We switched transport from sea to road for a rare day in a car (I can’t quite remember when we last drove one) to explore inland the islands and motu’s of Huahine. Time to close the workbooks and go for a school trip instead.
It’s a stunning mountainous island of lush green volcanic peaks running down to aquamarine blue water.
We enjoyed a very cultural day ranging from meeting a local artist, who miraculously sold ice-cream too, to a shell collector and ancient Marae and much more between.
Love of art 
I’ve-cream! 
We went to our first museum in eons which was inside a rebuilt traditional chief’s hut and learnt about the local archeological excavations and marae.
A walk through the jungle took us to marae on top of a hill – how they got the stones here was mind boggling.
We saw traditional stone fish traps still used today and visited sacred eels in the river which were as thick as your thigh with piercing blue eyes. We fed them our leftover baguette which they promptly demolished. A sightly eerie sight.
Stone Fish traps 
Fish traps 
We went across the bridge to Huahine Iti (great excitement to see a civil engineering structure- we’ve not seen a bridge in practically a year!) — and this one was pretty tiny!!
We stopped in Parea to see how they made ‘pareo’, the basic article of clothing for all Polynesians. Women wear pareo (aka sarong) as a skirt, dress or towel and men wear them as shorts/skirt thing too. Natalie, a French woman married to a Tahitian, was so friendly to us (there have been no tourists here for months) and happily explained the whole process.
She kindly let us all have a go painting the pareo she was working on.
Of course we then decided to buy it as it depicted the manta rays we’d seen so many of. She also dedicated the pareo to our trip and so it is signed and written to the Hall family. A great momento from another magical day in this gorgeous island.
Halls Aboard - Sailing Kathryn del Fuego 