Our ship was anchored off-shore in Huahine (pronounced wah-hi-ne) and means female — again showing the connection of the South Pacific languages to Hawaii’s. We had a wonderful, informative tour (probably the best of the trip) led by a local man who was actually born in California as his Huahine mother was having a difficult birth. He returned to his island at 4 months of age, but has remained close with his family outside of Sonora and visited them often—his fluent English was a testament to the close family tie.
He shared much local history and botany of the island, and took us via boat to his family’s pearl farm in the middle of an only on the bay. I had an unfortunate trip-and-fall on the wooden deck (missed a step) as I was looking ahead at a fish in the clear water when I should have been looking down at where I was stepping, but came through pretty much unscathed with some bruising and swelling that has mostly passed now.
We stopped to watch 3-4 foot long blue-eyed eels swim in a stream and also visited a vanilla farm, tasting homemade vanilla ice cream—which was lovely as it was quite hot at the farm.
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