasound that I’m reproductively normal and healthy, no obstructions, no misshapenness that would be an issue with bringing the baby to term or delivery (the doctor said I have a very attractive uterus), and I have “plenty of eggs” in my ovaries. At the time of the ultrasound (it was half a week before I was expecting my period), I had something like 16 “ripe” eggs in one ovary, and 18 in the other. (Older women or infertile women have less eggs, sometimes less than 10 between the 2 ovaries.) This is important because it means that our infertility is solely due to Mr. W’s vasectomy, which puts us in the “voluntary infertility” category, so insurance is not going to cover any of this. It also means that I will get the most conservative and least expensive treatment possible. I had another concern — some years ago I underwent the LEEP procedure, which means a chunk of my cervix, which is what holds the baby in during pregnancy, was removed. The doctor who performed the LEEP did so under the presumption that I’d never planned to have kids, as I only discovered after the procedure. This made me paranoid that he took a bigger chunk of my cervix than he otherwise would have. Shortened cervixes due to LEEPs and cone biopsies may cause an “incompetent cervix” in some people, which means when the baby gets closer to full term, the cervix starts opening prematurely, which causes a miscarriage or premature birth. The fertility doctor reassured me that a LEEP uses an electrical scoop that takes out the same uniform chunk of flesh no matter how hard the doctor would’ve pushed, so being unaware of my need for a cervix later on would not have made the LEEP doctor take out a bigger chunk. He said I simply have to bring to my obstetrician’s attention that I’ve had a LEEP done and they’ll keep an eye on the strain on the cervix. If it looks like the baby’s starting to “beak” (poke through the cervix), there’s a procedure that can be done where the cervix is stitched closed for support. (heebie-jeebies) But only a small percentage of women get incompetent cervixes.

Now that we have established that I’m a healthy fertile 33-year-old, the next step depends on Mr. W. The fertility doctor gave us a list of local urologists they have worked with in this field. We were to choose one and make an appointment, with the goal of finding out whether sperm can be extracted from Mr. W. There are several ways of extraction. Ideally, his body would not have built up antibodies to the sperm, and there will be plenty of young sperm in the epididymis. A tiny needle extraction is all that’s necessary in this case. If there are no sperm here, they’ll go a little deeper into the testes, where even younger sperm in a normal man would be. If there’s nothing there, as sometimes the antibodies invade deep to destroy the sperm, they’ll take a biopsy of the layer of cells where the sperm are made in hopes of finding infant sperm they could pluck out and use when they examine the tissue under a microscope. They’ll have to let the baby sperm mature a few days before they could do anything, as the sperm will just lay there otherwise. A small percentage of men who develop antibodies to their own sperm have aggressive antibody invasion that would destroy even this sperm-making tissue, in which case no live sperm would be found anywhere.

Assuming sperm of any sort could be extracted, these sperm will all be immature young sperm because they didn’t have the time to mature through the process of swimming through all the coils and ducts in an unsnipped man. This means a turkey-baster injection in me would be impossible with extracted sperm; the sperm would be unable to swim to the egg and would be unable to penetrate the egg. So here’s the sucky part for me.

I’d have to undergo In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). I give myself hormone shots, two a day (this is the lowest dose since I’m already reasonably fertile, otherwise some people go thru more shots per day) into the skin/fat layer of my abdominal/stomach area. (heebie-jeebies) The hormones will stop my body from ripening my eggs in preparation for the next ovulation cycle. Normally, every menstrual cycle, a bunch of eggs “ripen” in the ovaries at slightly different rates and then the body takes the ripest one closest to the “exit,” kicks it out, and that’s the egg going into the Fallopian tube. The injections will pause the process mid-way, then I change to different hormonal injections that will suddenly allow ripening. This lines up all the ripe eggs so that they’re all in the same stage of ripeness, giving the fertility doctor the maximum number of ripe eggs to choose from. He will extract some of the best eggs in a minor outpatient surgical procedure (he said 6-10 eggs, but since I have so many eggs, we can go to the high end of the spectrum to make sure we get the healthiest specimens) directly from the ovary with a small incision from the side of the vaginal wall. From those extracted eggs, he will choose the best 3-6 and fertilize them with the harvested young sperm in a petri dish.

Because extracted young sperm are not mature (motile) enough to penetrate the egg membranes by themselves, a procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is necessary. In the petri dish under a microscope, the young sperm will be directly injected into the egg. Success rate of fertilization this way is 75%-85%. The doctor will watch the eggs for a couple of days and choose the best fertilized ONE (cuz I’m otherwise healthy) to implant in my uterus. In an older woman in her mid-late forties, for example, a doctor may implant up to 3 eggs in hopes that one would take. For me, one is fine because the doctor anticipates no problems and he doesn’t want to risk multiple births (twins, triplets) in someone of my petite size. We’ll likely keep the other fertilized eggs in frozen storage for awhile, and if the first egg doesn’t take, then we’ll implant another later on. This process from start to finish, assuming a successful first cycle, will be around $12,000. The urologist visit and sperm extractions add about $3000.

This course of action assumes sperm are successfully extracted from Mr. W. If no sperm are there, we’ll go the donor route. The fertility clinic has a list of reputable sperm donor clinics we could use. We’d go with one of them, select a donor based on the guy’s profile (physical description, family medical history, some donors provided their own baby photos, the profile even has information as to the guy’s talents, hobbies, education, occupation, sibling information, parents’ and grandparents’ medical history/background/education/occupation/cause of death/age). We have the peace of mind of knowing that the sperm samples are put through a battery of tests for not only diseases the donor may have, but for the sperm’s genetic predisposition to hundreds of diseases based on susceptibility of the donor’s race to particular genetic diseases (lupus, etc.). Basically what we get is sperm that’s been more thoroughly screened than anyone would ever screen their own partner’s medical geneology for. I had come to terms with the possibility of using anonymous donor sperm, and was mostly comforted by knowing that this would be healthier sperm than what I would be getting from Mr. W, who has a family history of hypertension, high cholesterol, cardiac problems, etc., all of which have his family members (and himself since his heart attack last February) on a lifetime of medication. Plus, going the donor route means turkey baster insemination, no egg harvesting, no fertility shots for me, and the total cost would plummet from $15,000 to a few thousand. Of course the downside would be the talk I’m still going to have with the kid one day when I explain family history to him/her, and the possible effects this would have on the kid’s sense of belonging in the family, or on Mr. W’s psyche.

May 20. We’d selected the urologist from the list. We went with the cream-of-the-crop, multiple award-winning doctor working (Chief of Urology) and teaching at UCLA Medical Center (Best in the West, AND of course, I’m partial to Bruins) who wrote the book on male infertility, quite literally. The initial consultation took approximately half an hour in the exam room, and cost $400. Great news, the doctor called our case “a slam dunk.” “There’s plenty sperm in here,” he said during his examination of Mr. W, “I’m sure of it. In both sacs, too.” So the testicular sperm aspiration method (TESE) with a needle will be used, which is less invasive than the microsurgery method (MESE) in which a piece of testicular tissue is biopsied for sperm. TESE is also the less expensive method at $2000. “We salivate when we see cases like yours,” the doctor told Mr. W. “We know your sperm work because you’ve had two kids, your kids are healthy, you’re otherwise healthy, and the epididymus is full. 87% chance that we’ll find what we need.” (We also learned that the fertility clinic we’re going through, or at least its founders, used to be part of the same UCLA Medical group. More Bruins! It’s a sign!)

So the next step is to discuss timing with our fertility doctor. If we’re going on the Australian vacation, then I’ll undergo the series of fertility shots for a couple of weeks upon our return in late fall/early winter, then they’ll extract the eggs from me and prepare them, the day before they want to fertilize, Mr. W will get his TESE with the urologist we met with, and the fertility lab will do its magic in the petri dish. I assume that within a few days, I’ll be returning for implantation. If that first cycle is successful, then we transfer to a regular obstetrician that insurance covers. If not, then we either resort to the frozen fertilized embryos for another implantation, or perhaps make a new batch of fertilized eggs from frozen unused eggs and frozen unused sperm, depending on what is kept (which has yet to be seen).

I’d just like to note that my mention of future costs are estimates. I can only give accurate numbers as to what we’ve already paid, which is $250 initial consultation with the fertility clinic, and $400 initial consultation with the urologist. But I’m being as detailed as I can be right now simply to put the information out there, in case there are others in our position whom this information would benefit.

An overwater boardwalk and pier around the side and back of the building had demonstrative aids depicting pearl harvesting and collecting in their various stages. The two Japanese people there were very nice and gave us cold water and a tour even knowing we weren’t able to buy anything as we had biked in (gross and sweaty) with no spare money. Their jewelry designs are among the best I’ve seen, though. But out of respect to their designer, we didn’t take photos. We made it back to the ship by sunset for dinner.

It would be another day in Bora Bora tomorrow, and we had a GREAT excursion planned in the afternoon. Actually, a dream-come-true excursion for me!

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!

Taha’a has a gorgeous string of motus (small islands) along its northern reef edge, which we took plenty of photos of while on deck.

This is a very pretty photo of some overwater bungalows off a motu, which Mr. W snapped. You’ll see Bora Bora’s scraggly peaks behind them.

Here’s a 30-second video of our view on deck.