It was a very sudden transition from Spanish to French as we boarded the plane on Easter Island and headed to Papeete on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia. Up to this point, I had been doing most of the negotiating with what little Spanish I have. On Tahiti and Bora Bora David made use of his French.
We had a late night flight and arrived at about 1:00 am. At the airport, we were greeted by live polynesian music and a woman doing a welcome dance as we wound our way through the immigration line. Our airbnb host was waiting up for us and showed us by flashlight to our backyard bungalow. I caught the fragrance of jasmine on the night air as we entered.
In the morning, we were able to see more of our surroundings -- the jasmine covered patio with a picnic table and entry into the open air kitchen and the private garden area.
After a few hours of sleep, we got directions to the local shopping area and went in search of provisions. Amazingly, even though Tahiti is halfway around the world from France, it is very French -- we found a little patisserie that made authentic croissants and eclairs and many of the food products in the grocery store were imported from France. Here is our haul from that first shopping trip.
That afternoon, we were incredibly hot and sweaty in the humid air, so we changed into bathing suits and went in search of the ocean. We found a narrow path between houses that gave us access to a little bit of beach and we lolled about in the shallow water for a while.
If we had intended to go to Tahiti for a holiday in the sun, we would have been pretty disappointed. The heat and humidity that afternoon were precursors to a torrential downpour that night. We had arrived during the rainy season. However, this stopover was on the itinerary because it is how you get from Easter Island to New Zealand, so we determined to make the best of it anyway. We spent another day in our bungalow on Tahiti island and then flew to Bora Bora island, an amazing paradise among paradises. We could see it mistily, surrounded by its atoll, through the plane window as we circled to land.
The landing strip is on one of the atoll islands, so we were transported by ferry from there to Vaitape, the major settlement on Bora Bora.
The young woman who picked us up and drove us to our bungalow was born on Bora Bora and actually grew up in this paradise. She must have had good karma in her past lives.
Our spacious, thatch-roofed bungalow was right across the road from a nice beach and we had coconut trees in our yard.
If you look closely at the photo below, you can see spikes with little green buds on them - those are baby coconuts! You can see coconuts at various stages of development on this tree right up to the almost mature ones at the bottom left.
Here is our beach under cloudy skies.
Here is me enjoying a cool dip in the crystal clear water.
Unfortunately, our snorkeling trip to the coral reef was canceled due to a storm that day. However, we had a few days of some sun, some rain, in one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was well worth it. When we were waiting for the ferry to take us back to the airport, we were serenaded by a gentleman playing a ukulele and singing traditional polynesian music under a thatch roofed pavilion.
Next, we flew to New Zealand….
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