There are a few more blue patches in the sky this morning and we both counted our mosquito bites. Keiron seems to be attracting the most but I'm getting a few as well.

We walked to the supermarché for a baguette, the internet place still had no connection. Although I had had a shower, I was hot and sticky in about two minutes after setting out.

We have decided to stay on Moorea for the whole ten days. It's lovely here and we've decided to hire a car for a few days to see the rest of the island. Neither of us was looking forward to a five hour ferry trip to Raiatea...

We got picked up by the Quad bike woman in a 4WD and we talked for a bit in English, but eitehr she didn't understand everything I was saying or she wasn't paying attention because she often asked about the things I had just ben explaining.

We got to the agency and two couples of Americans were coming as well. She dished out helmets and hairnets (the bald guy kindly refusing) as the helmets were very soggy from the previous day and smelt of - you've guessed it - wet dog.

She forgot to tell us her name, but shall call her Lara, for reasons which will become clear later on. Lara explained the drivers how to drive the quads, change gears, reverse etc in about five minutes and we were off. Lara made us do a few rounds to make sure the drivers got used to the quads. Keiron was a bit nervous but managed to get the hang of it quickly as we raced down the road, Lara standing upright on her quad bike and storming off ahead.

We took a road inland and had to go through a few rivers, but Lara had conveniently forgot to tell the drivers how to tackle these. In the end, we all managed and in the next stretch my sandalled feet got extremely muddy, almost as muddy as the giant pigs we saw. We stopped at a pineapple field, where the clouds were hanging very low over the mountains, Temple of Doom style.

After the pineapple fields we went through a big river, washing my feet clean again. We went through plantations of banana, guava, vanilla, grapefruit and lemon, and tried the guava fruit, which was excellent. Our quad spun its wheels getting up a hill full of loose branches, another hill we had to tackle in 4WD as it was very muddy and steep. Lara had forgotten to put ehr own bike in 4WD and didn't manage to get up, so Keiron had to reverse back down the steep hill and take it again!

We stopped at the shop from the agricultural school, where they sell jam, juice and icecream. Keiron had a grapefruit juice (Pamplemousse!) and I had a pineapple juice, both absolutely incredible.

We took off again, Lara standing up on her quad bike smoking a cigarette and racing away like a maniac. That woman was crrazy! Most of the time she raced ahead of us, going through mud, streams and more mud as if it was nothing, looking unbearably cool in a white Nike top, shorts and high trainers. The rest of us just looked bedraggled, like a bunch of cats fallen in the river. She was also very beautiful, with features more Asian than Polynesian, and a great figure. Beautiful AND cool, how annoying is that?

Unfortunately, because the weather was so bad, she decided to cut the trip short, which left us hungry for more. We said goodbye to the bald American and his Cuban girlfriend (she looked far from Cuban though) and piled back into the jeep (Lara had wisely put down towels on the back seats). We dropped off the other Americans, the guy giving Keiron a weird handshake in parting. I suppose he thought he was 'pretty fly for a white guy'. He wasn't.

Lara drove the jeep to our hotel pertty much the same as the quad: like a madwoman. Still, she managed to stop to pick up a hitchhiker with a bunch of bananas who climbed into the boot.

In the evening, we tried to get the oven to work to have pizza, but even the girl from Motel Albert took about half a box of matches before she managed. We went to bed early that night.