4th of July Road Trip

We had another awesome Fourth of July. Although it wasn’t sailing around the San Juan Islands and hanging out in Roche Harbor with friends, it was still super great! We rented a car and drove around the island of Huahine. When we got the car, we went to the grocery store and bought some baguette sandwiches for lunch and snacks, then we went to the Agricultural Festival for Heiva. At the Agricultural Festival there were stands of people selling things (we bought honey, a shell necklace, pillow case covers and a woven bag.) At the festival there were also men and women doing contests. The women were making bouquets by weaving beautiful baskets and holders to put the flowers in and arranging the flowers. The men were weighing taro roots that they grew to see who had the heaviest. There were also animals including rabbits, chickens, horses, goats, cows, and pigs to view.
After going to that festival, we started walking back to the car but we saw a craft store which we browsed around and I got a cowry shell. When we got back to the car we looked at the map and saw that the Shell Museum was the first stop. It was two rooms with a ton of shells this person had been collecting for 30 years! There was some jewelry and stuff you could buy in one room and the second room had the shells in it. There were shells in cases all around the walls and a case in the center of the room. The man who had collected all the shells told us about them, like which ones were common and which ones were rare. Also, he showed us which shells where poisonous. Before we left we bought a book of French Polynesian shells/fish.
When we left the shell museum we continued down the road about 15 min to an archeological site. It wasn’t that interesting because we weren’t really sure what the ruins were and the hut that was supposed to have artifacts and things to read about the site was closed. We tried to find a place to sit down and eat lunch but there were a lot of fire ants everywhere, so I didn’t sit down while I ate.
Our next stop was the sacred Blue-Eyed eels. When we first got out of the car and looked down into the stream we only saw one. We walked up stream a little bit and saw a huge swarm of the eels. They were all there because some people where feeding them canned tuna. When the eels went into the sunlight you could catch a glimpse of their blue eyes.
After the eels we drove up this super steep hill to a beautiful view point that overlooked the ocean and the island below. We could see the clear blue water and the boat in the anchorage below. We could also see the red rock in the hill. Right before we were about to leave we saw a rainbow. The view was amazing especially with the rainbow.
We kept driving along and we stopped at one or two more viewpoints. Then we also picked up our hand-painted sarongs/pareos we had made the day earlier. The lady Natalie was very nice and gave us the dried pareos we had painted and she had helped fix some mistakes we made on them. Finally, we got back to town then returned the car. It was a great Fourth of July!

One Reply to “4th of July Road Trip”

  1. I loved hearing your stories. I felt like I was there with you. I miss you all especially during the 4th of July.

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