Advertisement
Published: October 5th 2008
Edit Blog Post
I made a mental note of how beautiful the mountain looked in the bright morning sunshine as we walked down for breakfast. Vlad came over and explained to us that he wouldn’t be able to take us directly to the airport motu in his speedboat as it was still too choppy over that part of the island. He’d tried to find someone else with a bigger boat but couldn’t so instead he explained that we’d have to go back directly across to the mainland, then travel around the island by taxi to get to the airport shuttle boat.
We spent the morning taking as many pictures and videos of the place to help us remember how beautiful it is.
Vlad gave us a large shell to use as a soap dish as a leaving gift. It makes a change from a shell necklace. We promised to leave him a good review on trip advisor and told him that we‘d be back one day.
The journey to the mainland was a breeze compared to the last time. It was still slightly bumpy but in about 8 minutes we were unloading our bags and getting into a mini bus. As
usual there were more pick ups to do which seemed to take ages and we started worrying a bit as we had the shuttle boat to catch and if we missed it we’d miss the flight too. Luckily we made it with ten minutes to spare.
The flight back to Tahiti was only about a quarter full. This time I got the window seat and had the awesome view of the sparkling blue lagoon as we took off. I tried to get as many photos of it as I could. They say that Bora Bora is most beautiful from the air.
There was a lot more turbulance this time than we’d had on the other flights, and we landed with a bit of a bump. We were worried we’d go off the end of the runway into the water as we seemed to be going so fast, but luckily it slowed down (and there was actually plenty of runway still to spare when we looked so it wasn’t a near miss after all). Many of the islands in between Bora and Tahiti were hidden under banks of heavy cloud this time so we didn’t get any more pictures.
Beni from Fare Suisse guesthouse picked us up again and we ended up back in the same room as we stayed on our first night in Tahiti.
This time we didn’t want to be out too late as we remembered how dodgy parts of Papeete felt at night, so at 6pm we headed to a nearby Italian restaurant we’d scoped out last time. The pizza and lasagne we ordered were the best we’d had in ages and they filled us up so much that we couldn’t even finish the litre jug of beer we’d bought to share. Everything here felt so cheap compared to Bora - our whole meal and beer only came to about £35!
We popped into the supermarket for a few bits on our way back. We could even afford to buy some new deodorant, as it was a bargain at £1.50! We also thought ahead and bought some pain au chocolates for breakfast tomorrow as the flight is early.
We headed back to Fare Suisse without taking any wrong turns this time and spent the rest of the evening doing research on camper vans in New Zealand.
Things we’ve learnt about
Tahiti and her islands:
There are geckos, lizards and tiny ants everywhere (just like everywhere in the South Pacific)
It’s expensive - much more so on Bora Bora
You’ve got to get up early if you want to get fresh croissants or baguettes
Locals shake hands differently - they either tap their hands together twice rather than actually shaking hands, or they make the phone symbol with their hands and shake it
There are lots of different ways to tie a sarong, it’s a shame that I can’t remember any of them!
French food is very tasty, as is French wine (just avoid the cheap boxes as these are bad!)
It feels much more like Europe than anywhere else we’ve visited so far. Put it this way, if you were struggling with heavy bags nobody here would stop to offer you a lift. Mostly people don’t say hello to you when you walk past them.
Even if people know you are English, they always speak to you in French first and wait for you to tell them you didn’t understand.
Speaking French becomes second nature quickly - we know we’re going to have to remind ourselves to stop saying Bonjour,
merci and café au lait etc when we get to our next stop!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.357s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 11; qc: 55; dbt: 0.2706s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb