Blogs from French Polynesia, Oceania

Today we head back across to Tahiti, the main reason for this being a tour into the island’s interior which we’ve got planned for tomorrow. We’re very sad to be leaving our relaxing bungalow on the shores of the Moorea lagoon. But first the hazards of check out. The delightful young French girl who’s job it is to shepherd us out of our lodgings knows how to say “check out”, but that seems to be about where her English stops … and our French … well “bonjour”’s about it. We got the accommodation to book us a taxi to the ferry terminal, but we still don’t know when or if it’s coming or how we’re supposed to pay for it, and no amount of talking slowly and hand gesturing seem to be getting the questions across. ... read more

Today we’ve signed up for a land based tour of the island with the apparently iconic local company Franckyfranck Tours. Issy and I did this same excursion back in 2014 with the man Franckyfranck himself. Issy’s decided to pass on a repeat so Scott and I set of on our own. It seems that Franckyfranck isn’t going to guide us today but rather his offsider Tammo. Tammo tells that he’s originally from Germany, but first came to the Marquesas 25 years ago, so for all intents and purposes he’s a local. When we were here in 2014 Franckyfranck lived on his yacht, which we were given to understand was just an interim measure. Well it’s either been a very long interim or housing here’s a bit hard to come by … it seems he still lives ... read more

We were all feeling like zombies when we arrived here yesterday so we sleep in ‘til about lunchtime. We think we remember through our zombiness walking a few hundred metres to the supermarket in the pitch blackness last night to stock up on some supplies for breakfast. If I’m remembering correctly it was a terrifying expedition that we were probably lucky to survive in our near comatose states - total darkness, no streetlights, no footpath and a heavily trafficked main road. And as if to prove how stupid we were being we then ventured out along the same road again to get pizza. And very nice pizza it was too. The young lady who served us apologised for the quality of her English, which made it about half a dozen times yesterday that this had happened. ... read more

The next morning, we skipped breakfast and headed to the market in Papeete instead. We checked out of the hotel and headed down the mountain one last time. Papeete is the capital of Tahiti. Much like Hawaii, they pronounce all the vowels. So it's pronounced Papay-EETEE. The market there reminded me of a few others I've been to - some local fruits and vegetables, but mostly stuff for tourists. There may be sections that we missed that would have been more used by locals, but I didn't get the sense that this was set up for locals. It was just as well that we didn't spend much time, because we had a ferry to catch! We stopped for a quick but nice bite to eat before heading to the ferry. It was so hot, at 1030am, ... read more