1. Society Islands
2. Aitutaki, Cook Islands
3. Palmerston, Cook Islands
4. Kingdom of Tonga

Tahiti onward to Bora Bora...

We have finally left the island of Moorea. We ended up spending a week more than we would have like but we didn't complain much since it was so much fun. We were about 20 boats in this anchorage where 10 boats had kids ages ranging from 8 to 17! Reminded me of my youth, ahhh the wonderful memories!!! Our passage was a weather window of just one night. It looks like 11 boats took advantage of this weather window, cause of the 5 I knew that were leaving, another bunch pulled out at the same time as us. NO one wants to have to use fuel since it's about 7 bucks a gallon.

Before we left we wanted to load the boat up with fresh fruits so I went to the house that, sometimes, has a table with fruit out in front. It was early, 8am, and all was quite but I was able to get someone's attention inside. They knew I was coming for a stalk of bananas cause I came by the afternoon before to place my order. The mom came out holding a very large stalk of bananas and I became a bit nervous how much this was going to cost me. Considering that everything here is about 5x's as expensive than home!!! I started to ask her how much and she asked me if I had kids on my boat. I said yes, I have two and this is my daughter Seanna with me. Seanna always has to go with us on errands!!!! Then she said, "I would like to give you these bananas". I was shocked! I wanted to make sure there was nothing lost in translation and asked again, "how much"? She said she wanted no money. Then she floored me even more when she carried this big stalk to my dingy and said wait here. She came back with a large basket full of fruit. I don't know the names of them but one was their local apple, which look purple and green outside and the size of an apple, and Paul said it taste like a large concord grape on the inside. Then she gave me a few long green pods that she said the kids would love and she was right. The kids open the pod and take out the white cover seeds and eat the white. I took pictures of it. Then she gave me some ripe bananas for now, 6 papaya and two other fruit (I had different names for this one fruit but it's green with little soft spikes on it used for drinks). When I came home to tell Paul that I didn't pay a dime for this he couldn't believe it. I did leave the lady some gifts...I couldn't just leave her empty handed. I gave her wine, shoes and lipsticks. I think this made her happy.

We had a Catana raft up last night. We met up with our friends on Da Mojo and Ocealys who each have two kids plus some guest on board. At around 5 pm we all rafted up and had a "pot luck" dinner. It was a bunch of fun. Total of 8 kids all the same age. I haven't laughed so much in a long time! Yesterday, we went surfing with Da Mojo (gosh, I love this family) and David, the dad, took Merric surfing on his long board. It was the coolest thing to see Merric in front surfing a wave. He also did some great boogie boarding. He already has incredible balance jumping on the surf board so now I know what to get him for X-mas!!!! I, on the other hand, paddled my Kayak to the surf spot and ate it on the first wave and lost my spare sunglasses, haha. I have been Kayaking for over an hour a day or swimming. Getting back on track...now if I could just quit the drinking every night! Mom, you would be upset with me...I didn't put sun block on that well yesterday and I am paying the price! OUCH.

Yep, we have found Nemo in Huahine, Society islands. Just laying back enjoying life. Seanna says she is happy to be 4 but can't wait till she is 17. I told her she will get there one day! Don' know why she picked that age??? I preferred 23 myself.

We are on our way to Tahaa tomorrow and should be in Bora Bora by the 2nd or 3rd to pick up Alex and Kristin. We are REALLY getting syked up for that! Keep getting incredible reports on the beauty of that place. We also got word that if I thought Tahiti was expensive that Bora Bora will take my breath away. So, I stocked up here. Good think Alex and Kristin are staying on the boat and I love to cook, eh!

Thank you for all the cute emails to Seanna on her birthday. She really loved hearing them and was so excited to get them, she kept saying "Awwww". She is deeply touched by family. We always have to tell stories about family or I use threats that Pierre will come down on them if they don't eat their dinner. Merric loves that! He wants to be just like Pierre...big and strong. So, sometimes they ask me if Uncle Pierre eats certain foods and it's easy to say yes. All of you are always in our thoughts and daily conversations. Speaking of being attached to family. Seanna has a bathing suit that has seen much better days and the straps lost their elastic and the butt is sagging but since grandma gave it to her she never wants to give it away. She told me that, "I don't want you giving this to any Indians..I love it cause Grand mama gave it to me, okay mommy". I said, "Okay" We always gave away our old clothes to the Kuna Indians in the San Blas incase you were wondering why she said that...haha.

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We spent a magical two final weeks in the French Polynesian islands at Bora Bora. Alex and Kristen came to visit for 10 days and we had a blast. The weather was just perfect. The week before they came we had strong winds and it was hard to do anything with the boat so just a few days before they came I made a wish and threw a few coins in the water. The next day Paul got the report that the weather was going to be picture perfect the day after they arrive. It's one of those places where it's not hard to entertain guest...the island just does it's magic. The waters of Bora Bora are different shades of blue...it's not rare to be cruising on the dingy or big boat and see the wild life just below you. Although everything in Bora Bora is very expensive we didn't feel the pinch since I was stocked and being on the boat was better than any restaurant. You should have seen Alex and Kristen whippin out the home made tortillas for Fajita night. Coco coladas, mojitos, margaritas, tahiti beer, wine and shots toasted the sunset every night. It was very hard for me to let them go!

We are now underway to the Cook Islands and are on day two of a three to four night passage. We have already skipped two islands because the weather isn't permitting us to get into the cut and we don't want to take the chance. As we passed the first island I spotted a whale doing a show. The humpback whale jumped up a few times then did the classic back flop. It was just beautiful. At the same time my line went out and had a Mahi on but just as I got it close to the boat it got off....

Aitutaki, Cook Islands

We made it(Aitutaki, Cook islands) into the Extremely narrow snakelike cut.... into a VERY small anchorage with three other cats and one small mono haul. It is full of coral heads everywhere and doesn't leave for any mistakes. You have to be able to turn on a dime. We hit the cut at high outgoing tide. Paul was full steam ahead and we barley moved. Most of the cats here anchored off the cut for two days before they were brave enough to come in. We saw them in here so we just progressed. We went to 6 feet (at full high tide) at the 1/2 way mark into the cut and didn't go above 10. We have two anchors out since there is NO swing space but we are not complaining. Everyone here was ready to lend a helping hand to get us in and anchored. It is just great! The view is spectacular beyond the rusty harbor. The lagoon is very shallow so it dries at low tide and so far the people we have met have just charmed us. They wave at us like they know us and we've been friends for years. The color of the water here reminds us of the Bahamas (every shade of blue) and there are tons of islands in the shallow lagoon, that we can reach with the dingy, to go visit. We plan to do some kayaking and snorkeling tomorrow. We had lunch at the wharf bar and had a full meal with beers for $32 NZ dollars. We are back to normal prices, yeah! I don't plan on cooking much here, hahahaah. After the huge $$ inflation we saw in the French Polynesian we forgot that there are places out here that are "affordable".... I am really happy we stopped.

8/23/08

Still just relaxing here in Aitutaki, Cook Islands. Did you know that this is where they filmed Survivor, Cook Islands. It's not rare to see a local with a Survivor hat or shirt on here :). They said that they filmed for 6 months and hired everyone on the island. They were a class act! Nice to know they were not taken advantage of cause the people here wear their shirts on their sleeves around here. The beaches and view here are incredible and I can see why they choose this place.

On the second or third day, we tried our hand at fishing but were not that successful. We caught one medium sized snapper and Paul didn't feel like cleaning it so when we saw a local couple coming back into port we went up to them to say hello and asked if they got anything? They didn't get much so Paul gave them our fish. Well, that ONE LITTLE show of generosity has then, over the past few days, landed us as the garden of Eden. Mii (Me'E) and Richard work by harvesting sea grapes, which is compared to caviar and sells to the local market, it then gets flown over to the other larger islands near by. We have had our share of sea grapes!! Which look like a small bunch of green grapes about the size of your thumb. They are very salty.... They sell it for $10 a pound. You can serve it as a salad but we really liked it on a cracker with cheese. Mii and Richard stop over every day and drop off grape fruit, passion fruit, bananas, guava, paw-paws (papaya), lemon, sour oranges, sea grapes, coconuts and star fruit. We told them we were leaving tomorrow and then they brought over more of the above but in MUCH larger quantities. Our water line is disappearing...haha. Shoot, I made a meat sauce and I put some papaya in it and you know what...it was awesome. I also made a papaya, banana and coconut cake that was out of this world (I used aunt Johanne's mango bread recipe and subsituted the mango for papaya...this time I had so much ripe banana I put one in too.... please pass that on to her and tell her I think about her every time I take out the recipe). Don't know what we are going to do with the rest since I have already donated it to other cruisers that have come by.

We are going to stat making our way to Palmerston Atoll and we have been given several boxes, stalks of bananas and other goodies to bring to them. There is quite the story behind the island and the people who live there. Try to google it and see if anything comes up. It's about an Englishman who worked on a ship back in the late 1800's who visited the atoll. He later went back with 4 wives and set up camp at each N, E, S and W motu and had a bunch of kids. He taught them about in-breading and forbade it and that kept them healthy and strong. They all have the same last name Marsters. Apparently, when a boat arrives a family will come out to greet you. The first family to great you becomes the "host family" and they take care of you from morning till night with parties, dinners and activities. They don't have much but love to have people come visit. I have cleaned out my lockers and have a huge bag of goodies myself to leave them.

8/27/08

Sitting here with about 8 other boats enjoying Palmerston atoll. On our way here we caught more than our share of fresh Mahi so we opted to donate a large ziplock bag and set up a fish/pot luck party on the beach with our host Edward and his wife Shirley and get all the cruisers together. Had a nice time dodging rain showers and having a BBQ.

Imagine this, here I am in the middle of the pacific ocean, 1000 miles away from civilization and the Shirley was asking me if Angelina Jolie and Brad Pit had their babies yet! There are only 12 adults on the island and 25 children. It is a well structured island with the adults in all levels (secretary, customs, immigrations, inspectors, one police officer and teacher). The school is really nice and it set up with curriculum from New Zealand. The children here are just charmers and love to talk to the cruisers.

I am a little tipsy from a few rum drinks tonight so I will write you later....

Homemade bbq with coconuts and palm leaves       Layer with more leaves and cook for 20 mins.                Enjoy!

Sept 26, 2008

I have been LAAZZZZZYYYYYY and just sitting back reading all day (The Poison Wood bible). I know it's driving Paul nuts cause he can't just sit around but there really isn't anything to do. The weather, since we got here, has been cold, rainy, windy and cloudy.

We are disappointed but lucky for us we are not on a charter here paying loads of money like a bunch of other "Moorings Charters" boats out here. I do feel really bad for them. They fly all the way from Sweden to sail Tonga and enjoy sun, whales and water but get the mentioned crap above.... We have been holed up here, at anchorage number 16, for almost a week. They have around 35 good anchorages but the names are so hard that moorings decided to number them years ago and it just stuck. It does tick some purist off but hey you try to pronounce Euakafa Eueiki. What zee heck!!!!!

Tonight is Pizza night. Did I mention to any of you how much the food stinks here. We are limited in selection and what they do have (chicken legs, Beef Ribs, and some weird cut of lamb) has been refrozen about 10 times and taste like game meat. It's pretty scary. I am thinking about hunting my own pig and becoming a butcher..there are more pigs than people on the island but they don't even have pork in the stores...go figure!

I HAVE BEEN MAKING IT UP WITH INCREDIBLE DESERTS> For example: Crepes for dinner last night with Nutella, bananas and strawberry jam along with the last cherished bottle of maple syrup from dad and a small glass of Port wine! But, what I failed to mention is that I tried to pressure cook the one of the three choices of meat, Beef ribs; Even drenched in BBQ sauce and trimmed of excess fat it was just gross. I couldn't even stand the smell so I ate Black beans and rice. For someone, like me, who loves to cook, this is just torture! I CAN'T wait till New Zealand and a decent grocery store....I am not asking for much!