Papeete

PAPEETE TAHITI

This island is MUCH larger than Bora Bora and is much more developed and busy. You see many houses marching up the side of the extinct volcano;the sides are more sloping than in Bora Bora. Thereare more people here too: probably 10,000 alone on the streets of Papeete on a given day. They have traffic jams from 6-8 in the morning and 4 to 6 in the evenings.

We had breakfast in the cabin and then were lucky enough to be on the first tour to go out: Highlights of Tahiti. This was an air conditioned motor coach and there were about 36 of us. The architecture here is very suggestive of French but not overwhelmingly so. The colors are vibrant as many Caribbean ones are. The minister of one church has paint sent to him from China each year to paint his church (the weather is very hot and humid) so whatever color is his church will also be seen on many folks’ homes as the extra paint is distributed.

58 percent are Christian, a smaller percentage Catholic, and less than 1% Muslim, or Jewish, or others. Polynesians are the majority but 38% are Chinese who again own many of the businesses. French are a smaller number.

It was in the 80s today with humidity even higher. That simply wipes us out.

Our first stop was the home of one of the co-authors of Mutiny on the Bounty and it has been renovated to the exact way it looked when the book was written. The docent was very informative and I quite enjoyed this more than I expected. His name was James Norton (?) Hall.

Other stops included the blow hole (not much of one this stop I’m afraid). We saw this years ago when we were here but it is so built up around it now and the spray was much less impressive. Last time two people got drenched and their cameras were ruined. We also went deep into a valley to see a gorgeous waterfall. And also stopped at a lighthouse and toured the displays there. Ed and I had seen these latter two stops last trip here (2008? 2010?) both both areas are so much built it up it made us wonder until we began to recall specifics such as the fact that I twisted my ankle in a crab hole at the lighthouse last time. We had previously visited the Gaugin home here but it was destroyed sometime ago in a typhoon and was never rebuilt.

They have had a lot of rain and flooding recently as has Bora Bora so you saw a lot of construction and dead wood which had been washed down from the mountains or on the shore. There is a lot of volcanic rock around here. While the sands in Bora Bora were white (very fine) sand, they were all black sand beaches here. We saw many folks swimming in the surf and Ed got a great photo of a mother and child emerging from the surf.

There were many small shops and the usual kinds of things for sale.

When we returned from the tour we had lunch on the ship and then went into town to see what was there. Not much exciting I’m afraid but Ed bought a shirt and I got a cute and very different top; now to find something for the bottom that matches! Then we went into this covered open air market which had everything from soup to nuts. But nothing that enticed us. There was an internet café at the top where you could use the internet for an hour for $2 but we didn’t have any of our devices with us to make it worth our while. So we returned to the ship, my face beet red and soaked. I showered and felt marginally better. This meant a lot of laundry going out tonight too. Thank theLord for laundry privileges!

We had supper with only one other person at our table but he is great fun. The waiter has such a dry sense of humor he makes it all fun.

Ed just told me we did 3.6 miles today. Still not enough to keep ahead of the calories I’m taking in, mostly in the form of fruits so I try to justify it. I’m still working on balance.

We are both moving along in the resolution of our lung issues. I have fewer and fewer coughing episodes and I have lots of company. You hear a lot of coughing around on these tours.

Both islands talked a lot about the impact of 9/11 and the 2008 economic crisis from which they have still not recovered. Tourism is still their major industry and while they are a part of the French Polynesia, they have no French benefits.

Tonite’s Show: was a comic and he was very good. Had me laughing so hard I surely cleared out of a lot of my lungs. Found the photos we’ve been doing with the ship’s staff and put them into our folder for later.