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Published: September 23rd 2023
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For those of you that know us, you are familiar with how we travel and why I select certain places over others at particular times. It's all about the points, miles and free travel because we surely can't afford travel like we do on our public safety salaries alone. Of course Tahiti has always been on our travel bucket list, but it quickly rose to #1 when I scored a 48 hr flash sale on United for about half the miles it would ordinarily cost (approximately 1 credit card sign-up bonus for two round-trip tickets).
Tahiti, or more aptly called French Polynesia for it's collection of 118 islands and not just the one largest island of Tahiti, has enticed me not for the $2k a night over the water bungalows but rather one of the few and best places on earth to swim with Humpback whales. Of course scuba diving too...always diving. Tahiti is an 8 hour flight from San Francisco, or as they say 1 movie past Hawaii, in the South Pacific Ocean. Tahiti was first "discovered" in the 1700's by Europeans, mesmerized by what they described as "noble savages" who instead of killing the colonialists were willing
to sell their beautiful tattooed and half nude women for a single nail. By comparison, Fiji was still partaking in head shrinking and cannibalism until the 20th century, so understandably Tahiti was the sought after paradise for sailors long at sea. The movie "The Bounty" about the mutiny on the HMS Bounty captures perfectly what the lure was for sailors to want to stay. It wasn't until the 1960s that flights were even possible here, and it shows. Unlike Hawaii, there is still a real absence of tourism in most places and happily not a Starbucks to be found.
We spent our first 4 days on the island of Tahiti, where all international flights come into. Most travelers immediately fly off to Bora Bora and other islands, but we decided to stay a few days and circumnavigate the island a few times. The abundance of waterfalls, empty beaches and steep green mountains rising from the beaches made it well worth the stop. We stayed in a beach hut called Fare Arearea, on the east part of the island. It poured rain off and on the first couple days which was fine by us coming from the arid desert in
Arizona. We immediately fell in love with the resident dog "Fare," a black and white mix who reminded us of one of ours. Fare happily made himself at home in our hut when we invited him in. We quickly learned he loved to dig up and eat live carbs with incredible enthusiasm and skill, so we spent our days and nights hunting with him along the beach. We tried sharing our meals with him but he preferred raw crab and our company instead.
Ironically French Polynesia is not known for its white sandy beaches despite what some photos show, but we found some beautiful spots along the coasts to swim in the gin clear waters off its coast. Most of the beaches here are black volcanic sand, and a bit rocky. We spent out last day diving some wrecks in the lagoon off the airport. The visibility wasn't great because of all the rain, but still incredible. One of the wrecks was a WWII Catalina seaplane, that became one of our favorite wrecks to date. Next stop, 4 days on the island of Moorea to the humpback nursery of the Pacific.
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