Monday - February 18, 2008
Papeete, Tahiti
Tahiti is a little like Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands, in that it is much more developed than the other islands, but still has pockets of natural beauty amongst the commercial and residential areas. Papeete is like any city, with lots of shops, restaurants, and even a mall. It has a lot of traffic and is not really all that inviting a place to spend much time in. But it does have a couple of nice parks, a simple cathedral that has some lovely stained glass windows with religious scenes entwined with Polynesian motifs, including flying fish, and an interesting 2-level marketplace that is fun to wander through.
Seeing as we had the morning to ourselves, we decided to check out the market. Everything was almost still the same as the last time we saw it, right down to the two ladies selling woven baskets and souvenirs that I included in my previous Tahitian blog. The only difference was that they were three years older and instead of wearing real flowers in their hair, they had artificial ones! Times must be tough in Papeete too. But we could still wander through stalls with fresh flowers for sale, bolts of colorful material, luscious looking fruits and vegetables, and rows of fresh fish.
We wandered around town for a bit, getting a kick out of the Vahine's Secret store that sold... you guessed it, racy underwear, and the McDonald's restaurant that had no walls. By noon we were hot and tired (the temperature was in the 80s and the humidity was equally high), so we wandered over to a brew pub by the port and had a nice, but very expensive lunch. We paid $50 for a pizza, a club sandwich, a beer, and 2 cokes! Tahiti is an expensive island, no matter where you eat.
Then it was time for our tour, so we walked back to the port to board our jeep and head off along the coast for 2 stops for a couple of magnificent views before turning into the interior of the island on a dirt road. The first viewpoint gave a look back across the reefs to the city with the island of Moorea in the background. The next stop gave us gorgeous views over the black sand beaches and the surfers who were catching some big waves. Again, the clouds were quite magnificent today. The sky is incredibly blue, with these huge, white puffballs that look like explosions! The water has so many shades of blue, from sapphire to turquoise, that you can't count them all. Add to this scene the black sand beach, and it all makes quite a lovely picture.
Once you leave the coast for the interior, the landscape immediately changes from the flat fields of taro and tropical flowers to towering mountain peaks that are covered in trees and ferns, with waterfalls pouring down the sides into streams and rivers. It started to rain shortly after we left the coast, and it rained quite heavily for about 20 minutes or so. This was all it took to turn some of these rivers into raging torrents. As we came to a place where one could normally ford the river we had been driving along, we encountered a scene of high drama.
A group of Polynesians were struggling, without success, to rescue a man and his child from their truck that was stuck in the center of the river. Apparently, they had been caught by a flash flood. By the time we got there, the water was up to the windows. Our driver immediately leaped from the jeep with a heavy rope that he managed to get out to the man, and then, after a few tries, he pushed a dinghy out to the truck. We all stood on shore, silently cheering him on, and loudly exclaiming when both man and child made it to shore safely. I don't know when they managed to get the truck out because it was still there when we returned along the same road later that afternoon.
Once the rain stopped and the clouds lifted, we were rewarded with beautiful scenes of clouds hanging on the tops of the mountains, waterfalls in all directions, and tress covered with orange-red flowers. These are the Flame or Tulip trees that were originally imported from South Africa. Now they are all over the island and are an incredibly beautiful sight. The island is covered in flowers, everywhere you look. Some I can easily recognize, such as hibiscus, orchids, and bougainvillea, and others are more unfamiliar to North Americans, such Jacaranda trees, Frangipani, etc. Residential gardens are quite spectacular here, with flowering trees and shrubs and multi-colored leaves on large plants.
When we returned to the ship, the light on the hills above the city was quite lovely. As I stood on the balcony taking photographs of the scene, an incredible rainbow appeared between two mountains. It lingered for some time, so I shot photo after photo until it faded from view.
We ended the day with sail-away drink on the Sun deck with Marty and Lynn. We were hoping for a picture-book Tahitian sunset. Unfortunately, the sunset was less than spectacular, but I'll never forget the brilliance of that Tahitian rainbow.