Moorea

In the Rogers and Hammerstein musical SOUTH PACIFIC, Bloody Mary sings:

Most people live on a lonely island,

Lost in the middle of a foggy sea.

Most people long for another island,

One where they know they will like to be.

Jan Prince, in her excellent French Polynesian guidebook , says that Moorea (Mo-oh RAY-ah), while some people say it is an island shaped like a heart or an isosceles triangle, she thinks it looks like a swimming turtle. Whatever it looks like from the air surrounded by a coral reef, this is the tropical South Seas island that most people would expect to find when they fly to (very) nearby Tahiti. She says that some people feel it’s worth the airfare to Tahiti just to see Moorea.

Moorea is dated by scientists to be about two million years old. Its magnificent beauty covers 53 square miles and is comprised of some spectacular mountainous peaks that are all that remain of what is estimated to be an 11,000 foot volcano that erupted eons ago. The volcanic peaks of the mountain range resemble a fairy castle or a serrated sharks jaw. Mou’a Roa (long mountain), with an altitude of 2900 feet, resembles a shark’s tooth. It is the most photographed of the wonders of this island and is often pointed out to visitors as Bali Hai. Bloody Mary is a fictional character created by James Michener in his “Tales of the South Pacific.” She knew what she was singing about when she said most people longed for another island where they would like to be. These islands do that to you; just when you think you’ve seen a great one, there is another even better one just over the horizon. We’ve seen photographs or renderings of some of these places in books and magazines and seen them on TV. They are even better than imagined. Some friends of ours have been out here and told us how wonderful it was…yeah, well we live on one of the best beaches in the U.S.; how much better could these places possibly be? Let me tell you….A WHOLE LOT !!!!

We opted for a two part excursion today, one that we signed up for through our Cruise Critic connections. In the morning we went on a bus tour of part of the island with a research director from the University of California at Berkeley, Gump Research Station here on Moorea. Their facility hosts various research projects from university students who come here for months at a time to do things such as study salinity effects on sea creatures and the long term effects of global warming on coral reef systems. A lot of the students are from UCAL Berkeley and from Northeastern University in Boston, my alma mater. I have to tell you, school would have been a lot more fun if I could have done my lab work out here instead of commuting on the MTA every day and struggling with differential equations; like, that was a subject that I never had any use for in my work life.

We learned from our guide about the archeology of the island, its geologic history, the various flora, the invasive species (interestingly, Australian Pines are NOT invasive here), the various endemic bird species, and the sea creatures that abound in the reef and the lagoon. We stopped for lunch and then went on a snorkeling adventure inside the reef to view the kinds of colorful saltwater fish in the wild that you see in marine aquaria. We ventured outside the reef to look for some humpback whales that had been reported in the area but we didn’t find any. Then we stopped again just inside the reef to mingle with some huge sting rays and some rather timid black-tipped reef sharks (these are not large animals and they have no interest in harming humans…they’re just here for the free food…kinda like us). Rosemary had an up close and personal experience with some rays who are all well aware that humans come out there to feed them regularly. Their behavior can be best described as pleasantly aggressive. Lots of fun.

Rather than write a more detailed narrative here, I’ll let the pictures tell the story much better than I can. - RBM

Oct 10, 2009

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