Moorea, French Polynesia

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My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

May 24, 2023

I’d first heard about Moorea from my mom, who went there on her first world cruise. Most recently, she sent me a picture from the Island Princess on her fourth world cruise earlier this year. This was the place where they have the huts that are out over the water. The first time she and Ron Voyage stayed in one of those, and one of their friends played with the dolphins. They had a great time watching. For my turn, I had the day off and there was a crew tour, so I signed up.

For six days I’d been circling between my cabin and the ship’s venues: Zumba, shower, pop choir, lunch, Arts & Crafts, office, gameshows, trivias, bean bag toss, pictionary, and all the other random things on my schedule. The previous day I did all the activities while we were in Papeete. We had a late sail and I had the evening off. I was able to get my emergency card covered, so I changed into street clothes and headed out. I walked around for about half an hour as it got dark. I couldn’t find anything I wanted to eat or drink. There was a crew bbq that night which started at 9pm and the crew would be going out to hit the town after that. It was 6pm and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I fell asleep and woke up 14 hours later.

The queue for the tour curled around the M1, we scanned our Ocean ID’s and then the ship opened up to the pontoon leading us to the the water shuttle. Already this day was spectacular.

It felt like the beginning of the Wizard of Oz after the tornado when Dorothy steps out of her dusty black and white life into color.

We crossed the dock from the water shuttle to another boat that was loaded only with crew, and , bit by bit, I could finally feel my body begin to relax.

We marveled at the mountains and the color of the water, and then, there were the huts!

They were all boarded up. I kind of appreciated that there was no one there for us to be jealous of.

We were in paradise!

We pulled up to a spot where the boat dropped anchor. We jumped in the shallow water and hung out as the sharks and stingrays swam around us.

So this was paradise. The contrast of the endless sea days to get here made it all the more spectacular. We hung out in the water amid the squeals of close encounters with the residential sea life and took stock of our blessings. The weather was perfect. The sun was shining. The clear turquoise water was a perfect temperature. The mountains were gorgeous. We were among friends. We didn’t have to cater to any guests for a few hours. There were exotic animal swimming around us. This day made all the work we’d done to get here worth it. We swam around and mingled like we did in the crew bar, except here we floated in the sunshine instead of drinking in the dark.

After a while, the boat took us to another spot where we swam and floated some more. This spot was closer to the guest tours and further from the stingrays, but there was a bar on an island where some people went to get bbq and beers. I just stayed to soak in the view. On the way back, we still couldn’t get over the clarity of the water.

Or those mountains.

It was the first day of rest that actually fed my soul in about three weeks.