Sunday Feb 16, 2026
Hi Gang! Happy President’s Day! Hope some of you had the day off. Of course we did! Lol. And we spent it in another part of paradise. Today we were anchored in Moorea, another island in the French Polynesian island chain. And at least for Kathy and I, we think it’s the prettiest of all the French Polynesian islands we’ve seen these last few days. Even prettier than Bora Bora, and that’s saying something!
The island of Moorea was formed as a volcano almost 2.5 million years ago. Moorea is 10 miles across and has two small, nearly symmetrical bays on the North shore. The one to the West is called Opunohu Bay and the one to the East is Cook’s Bay. The highest point on the island is Mount Tohivea and can be seen from Tahiti.
Today we did a really fun excursion to do… yep, you guessed it… snorkeling! The water here is so crystal clear you just got to! But not only did we snorkel with sharks and stingrays, we also saw turtles and dolphins!
But the other cool part was we stopped at a Motu (which is a small patch of land that is flat and surrounded by water) and had a Polynesian picnic lunch. They cooked chicken, fish and sausage underground! They started cooking at 3 AM under a bed of banana leaves and burlap and we got to watch them lift it up! So cool! They also made fresh cerviche from swordfish. It was so yummy!
We had lots to eat and had so much we fed some to this cute black lab that supposedly swam over from the Motu across the water. You could tell she recently had puppies but we didn’t see them. Of course we became her best friend and she sat right next to us the whole time.
We then sailed back to the boat. Not only did we see some amazing scenery but we saw the first church built in all the French Polynesian islands. Pretty neat. We then got back on the ship and chilled and got ready for dinner. Hope everyone’s having a great Monday!
PS: I had so many pictures I’ll send them in two batches!
The Wandering Italian 