Just cruising!

We are back from our ten-day sailing trip across "les Iles Sous le Vent", writing on the overwater terrace of our bungalow in Bora Bora! Was an incredible experience... probably the best of our honeymoon up to now. François fell in love with sailing here about ten years ago thanks to his Godfather and wanted to rediscover this piece of Paradise with Alessia.


After another short flight from Moorea we boarded a beautiful catamaran in Huahine, along with a Parisian couple, Agnès and Nicolas, as well as a family from Lyon: Marie-Hélène, François and their 15-year-old son Antoine for a really unforgettable journey of island-hopping. The skipper, Lionel (from Normandy) knew this area of Polynesia like no other and brought us to see incredible places, both under the sea and on land!


As you will see, we have taken quite a lot of pictures – hope you don't get bored… but if you want more, it should still be possible as we took about 4000 pictures all together with our other boat mates!


Pictures of the cruise


Day 1:
After only 30 minutes on the boat going down from Faré (the main city of Huahine) to the southern part of the Lagoon, we were greeted by six dolphins which started to follow us and play around the bow of the boat… an amazing spectacle! For our first stop, Lionel dropped us off on a beautiful desert beach where we first climbed a cliff to admire the colors of the lagoon… to get there, we had to go across a wooden bridge which, as you will see from the pictures, was in a terrible state: completely rotten, full of termites and missing quite a few steps already – Lionel told us he probably not be able to do this walk anymore in a month or two – very reassuring! To cool off from all the adrenaline, we went for snorkeling, before admiring a beautiful sunset eating fresh tuna!


Day 2:
The next stay was very relaxed, going around the lagoon of Huahine in kayaks and taking some dips in the turquoise water to cool-off… we also did some shopping in Faré: local handcrafts, but most importantly, two big pots of Nutella for our breakfasts! Our boat-mates, who were huge scuba-diving fans, went for their first dive in the Lagoon pass, seeing a big number of sharks, while we were relaxing on the beach… and eventually getting soaked by tropical rain waiting for them to come back and pick us up with the Zodiac… For dinner, again some very good tuna cooked by our hostess!


Day 3:
Time to leave the peace of the lagoon to hit the Pacific Ocean… After about 4 hours of sailing we finally reached Raiatea, with Alessia's stomach suffering a little from the agitated sea. To recover from that, Alessia went for a big nap while I went for some snorkeling. We then switched island again to spend the night in a beautiful bay of Tahaa… along the way, we witnessed another beautiful sunset with Bora Bora in the background. Lionel took over the cooking for the night by impressing us all (especially the ladies) with his famous Tuna Chippendales BBQ (see pictures).


Day 4:
Waking up on Tahaa "l'Ile Vanille", we had our first bad surprise of the trip: Belgian weather with a grey sky and frequent intermittent rain. We spent the day on land exploring this beautiful island thanks to Alain on board of his "Vanilla Tour" Range Rover (yes more 4x4 on muddy roads). Alain and his Italian-speaking wife (from the Ticino) arrived here more than 30 years ago while sailing around the world and decided to stop half way, selling their boat and buying a piece of land here to start vanilla plantations and a family: the real "hippie dream"! We were welcomed in their traditional house and got an exciting course of botanic across the islands' forest and vanilla plantations (we assisted to human pollination as the bees don't do their work here!) The night was spent in Raiatea where our boat mates left us alone while they went to see a Tahitian dance show (we had already seen enough at the hotel in Moorea).


Day 5:
The weather was again a bit moody today, switching quickly from very sunny to tropical rain. Not that it mattered too much as, apart from some swimming and chilling, we were on a mission: SHOPPING FOR BLACK PEARLS AT A PEARL FIRM! After some very interesting explanation on the culture of pearls (again like the vanilla, artificial insemination), Alessia went through a few hundreds of pearls to find hers… François, on the other hand, was much more excited about the ballet of windsurfers and kitesurfers enjoying the strong wind in the strait between Tahaa and Raiatea!


Day 6:
Cruising the lagoon of Tahaa, we finally reached the Motu (small island) of the only Relais and Chateaux of Polynesia… There, we went snorkeling in an impressive coral garden: after a short walk on the Motu, it was all downstream in sometimes less than a meter of water. It was quite an impressive dive as we saw a huge number of different fishes, but were also surrounded by fire corals, low water and very strong currents. To increase the excitement further, we ended up face-to-face with two huge moray eels of close to 2 meters fighting each other outside of their holes (Alessia didn't really appreciate)! The rest of the day was spent navigating towards Bora Bora… Nobody sick this time, despite the even bigger waves and strong winds – we did some peaks at 11 knots with the boat!


Day 7:
The island of Bora Bora looks a bit less like paradise under a grey sky and with cold temperatures… but we still decided to go and look for the Manta Rays. Our chances were more limited snorkeling vs. our fellow divers but we still managed to see a huge one! Alessia was actually the one to see it first, but was not feeling totally at ease and directly reached out for the Zodiac! Getting back to the Catamaran, we got totally soaked by some torrential rain… but the sky quickly cleared up and we enjoyed a very sunny afternoon afterwards!


Day 8:
The next day, we woke up very early to go snorkeling with black tip sharks and grey rays close to the reef… Seeing the fins of about 10 sharks sticking out as we arrived with the Zodiac, didn't totally reassure Alessia, who decided to watch the spectacle from above… but we made up for that for some beautiful snorkeling close to Matira Point and for the first time we met some other turists.


Day 9:
Still going around the beautiful lagoon of Bora Bora, we stopped in a place for François to try out scuba diving around some great corals. It was an incredible experience and left François asking for more, trying to convince his instructor to go below 10 meters! The afternoon was spent around the Bloody Mary's pontoon… again an incredible viewpoint from a cliff, some acrobatic jumps off the boat (incl. a picture of Alessia), a nice shower… and a few Bloody Mary's!


Day 10:
On our last day, we finished off the cruise in style with some hot pancakes for breakfast - and some Nutella of course! We did more swimming in the lagoon and assisted to a very funny lifesaving demonstration from our two Parisian friends Agnès and Nicolas. Agnès literally drowned Nicolas about five times in the process of getting him back on the boat! We then unfortunately had to go back to Vaitape to say our good-byes, exchange addresses and move on to new adventures (more relaxed for sure, at least for the next week)!


Thanks a lot to Lionel, François, Marie-Hélène, Antoine, Agnès and Nicolas for the great time – it was simply amazing!
And if anybody wants to go on a sailing cruise with us next summer, don't hesitate to say, we know that's what we will be doing…