We pulled into the dock at a suitably early hour and I opened the curtains of the stateroom to reveal the island paradise of Tahiti (I wish). Sadly we were at the docks, in an uninteresting part of town that is the capital of this very religious nation that was essentially closed due to it being Sunday. We disembarked and wandered around the neighbourhood, which was just a selection of bolted shut security roller doors painted with funky murals.
We tried hiring a car, it was going to be $400 for the day and we would have to return it to the airport. There were some extremely overpriced day tours we could undertake so we tried to jag a maxi taxi for our group of five to go exploring. We were having no luck and had almost given up and were heading back to the ship and then we stumbled across a lovely guy called Robert O'Connor, a native islander with a very Irish name. He took us on a delightful drive around the island. He was tour guide, translator, and driver all rolled into one. There is no way we could have done better.
First stop was the black sand beach where there both memorials to the infamous Bounty and Captain Cook. Cook was here to witness and track the path of the planet Venus across the sun. This only happens twice every 243 years with the two transits separated by eight years. The last transit was in 2012 and the next will be in 2117. The beach was clearly in full use on the day of our visit with the locals fishing, swimming, sun bathing, playing Bocce, and generally just having a good time. The shore was littered with outriggers and the black sand, while looking like dirt, was actually the remnants of the path of a volcano that had been ground into fine particles over many many years by the sea.
From there we moved off to the largest waterfall on the island, The Fautaua Falls. Apparently with a permit you can take a six hour hike to the top and soak in the pristine waters of The Fautaua River. I will have to take their word for it.
Some gardens were the next port of call and while perfectly charming they were not something to write home about. Lots of native species along with accompanying interpretative signage. The rainfall being so plentiful here the grounds were positively bucolic. From here we went to a very interesting water filled grotto that was billed as a cave and about three feet deep. Water was raining from the roof along with odd small pebble. Robert told us that when he was a kid he would never swim to the back as all the children believed there were monsters there. It was allegedly about 100 meters deep in to the mountain but the natural light faded at about the 15 - 20 meter mark. I thought it would make a great place for a midnight dip after a long day of sightseeing but I wasn't going to be doing that on my own with the ship leaving port at 3.00am and the the grotto being a 55 kilometer drive away.
That concluded our jaunt around the island which we managed to completely circumnavigate. We headed back passing a very expensive marina and what looked to be the major shopping district to plan our dinner.
Like the shopping precinct almost every restaurant was shut so we settled on the one within walking distance of the port. Named "Le Retro" I am not entirely sure what the retro elements were. We must have waited 15 minutes for someone to take our drink order. There were clear language barriers as my French is about as good as my Swahili. However when there are four people at the table and two dishes, defined as starters by their own menu are delivered with the main meals I think there may have been a little passive hostility towards the non locals at their tables.
Our waiter and the Maître D minced around the restaurant appearing to do nothing while the one waitress ran around and aggressively did everything else. The meals were pretty good but not good enough to make us stay for dessert so we headed back to the ship having contributed $300USD to the local economy and headed to our favourite bar, The Vines, where our favourite bartender "Gil", served us our regular night cap (or two) and headed to our stateroom to sleep the night away. Tomorrow we head to Moorea, which is twenty miles away. All these trips to shore are eating in to my drinking time. Thank goodness we have five sea days to follow!
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