After around fifteen hours of sailing, we finally reached Huahine.
It was already afternoon when we entered through the reef passage near Fare and found a place to anchor on the western side of the island.
My first impression was very positive.
Huahine is lush, green and heavily covered in tropical vegetation. The mountains rise from the interior, but the landscape is not nearly as dramatic as Moorea.
Moorea was still very much in my mind.
Its almost vertical peaks and extraordinary mountain silhouettes had set the bar extremely high.
Huahine felt different.
Quieter.
Less spectacular at first sight, but also sleepier and, in some ways, more traditional.
Not far from where we had anchored there was a small yacht club and a few places along the shore, so we had somewhere to go ashore, walk around and have a drink.
I spent most of the rest of the day in the water.
Although I had not done as much swimming in the Caribbean as I probably should have, I had decided to change that in the Pacific.
Besides swimming, I was also starting to practise freediving.
I began working on breathing exercises, trying to increase the amount of time I could stay underwater.
My results at that point were, to put it mildly, disastrous.
I could barely manage a minute.
Another problem was that I kept floating back towards the surface, so I started using small weights to help me reach neutral buoyancy more easily and stay at depth without wasting so much energy.
I was nowhere near being a serious freediver, but it was slowly becoming another part of the journey.
And it is difficult to imagine a better place to practise than a Polynesian lagoon.
Fare
We mostly used our time on Huahine to rest.
We walked through Fare, the main village on the island, located on the north-western coast of Huahine Nui.
Fare is a very small place.
There is a harbour, a market, a few shops, restaurants and several small places along the waterfront. There is very little that could really be described as urban life, and that is part of its charm.
It does not take long to walk through the whole village.
But Huahine is not an island you visit for city life anyway.
What makes it interesting begins just beyond the main road.
Huahine is actually made up of two main islands — Huahine Nui, or “Big Huahine”, and Huahine Iti, or “Little Huahine” — connected by a short bridge and surrounded by the same system of lagoons and coral reefs.
Compared with Moorea, and especially with Tahiti, I had the feeling that modern civilisation had not completely taken over here.
Of course, there are cars, shops, phones and everything else necessary for modern life.
But once you move away from Fare, small villages, gardens, plantations, fishing boats and a slower rhythm of daily life quickly take over again.
Huahine is particularly known for having preserved a strong connection with its Polynesian past.
An Island of the Past
On the north-eastern side of Huahine lies the village of Maeva, one of the most important archaeological areas in French Polynesia.
Several chiefly families once lived in this area, and today many old marae can still be found around the village.
These sacred stone platforms were used for religious ceremonies, community gatherings and important political events.
Maeva was once home to several chiefly lineages, which explains the unusually high concentration of archaeological remains in such a small area.
Another fascinating feature of the area is the system of traditional stone fish traps near Lake Fauna Nui.
Built from coral stone, the traps were designed to guide fish into enclosed areas from which they could not easily escape.
Some of these structures are centuries old, and versions of them are still used today.
For me, this was one of the details that best represented Huahine.
The island’s history is not something that exists only behind museum glass.
Some of the methods people used generations ago still remain part of everyday life.
A few kilometres farther away is another of Huahine’s unusual attractions.
In the village of Faie, large freshwater eels with striking blue eyes live in a small stream.
They are considered sacred in local tradition and are still fed and protected by the villagers.
These famous blue-eyed sacred eels have become one of Huahine’s most distinctive symbols.
Perhaps this is what separates Huahine most clearly from Moorea.
Moorea impresses you immediately with its scenery.
Huahine reveals itself more slowly — through villages, old marae, fish traps, legends and a way of life that has not completely surrendered to the modern world.
A Few Days Without Hurrying
For us, however, Huahine was mainly a place to slow down.
We did not feel the need to make plans every day or rush from one attraction to another.
We would walk through Fare, buy a few things, sit by the water, return to the boat, swim and practise diving.
After the overnight passage from Moorea, that was exactly what we needed.
Huahine was one of those places where nothing particularly dramatic had to happen for the experience to be good.
The boat was safely anchored, the sea was calm, land was close enough for an easy walk, and the next destination was not far away.
Sometimes that is more than enough reason to stay somewhere for a few days.
Onward to Raiatea
But eventually, it was time to move on.
The next island on our route was Raiatea.
On the morning of 1 May 2018, we planned to raise the anchor and head towards it.
Unlike the long passage from Moorea to Huahine, this one would be much shorter.
From Fare to the area around Uturoa on Raiatea is roughly twenty-five nautical miles, so we expected the trip to take only a few hours, depending on the wind.
Once again, we checked the boat, prepared everything for departure and slowly left Huahine behind.
Moorea was still in my mind as perhaps the most beautiful island I had seen so far.
Huahine had something different.
It did not try to impress you.
It simply lived at its own pace.
And that was exactly what made it so easy to remember.