Tahiti Part 1

Thursday, May 10th we got up at 3am for a 6:30 flight to Auckland. We were in Auckland for 2.5 hours before we left for Papeete,the capital of Tahiti. We arrived at 9pm May 9th. We stayed two nights in Tahiti on the west coast near Papeete.  The first night we checked in and went straight for dinner at the restaurant in the hotel.  It was already 11pm but we were not too tired because it was only 7pm Sydney time.  We tried to explore the hotel a bit after dinner, but it was pitch black and hard to tell where the resort stopped and the ocean started. We slept in until almost 11am Thursday morning, much better than the 3am we woke up the first Thursday we had this week.  Katka and I explored the area around the resort bit, but we were sort of in the middle of nowhere.  We felt lucky to find a little food stand for lunch and a convenience store to buy snacks for the room.  Then we saw a couple of people walking with a bag from McDonald's, and I knew where my supper was coming from if I could find it.  Misa was still in bed when we got back at 1pm.  So Katka went to the pool while I checked my email and Misa ate the breakfast we brought from the convenience store. After Misa ate and got ready we joined Katka at the pool, it was pretty impressive.  They advertise it as the largest infinity pool in Papeete, and I suppose it could be.  It was at the pool that I started to look around and realize how beautiful Tahiti is.  The water is crystal clear, and various shades of blue depending on the depth and what is under, coral, rocks, or sand.  Tahiti is in French Polynesia, a huge group of volcanic islands.  The volcanos loom over everything, steep and covered with green trees, shrubs, and grass.  The sun set right over the island Moorea, lighting up from behind as if it was on fire. We stayed at the pool the rest of the day.  For supper Misa ordered room service, Katka had some tuna and crackers that she bought at the convenience store, and I headed for McDonald's.  But on the way I noticed a bunch of new restaurants had sprung up near our hotel.  Trailers with kitchens in them had been set up in the parking lots along the street, and tables and chairs set up around each trailer.  I wandered into one large parking lot and found a pizza and crepe restaurant.  I got a wonderful pepperoni and mushroom pizza to go and took it back to our room.  Somehow I resisted the Nutella and banana crepe.  We ate dinner on our balcony, soaking in the ocean breeze.  I can honestly say May 10 was bad and good, one day of each. Friday we took a ferry to Moorea, an island about 10 miles from Tahiti.  We weren't sure where to go, and there weren't really any signs pointing us to the boarding gate, so we actually didn't go on the ferry with our luggage, but a second ferry they had running at the same time for the overload.  We got to Moorea about 15 minutes after our bags, but they were there waiting for us when we got off, much to our relief. Our hotel for the week is the Moorea Pearl.  The first two nights we are staying in an overwater bungalow.  Our bungalow sits on four pillars about 3 feet above the ocean.  We have a little private pier with a ladder for swimming, and a window in our floor for watching the fish.  Misa and I swam about 150 feet around the bungalows toward the beach, but ran into coral about 100 feet off-shore and had to swim back to our bungalow.  I wasn't too excited about the 300 foot swim in open ocean, but I survived and feel happy for Misa that we tried. We spent the rest of the day in the pool, then supper at our hotel where we stole some bread to feed the fish under our bungalow.  Misa figured out how to throw the bread so it landed under the window in our floor, creating a feeding frenzy we can watch, since all of the TV is in French.  When we turn on the light for our back porch it also turns on a light under our bungalow so we can see the fish.  There were probably around 50 small fish (6 inches) and 20 large fish (1-2 feet) under our bungalow all night. Now we are getting ready for bed, Misa is reading while Katka and I write our emails and updates.