It was time to leave Moorea, which we were sad about. We liked it there and wished we had a few more days to spend there. We were heading to Papeete to pick up our friends Pete and Shelley, who were arriving later in the evening.

Since we were only going to be in Papeete one night, we opted to go to the sea wall downtown, aka the quay. We didn’t want to deal with anchoring and getting the dinghy down for only one night. There were a few more boats at the wall than last time, but the wall was still mostly empty. It was a weird feeling to pull in, tie up, and just hop off the boat onto dry land. Continue reading →

We left Tahiti through the southern pass, which is closer for us than going back around to the north. We had been leery of using the southern pass, reading in our cruising guides that it can be treacherous. The rally to Moorea had used the southern pass and it was no problem, so we were confident in using it this time. It is a bit hard to see, but check out the surfers catching waves on the reef. It felt like we were heading out to see through surf, but the pass itself only had minor swells. Going through was easy.

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We pulled into the lagoon at sunrise using the main pass, which is in downtown Papeete. Since we approached in the dark, we didn’t get to see the views from the distance, but from here it looked like Tahiti is a single large mountain that slopes down to the water. It is much less imposing than the Marquesas, which are taller, steeper, and clearly had many mountains. There were buildings all around, including many big buildings that were 4 and 5 stories tall. There appeared to be buildings all the way around the shore and most of the way up the mountain. A bunch of trash floated past us. Yep, we are in a city. Continue reading →