After three nights on Moorea, Eitan took his friend Roslin to shore to continue her vacation on land and we set sail for the next island: Huahine. The trip lasted all day and into the night with Eitan and me taking turns standing watch. It had been months since we left Mexico and this was the first time that it was just the two of us while underway. We only saw each other as we turned over the watch shifts. It was midnight by the time we could see the lights of the island and Eitan navigated us through the pass towards a handful of other boats that had already settled in for the night. There’s nothing like a flat calm anchorage after a long day underway.
We woke up the next morning to another lush green island. The hills that surround the bay are called “The Pregnant Woman” because the silhouette shows the perfect profile of an expectant mother lying on her back. I was a little nervous going into town after reading a handful of posts about theft and hostility toward cruisers on one of the Facebook pages. There were several counts of dinghies being stolen and boats broken into both before and after our time there. Luckily, we didn’t experience any of this and were welcomed just like on any of the other island. However, they weren’t overly accommodating and we found, once again, that there was no WIFI and nowhere to fill our propane tanks.
After spending so much time looking at weather forecasts and trip planning, Eitan normally has decision fatigue by the time we get anywhere and would be perfectly happy just sitting on the boat to decompress for a while. As for me, since I don’t plan on coming back to French Polynesia any time soon, I wanted to get out and explore as much as I can, so I planned a day tour around the island and rented us a scooter. Huahine is actually two islands connected by a bridge, but enclosed by a single lagoon, so we spent the day making a figure 8 around the encircling roads.
Our first stop was to hike up the peak of the smaller island to the south. The trailhead wasn’t marked at all but we asked some locals who pointed us in the right direction and let us park the scooter in their driveway. It was a nice hike, taking about an hour to get to the top. The flora changed from tropical trees to pines and ferns, feeling much like the coastal regions of northern California. The view from the top was a little overgrown but beautiful and overlooked the turquoise waters and reef below.
After lunch at a local restaurant, we drove around to all the different viewpoints identified on Google Maps. There wasn’t much else to stop and do but the views we encountered driving around the island were spectacular. We drove through the little villages scattered along the coast and saw the ruins, called “maraes”, of the island’s sacred sites from the original native inhabitants. Another site was home to the famous sacred blue-eyed eels, although the eels seemed a bit disappointed that we didn’t bring them any snacks. As we crossed over a different bridge, I noticed a pattern in the water below. It looked like a maze made of rocks, zig-zagging back and forth, used to trap fish. After a long day of scootering, Eitan and I returned the bike and picked up a pint of ice cream to share on the walk home.
We only spent two full days in Huahine but it became one of our favorite stops in the Society Islands. We wished we had more time to explore the many anchorages surrounding the island, but our time was running short. By this point we only had a week left on our visa and having to rush through the islands was increasingly frustrating. It had taken months to sail here and there were so many islands and places to see but not enough time to do it all. Plus, half our time in any location was spent running errands, shopping, and doing boat projects. Every day felt like an hourglass. With any downtime we had onboard I became anxious and expected we should be doing or seeing something. I looked forward to the day when we could check out of the country in Bora Bora and finally be back on our own schedule again.
