The Society Islands comprise 14 islands; the western ones are called the Windward Islands (or Îles du Vent), and the eastern ones, the Leeward islands (or Îles Sous-le-Vent).
Deposited just to the West of Tahiti (and part of the Windward Islands) is the bat-shaped island of Mo’ore’a (meaning yellow lizard). It is home to the world’s most expensive air journey – Tahiti airport to Mo’ore’a airport. £54 might seem an inexpensive fare – but considering you’ll barely have taken off before you’re landing, it’s the flying equivalent of buying a single to go from Leicester Square to Covent Garden. Why the airline chooses to run the 11 mile service, God only knows – maybe it’s for the fame.
Flying in from Hiva Oa, we optedto take the ferry which took 20 minutes… We arrived in the dark and there were no taxis to be found. A very kind man at the ferry terminal called a friend of a friend who drives a taxi in their spare time to help us out. Sophie arrived and was like a tour guide for the 30 minutes it took to get us halfway around the island to our little bungalow that we would call home for the next 5 days. Having had our entire itinerary planned out by Sophie, we dropped our bags and she took us to the local steakhouse.
You may not realise the significance of the last sentence. A steak house. An actual place that serves cow. And wine. We were *so* excited that we even had a dessert. It may have been the greatest meal we have ever eaten.
Once again we rented bikes. This time though they were proper bikes, not those instruments of torture with a motor that really don’t help you at all.
Moʻore’a is 60km around. It has a cycle lane (of sorts) all the way around the “rue ceinture”, and is pretty much flat. The perfect distance and conditions for cyclists who have spent too long on a boat! With the wind in our hair, we recced the island, velvet mountains to our left and dazzling azure to our right. Moʻore’a is almost completely enclosed by a reef which makes the waves crash about half a mile off the coast, leaving calm waters close to land. Cycling along we could see sharks cruising in the water only a few meters away. All-in-all it was spectacular. We paused halfway round for a particularly excellent view overlooking all the horribly expensive Sofitel Lagoon bungalows in the sea while we drank a coconut.
Compared with the Marquesas, Moʻoreʻa feels much more French, and much more touristic. There are café’s, and patisseries, and art galleries. There are far more Marquesan-style Tikis for sale here than any of the places we have been that actually make the things! Given this, it’s expensive and much of the coast line is privately-owned, being the garden of a house you would see for sale in Sotheby’s.
One of the best things about the cycle recce was that we found an absolutely beautiful public beach. With no time to waste, we donned swimgear and headed back out on the bikes to Ta’ahiamanu beach. On the north side of Moʻoreʻa, Ta’ahiamanu is in 'Ōpūnohu Bay and is filled with palm trees and coral reefs. It’s also apparently where HMS Bounty moored to search for breadfruit, leading to the famous Mutiny on the Bounty Lisa went for a training swim and came out babbling about dodging corals and swimming with Eagle rays, Moorish idols and parrot fish. Will went in and, thanks to Paul’s gopro (thanks Paul) got some excellent footage of Picasso triggerfish, flutemouth trumpetfish, titan triggers, bannerfish and checkerboard wrasse.
The very next day we did the round-Mo’ore’a challenge once again and took in some more sights such as a tasting at the Manutea pineapple distillery In the centre of Mo’ore’a, in the caldera of the volcano, are loads of pineapple farms and this is where they make them into fruit juice and a variety of alcoholic drinks, including a pineapple sparkling wine using methode champenoise (yes, despite our reservations, we bought a bottle. We’ll let you know…)
While a lot of visitors to Mo’ore’a seem to spend most of their time out on a boat doing some, likely top notch, diving and general critter-watching, we feel like we have done enough of that and are happy being land lubbers for a while! We hiked up to a view point called Magic Mountain to see some lovely views of the northern bays and reefs and had an excellent smoothie. Lisa seems also to have convinced Will that running is great. On his first run he just casually did 8km at 4:37/km (which is depressingly much faster than Lisa will likely ever be able to do). All very mundane in comparison to the activities we have been up to in other blogs!
