Bonjour Tahiti...

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We'd been informed that Tahiti was extremely expensive so we were very wary of how this would effect our miniature budget. When we arrived at the airport at 1am it seemed ridiculous to pay for somewhere to sleep for only a few hours so we made ourselves comfortable on the floor in the airport lying on our sleeping bags and using our bags as pillows. It was very uncomfortabel and when the large fan above my head turned on I was being blown strongly in the face which meant I had a pretty rubbish night's sleep.

When morning came and the airport came to life we began our tired adventure to another Island called Moorea, where we'd heard it was cheaper and nicer. It was 6am when we began the adventure so the island had only just began it's daily routines.
The hussle and bussle of the airport seemed very loud and far to active for the amount of sleep I'd had, but we were told to catch a bus from the main road and then catch a ferry over to the island. Catching a bus was a bit of problem in itself as there were no obvious bus stops so we walked for quite way before guessing it would stop wherever you were.
The colourful, and particulary old looking bus, arrived and at first it seemed we wouldn't fit on with our bags. The bus driver waved at me frantically shouting in French (oh, in Tahiti, it's part of French Polynesia so everyone speaks French, that's when we found out too!) to get on. So we piled our bags into the bus treading on people and stuffing our backpacks into any gap we could find. People were ushering us further to the back of the bus waving and making noises in French that I didn't understand. As the only white people on the bus we were being studied from every angle by the locals, but nothing too intimidating.
We arrived at the harbour and scrambled out of the door of the bus and into the hot sun, paying our 300francs with our, what looked like, flowery monopoly money. With no idea what the currency was or how much it was worth and with no French speaker between us the journey felt like a magical mystery tour?!
We payed for and boarded a ferry to Moorea after our bags were unknowingly carted away in a trolly. I instantly fell asleep in the coolness of the air conditioning. Waking in Moorea harbour I walked off the ferry to find my bag in the trolly and then we had to find somewhere to stay, it would be silly to forward plan these things, that would be sensible.

Walking aimlessly around in the HOT sun didn't appeal to any of us, so I asked a few people where we could find a place suggested to us called Chez Nelson, luckily for me everyone I spoke to spoke in pure French, but judging by where they pointed and at what they pointed at I managed to work out that we had to get a bus 'that way!'
We had to wait in the harbour shelter for the next ferry to come in in order to catch the bus we needed, so after a long wait, feeling incredibly tired we eventually boarded a bus, telling the bus driver 'Chez Nelson' in my loudest and most clear french accent. He nodded miserably in a truely enthusiastic french manner and we sat down.

We arrived at Chez Nelson after seeing that Moorea wasn't exactly a bussling metropolis and booked ourselves into a little 3 bedded hut for 1800 francs a night, you have just as much idea of how much that is as I do.
The hut itself consisted of three beds, a window with some flowery curtains and a door, what more do we need?
After sausage pasta, our favourite, I was unsurprisingly pooped and was fast asleep as late as I could hold my eyes open, until 9pm.

Shopping was also made very difficult as everything was french and we still had no idea how much everything was. I knew from my travelling in France 4 years ago that I could survive on French sticks and jam, so that's what I bought. Frecnh sticks are incredibly cheap and the jam would last me a good few days and cost me no more than 47 francs for breakfast and lunch per day. Tea was more difficult but seeing a picture of baked beans on the side of a large tin can we assumed we'd get baked beans, genious! So even though Tahiti is very expensive our food budget was one of the smallest yet. Our evening meals; Baked Beans or Raviolli with a third of a french stick.

DAYS GO BY WITH SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS TO BOOT

After waking early most mornings to the sound of french people yelling and babbling from outside of our paper thin walled room our plan for our time there was very similar to the day before; lye in the sun, don't spend any money and chill out at our last hot, sunny holiday destination.
I lye on the beach smuthered in Sun cream under the 35'C (at least) burning yellow ball of gas for as long as I can, before almost melting into the sand, then crawling for the relative coolness of the 22'C lagoon.
One afternoon Matt and I (or team snorkle) ventured into the lagoon reef to once again and for the final time admire the stunning world under the ocean surface. Not to be dissapointed or leave us un-fulfilled a large ray flew like an under water eagle through the water in front of me, navy blue on its back and light cream beneath, hoovering the carpet of the reef.
On my way back to the beach in order to return the snorkle and masl before our hour was up I noticed a beautiful shell in behind some anenome, so with my snorkle now in my hand I dived down the short distance to thwack it from the anenome. I then brought it to the surface to find, living inside, a large and particularly ugly snail. I left it in the room hoping it would dry our and die so I could then scraped it out and keep the shell, that are always being sold at markets and souvenir shops.

After some discussion we decided staying in Tahiti for a full 5 days a bit of a waste of time with the adventures of America to come, so we called Air New Zealand to see if we could bring our flight forward. This was sadly not possible so we had to hold our heads high and prepare ourselves for 3 more days of sun and nothing-ness, with the company of our own thoughts, to pass the time.

With the thought of going home in the fore-front of my mind; i can;t help thinking about how strange it's going to be getting home. Opening cupboards of food, drinking something other than water at breakfast lunch and tea, sleepingin a room in complte silence, with no other breathing in the room. Thinking of being freezing cold wearing a huge jacket is so hard to contemplate when lying in the warm water of a Tahitian lagoon. How will my family thinkI've changed? how will they have changed? A lot can happen in a year, but when your at home no-one tends to do very much as time just passes by, in what I repeatedly call 'the real world' but why is home the 'real world' when I'm out here experiencing the 'actual world'? learning, seeing and experiencing the world at forst hand, surely that's the real world?
Having a choice of clothes will be something I can't wait for; after wearing one pair of jeans and one pair of trainers for over a year and managing with only 5 t-shirts as a choice; not only that, but they'll be clean and ironed. The only way I ever know if anything is clean is after a good sniff and even then it's a guess?! All my clothes are stuffed in backpack and rarely un-packed, each item has it's place, not in a drawer or a cupboard, but in a pocket, or strapped to the outside.

When I have so much time spare I find myself doing strange things, like for exampe a fly landed on my book whilst I was sat on the beach reading, instead of waving my hand at it to usher it away I simply studied it from about 12cm from my face so I could see every detail of it's tiny body watching how it moved for about 15 minutes, then it flew away and I carried on reading.
When you have nothing to think about, it's almost like you have an endless vault in which to walk down and as your walking you have little looks down each isle to see what's down there and what's going on; reminicing? the future? scenario's? the present? dreams?...the choice is yours if you un-lock it.
One thing that is fantastic about this empty life is that I have no worries, no time limits, nothing that bothers me, because if something does bother me or us then we can change it however or whenever we want.

One day I was reading my book in the strenuous South pacific sun until I couldn's take anymore, so I walk down to the ocean and submerged my head beneath the water with a feeling of relief, then as I was rising out of the sea looking around at the setting I was in I couldn't help but laugh, out loud at how incredible and unbelievable it was and how when I'm at home and I'm doing something stressful or annoying I can close my eyes and see the palm trees dipping into the ocean and the white sands and the crystal clear turqouise blue lagoon. I guess the main reason I laughed is dis-belif that I'm actually there.

I lay in bed one night and was woken by something crawling on my back, I jumped up after hitting it away, then scared of what it might be I scrambled up into a sitting position to see a black creature scuttle across my matress towards my pillow and then down the side of the bed. I got my iPod out to use the light form it to see what it was but it had gone. I lay in bed for a while then I heard something scurry up the wall next to my head, I lept up again to see a huge Cockroach headin gup into the rafters of the hut. I went back to sleep eventually after lying there in a bit of panic for while.

Our last day in Tahiti was spent on the mainland souvenir hunting and then we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Los Angeles at 2:20am. We had to wait at the airport from 6:00pm, it was very boring indeed!

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Comments

[Mum]

Clothes
Yep.. you've got cupboards and drawers full to overflowing with clean, ironed clothes. Can't wait to be doing your laundry again!!!!! See you soon. Love Mum x