Day Twenty Five January 30

We left Papeete in the early hours of January 30 to sail to the island of Moorea. I thought that everyone would have woken up when the engines were started but the ship left port quietly.

This is our favourite island and we have stayed there three other times at the conclusions of cruises. It is only 19 kilometers or 12 miles from Tahiti. Moorea is the second most popular tourist attraction after Tahiti.

Again we found a non ship snorkeling tour with lunch on a private Motu. A bonus was a stop to feed the manta rays in waist high water. They are very gentle animals and their skin was kind of mushy and very soft, Oh there were also reef sharks in the area as well swimming around us.

A coral garden was our next stop for 45 minutes of snorkeling in the beautiful clear blue waters. As mentioned earlier, alot of the coral has been damaged in French Polynesia. However, in this location we saw many species of fish with stunning colours.

We met a couple and their kids from New Caledonia so it was interesting to hear about their country that is in the north Pacific and a territory of France. This country was at one point on our itinerary. Hopefully we will get there one day but it was fun learning about it.