About mid morning, our guide, Cedric, arrived on his boat with paddle boards in tow. First were a few lessons on how to properly board, stand up, and stay aboard a paddle board. If it looks like we were concentrating, we were. Lesson 1 is not to look down, one of us who won’t be named did and was the first casualty – at least the water was nice.
The river itself is protected and flows thru a series of plantations which use the water for irrigation but maintain the shoreline in its natural state. It had the look and feel of the Amazonian rain forest without the assorted nasty critters that inhabit the Amazon.
It takes about 3 hours to paddle up to the headwaters of the river and paddle back. I would rate this as one the highlights of our trip so far and certainly a highlight of Raiatea and her sister island Tahaa.
Deb has had some issues with her arm so she did not join us but did try out paddle boarding back at the boat. One of our missions is to see if we can acquire two inflatable boards to keep aboard Iron Lady. It is great fun and the boards are really very stable once you adjust to using them and relax a bit.
Lest you think this is all gentle stuff, Cedric races paddle boards competitively – from Huahini to Raiatea – a distance of some 30 miles. He says its best when the trades are blowing around 25 knots as they surf a good part of the way over. No thank you.
And a happy crew at the end of a great day.
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