French Polynesia

Day 214 continued - Wednesday 8th February 2006 - arriving in Tahiti

It was another 5-hour flight, again with LAN Chile, plenty of time for another pasta meal! Ian played some more games on his entertainment console, while Nikki watched the Wallace and Gromitt movie, before falling asleep.

We arrived in Tahiti 10 minutes before leaving Easter Island! and had to surrender a couple of bananas at customs (it felt such an expensive waste to throw away fresh fruit bought in Easter Island!).

Day 215 - Thursday 9th February 2006 - relaxing in Tahiti

We woke early (there was a 6-hour time difference between Easter Island and Tahiti), but lazed in bed for a while before breakfast - our best breakfast in months, with cereal, french baguette and jam, fresh fruit etc...

Nikki did some handwashing, while Ian borrowed the pension's internet computer for free to edit some of our hundreds of Moai photos!

We lounged in a hammock for a while, then went in search of a supermarket. Once again, accommodation was so expensive (6500 Fr, about $65 - way over our usual budget) we knew we would have to cook for ourselves. Fortunately the supermarket offered a much better selection than we found in Easter Island, but it was still very expensive. After some deliberation, we decided to cook some vegetarian chilli for dinner and - for a change - bought bread and cheese for lunch!

As Nikki was not feeling well, We returned to the pension for lunch. But soon after, we walked the short distance down to the beach. We were some way out of Papeete (the main town on Tahiti, which is apparently horrible, with no good beaches). We were pleased to see that our local beach was quite pleasant. Once there, we headed a little further along to find a better spot - skirting a rocky outcrop in the process. We tried to go for a swim, but the lagoon was very shallow and Ian scraped his knee on a coral outcrop. So we settled down to relax on the sand.

Back at the pension, Ian started cooking (we had bought dried kidney beans and after soaking and boiling them for hours, still couldn't make them soft or tasty!). We had also bought some cheap wine, but it was truly awful, so we just put a bit in the food and threw the rest away. While cooking, Ian chatted a little to the other guests (a couple of English girls and 2 old French men) and eventually dinner was ready. Ian was disappointed with it, especially after it took so long to prepare. But at least it was edible. We whiled away another hour or so playing careds, before going to bed.

Day 216 - Friday 10th February 2006 - relaxing in Tahiti (again)

We enjoyed another filling breakfast and despite the cloudy sky headed down to the beach before 11am. Of course, no sooner had we laid out the sarong and laid down, than light drizzle starting falling. It was quite refreshing before the sun came out. Ian promptly fell fast asleep, while Nikki read, keeping half an eye on a storm over the nearby island of Moorea.

After a while, she woke Ian with a 20-minute rain warning, so we headed back to the pension. Unfortunately, the small shop we had looked in on the way to the beach was closed for lunch and we had to walk much further, back to the supermarket to buy dinner. Fortunately we were inside the supermarket when the heavens opened and the surrounding area was drenched by a tropical downpour. But we were getting a bit cold and as the rain eased a little, we headed back to the pension. Some of our food, including part of our lunch baguette did get a bit wet, but we soon dried out.

After lunch, we just lazed in the terrace area on the sofas and in the hammock. In any case, we needed to read up about what New Zealand had to offer and start making some plans. The sun never really returned enough to make a trip back to the beach worthwhile, so Ian started labouring over another vegetarian chilli. Even this distraction didn't stop him beating Nikki at Scrabble in between stirring pots.

We had bought a couple of slightly less cheap bottles of wine (all the available wine was French, and knowing nothing about French wine, didn't want to risk buying one more expensive one). But both the bottles were disappointing - Nikki couldn't even bring herself to drink the second one, but our fellow guests were happy to polish them off. We had to pack for an early start...

Day 217 - Saturday 11th February 2006 - on to New Zealand

We needed to be up at 5:30am today for our transfer (from Fred) to the airport. The various airport queues surprised us with their inefficiency. First we had the usual long check-in line, then another line to have our backpacks scanned and checked-in. Then an enormous queue for passport control - there seemed to be only one guy there checking all the passports. By this stage, no one was queuing for the x-ray machines, but even then there were 4 more people ready to check through our hand luggage by hand. Not surprisingly, we were late by now and there was no queue to board the plane itself :-)