Allo Allo

---

We arrived in Papeete (Tahiti), near to Midnight on the 8th December and our first impressions of the place were: "oh my god, it's HOT!" We were taken to a small Pension/b&b for our first night in paradise, there had been a bit of a drought in the region and rains were hoped to clear the stuffy atmosphere. The following morning we had a quick look around the town (well, not much to be said about it other than the fact that the price of Nutella almost gave us a heart attack! We later found out that Nutella wasn't the only expensive thing there). We hopped on a ferry to the nearby smaller island of Moorea which is supposed to be much nicer than Tahiti island itself. We had read that the cheapest stay option is camping at Camping Nelson. Upon arrival we discovered that for a few bucks more we could upgrade our small tent for a small bedroom with a fan, we took this option and made this our home for 10 days. This proved to be a very good option given the mad heat and blood-thirsty insects around. The place had its own beach access and snorkelling around the adjacent reef was cool especially during the frequent downpours which increasingly occured during the afternoons. The views weren't bad either with the beautiful blues of the lagoon and coconut trees bathed in the glow of glorious sunsets. Island life was fairly laid back and involved eating lots of fruit and travelling to several sites for sunbathing/snorkelling and enjoying the views of the mountains covered in tropical forests. The Island is part of France and thus has shops with Laure's favourite foods, which we had lots of. We also rented bikes for a day to cycle around the island, 65 kms in total, mostly flat but still very painful on the old backside! We then decided to upgrade to a scooter (a nice bright red one this time) for a couple of days, it made trips to the shops a lot easier, and allowed us to discover the mountains- no way was I (Laure of course) going to ride my bike up the big hills even with 21 gears!!!. We had no crashes, thankfully and even tried a bit of offroading, the 50cc bike nearly decided it had had enough of this but a local lad got it going again for us without too much trouble.
Given that this time is the wet season we had expected a few mosquitos but not the nasties that hung out around the camp showers feasting on you at all opportunities, both Laure and myself had to learn to dance whilst showering etc to avoid being drained of our life fluids. The fan in conjunction with lots of smoky, cancer inducing coils prevented them from feasting on us at night, but if we return to this part of the Pacific again we'll come in the dry season and save up to stay at one of the swanky bungalow resorts with aircon and room service like the fat americans!
For our final night we returned to Papeete and stayed at a b&b recommended by a Aussie fellow called Steve, he had secured a bunk there. The place was not too badly priced by Tahitian standards and Sisco the host was very friendly but the bed was designed by the Marquis de Sade, which he reserved for those he favoured the least. Can't remember the name of the place but we wouldn't recommend it! Needless to say the sleep was not great and we had a very early start for our breakfast time flight to Auckland, and the start of a whole new leg of the trip, hopefully without any translation problems.

---