Tahiti

For a while I thought this text would start the following way: "if Tahiti rhymes with paradise for you, just grab another travel magazine because that's just bullshit!". But fortunately it changed.

Papeete

We arrived in French Polynesia late in the evening. I had pre booked the cheapest shithole in town. Sorry for the "S" words, but the reason for that is that the first day in Tahiti was more like hell. The only good thing was the great company of Adam, Anna and later Lis. But lets take it in parts.
First just a short description of what is Tahiti. Tahiti is a french vacation colony, which in a way is good because it's EU territory so we can just go through the border control without any questions. Tahiti is also a surfers paradise. What we didn't know was that this was only in the southern part of the island and that Papeete, the capital, had no beach. So we arrived in Papeete in the evening and took a taxi to the Hostel TeAmo, very close to the city center where we paid only 2550 XPF per night. I sat down in the reception reading when Adam arrived. He had also taken our flight but it took him a bit longer to get out of the airport, probably because he is from the USA. Unfortunately he makes the same mistake as we did and books two nights. We started talking and after a while Anna also from the US arrived and joined us. We talked about our trips and about Anna's experience in a boat. She is in Papeete to work in a teaching sailing boat that will sail to Hawaii in a week time. We only went to bed when the hostel owner asked us to make less noise.

The next day in Papeete was really depressing... First it was the first of May (our second in two days since we gained one day of life when crossing the international time line) so most things were closed. Then we found out there was no beach in Papeete and worse, there were no buses to the southern beaches. We then confirmed in situ that Tahiti is really expensive and that Papeete is a place to get out of as fast as possible! What to do then? Well me and Adam just grabbed some beers and sat down in the "lounge" of the hostel talking and laughing the rest of the afternoon in Tiago's and Anna's company.

In the evening the three guys went for dinner at the great open air food night market in the harbour where they serve all sorts of grilled stuff at reasonable prices. After that we grabbed Anna and Lis from their sailing boat and went for a beer at the 3 Broisseurs. Of course we were talking a lot about the life on the boat and we were curious about funny stories that happen onboard.

Moorea

There´s two options in Tahiti if one wants to get some sun and beach: one is to go to the south of the island, the other is to take a ferry to the neighbour island of Moorea, which is only 30 min away.

We took the second option. We took the bus from the ferry terminal to Haapit. After 30 min Tiago saw a sign indicating Mark´s place to the right. I pressed something and the bus stopped. After 10 min walking in a muddy road (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that is has been raining like hell during parts of the day!) we met Mark, who didn´t seem very happy to see us at first. He was probably thinking where he would put the three of us. Once he figered it out, his mood changed and he started talking about his place and the amazing Moorea (where the sea water is so pure that if we can filter through our teeth you can drink it, Marks words). We had to wait for over an hour for our "room" to be ready. During that time we were playing football in the garden and getting our head wet with cold water (the temperature and humidity are amazingly high).

After droping our stuff Mark, who was going to pick up some people from the harbour gave us a ride to the amazing paradise, Pineapple beach. And finally we said "thank god, Tahiti is like we imagined it would be"! Torquoise clear waters, white sand, coconut trees, sun. In other words, paradise. :) We entered the water and immediately something huge with about 1m diameter comes and meets us. It frightened us until we noticed what it was. A stinger ray. And after the first one two more came. Amazing, I had never experienced that! We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the beach, reading and some sleeping and snoring!

In the evening we had a few beers and after that decided to crash a party that was happening on the other side of Mark´s complex. We met with a really nice group of French and Polynesian who have moved to Tahiti and live and work there and spent the rest of the night talking and partying. In the end of the evening (1.30 am...) we still went to a bar in the village and closed it (at 2.00 am...).

In the last day in Moorea and Tahiti, we were planning to climb the mountain from where we should get a great 360 degrees over the island and the lagoon that surrounds it. Unfortunately, it started pouring down when we finished breakfast and it only stopped a couple of hours before we had to take the ferry back to Tahiti, which didn't give us enough time. At three in the afternoon me and Tiago put our bags down by the main road that goes arround the island. There should be a bus passing sometime after three... There are no timetables and the bus drivers only start their buses if they feel there will be enough passangers to pay for the trip! Well, we waited for 45 min and when we were almost preparing to take off our t-shirts and start hitch-hiking two of the girls we had met the night before, passed by and offered us a lift.

We then said goodbye to paradise (we were going back to Papeete and from there we had to make time before going to the airport) a paradise that is not for a backpacker's pocket, but it was still worth spending 4 days here.