Uturoa, Tahiti

 We made it to French Polynesia. The island we are on, Raiatea, is basically surrounded by coral reefs. There is one chanel to get into the island around the coral reef. It just happens to be across from the Faaroa River as the coral doesn't like the fresh water flowing over it.  You can see the waves breaking over the reef in the distance behind this little island.



We walked a bit around the town. That took about 20 minutes as it is a very small town. The cruise ship has twice as many people on it (almost 3000) as live on this island (like 1,300). We saw some cool murals.


This white flower is only found on the mountains on this island. It is extremely rare and picking it will give you a fine of 10,000 US dollars. It is a beautiful 5 petal white flower without much of a scent.


We found this "Guardian of the Port" near our ship

We went kayaking in the Faaroa River. It's the only navicable river in Polynesia. Our tour guide said that Raiatea is the heart, or at least the center, of the Polynesian islands. The river was beautiful. It started as a wide salty river with the tide coming in to help push our kayaks. We eventually changed to fresh water. The scenery was beautiful. Almost like out of Jurassic Park.



We saw lots of native plants- banana, papaya, coconut, corn and taro. The guide showed us that the taro leaves are water repellent. You can submerge it in water and it comes out dry. You can also put some water on the leaf and the water will form a ball that you can then bounce in the air. Pretty impressive. The ball of water is about his chin level. He doesn't have a funny growth there. 


While traveling back, we had a light rain fall on us. It was so refreshing. A great day on the water.


As we were leaving, we passed this little house on a small island. Talk about my own private island!


And we sailed away into the sunset!



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