Papeete, Tahiti

We'd been at sea for a long time. It was nice to be coming into port again. Because Easter Island belongs to Chile, they keep it at the same time as the mainland. Because of this, there is a panhandle in the time zone line in that area. We ended up changing our clocks back an hour a day for five days! I love the 25 hour days, but when we get that many in a row, it kind of messes with your inner clock. I was waking up WAY too early this week. I was awake before 6 this morning and as a result, exhausted tonight. Hopefully I'll get a good night's sleep tonight and be back to normal.

The ship arrived in Papeete at about 7:00 this morning. We were ready to get off by 7:30, before they were allowing us off! I had arranged for a tour with a group from Cruise Critic. There were 12 of us. We got in the back of 2 trucks with benches along the sides and headed out. We had to go thru town first. Papeete is a fair size city with a lot of traffic. Not at all quaint or picturesque. Once out of town though, it was very green and pretty. We drove along the coast where we saw a lot of surfers. Our first stop was a gas station. Then we stopped at a bank! The guide wanted to be paid in South Sea Francs so wanted to change money before we took off. A bit odd, but it was fast, so no biggie.

 

After about 40 minutes we turned inland on a gravel road. We stopped every so often to look at the various fruit and flowers growing there. It started to pour, which was interesting. Not sure why we were all so surprised. I guess because it had been beautiful sunshine in town. In the mountains the clouds form and just let go. We were covered on top but the rain came in on the sides. Several of us were quite soaked.

The road followed a river, passing over a bridge and several dams. They have a number of hydroelectric plants, providing 40% of the island's electricity. There were waterfalls everywhere, it was very pretty and VERY green. We stopped on top of one dam. The guide took out some bread and threw pieces into the water. Eels came up out of the mud to eat it, BIG eels, about 4' long! It was amazing! We drove thru 2 downpours and past about 8 waterfalls before turning back to return to Papeete. Our last stop was by the river where there were some rapids. Below the rapids was a beautiful pool. The guide said the water was warm. WRONG! It was freezing! But we went in anyway. Only 4 in the group went in. The others really missed out.

 

Back in town we boarded the ship to change and have lunch. Within the hour, we were back on the pier. We headed to the market first. It covered about a city block and was very clean. They sold crafts as well as fruit, meat and fish. No smell, which is amazing for a market like that. We've smelled some really bad ones. On the second floor were all souvenir type shops, with an escalator going up! We looked all around those shops. There were a lot of wood carvings, pearls, jewelry made of mother of pearl. There were a lot of beautiful dresses, shirts, etc, made of colorful fabric. Most of the fabric was poly/cotton, so not of interest to me.

 

After the market, we headed to the Pearl Market.......a store with that name. They seemed to be doing quite a lot of business from people from the ship. We left there to go to another pearl store we'd heard about and ran into a fabric store. There they had 100% cotton fabrics in bright colors. I bought some of course. The store was owned by an elderly Chinese couple who had been born on Tahiti. Mel thought that was interesting. After that, we stopped at every pearl store on our way to the Pearl Museum (in another store). They had a nice display of royal crowns and other jewelry as well as a history of when pearls were discovered, etc. It was interesting. They gave us a ride back to town.........to their other store. We did buy a beautiful pendant with a peacock colored pearl. I'd never heard of that before, but it shines a teal-green and pink, really beautiful. We were back onboard by 4:30, with enough time to shower and get ready for our 5:30 dinner.

 

We were supposed to leave port at 5:30 but the captain announced that a local contractor was doing some work on the ship and hadn't finished yet so we set sail at about 7 instead. Tahiti was beautiful, but I'm really looking forward to Bora Bora.