Island hopping

We spent 2 nights anchored off of Raiatea near the town of Uturoa (second-largest town in French Polynesia) and enjoyed exploring and shopping.

Anchored in Raiatea

The first night, we anchored in deep waters. The second night, a very nice gentleman at Dream Yacht Charters let us tie up to their mooring ball in exchange for a 6-pack of beer. A heck of a deal and we had a wonderful night's sleep. Thanks!

Relaxing in Uturoa

The town of Uturoa isn't very big, but it has everything you want - you just have to time it when everything is open. We are still adjusting to "island time". You would have thought we would have the hang of it by now!

Doug checking out the shopping

They have a central market (marche) like Papeete with fresh fruits and veggies, wonderful crepes, and beautiful artisan crafts (upstairs). Even though we didn't buy much, we loved looking at the all the black pearl and polished shell jewelry - what an art.

Evergreen with Bora Bora in the distance

We decided to explore more of Raiatea on our return route in a couple of weeks, so we took off for the island of Tahaa. I know, we are really moving now - 3 islands in a week!

Sailing in the lagoon

The islands of Tahaa and Raiatea are enclosed by the same barrier reef and it was an easy sail through beautiful colored waters of the lagoon and we had an excellent view of Bora Bora. These islands are amazing.

Fancy resort on Tahaa

We anchored off a private motu (island) on the western side of Tahaa and relaxed for a couple of days.

We snorkeled through the Coral Garden, which is between two motus. The coral wasn't spectacular, but we enjoyed swimming with all of the bright colored fish. You could tell they were used to being fed - one tried to bite Doug!

Butterflyfish

Time to get moving again! We sailed from Tahaa to Bora Bora yesterday - a pleasant 30 mile sail. We grabbed a mooring ball off of the famous Bloody Mary's restaurant, which we just had to check out last night plus going in for Cheeseburgers today - yum!

Bora Bora is our furthest destination west. We have sailed over 4000 miles since leaving Mexico in April - pretty amazing, huh? 

Now, we are going to slow down our pace and meander back through all of the islands and places that we missed. Looking forward to it!