Papeete

We arrived in Papeete at 5:00 AM, so when I came up to Horizons we were docked despite it still being dark out. The first thing I saw were the headlights and taillights of traffic along the road. It felt like we hadn’t seen traffic in months and it was a bit jarring. It confirmed my suspicions that the Papeete stop would be quite different from the others in French Polynesia.

The upside of the larger population was easy availability of some items that we’d run low on. I needed Advil and there was a pharmacy directly across from the port terminal, so we did a quick walk over to pick that up. We also walked around town a bit and perused the local market. Liz’s cousin Linda and her husband David were due to board the ship in Papeete, so we looked for them in the termina and voila, there they were. They couldn’t board yet, but it was nice to see them.

David and Linda were able to board around 11:00 so we all had lunch together in the Terrace. Our plan for the afternoon was a bit vague, but we all wanted to find a good beach. We found one that looked pretty and headed out. That’s when we ran into a snag. With five of us (Devin was feeling run down and stayed behind) we wouldn’t fit in a standard taxi. We went to the taxi stand and they called a van for us. When he got there he said he could take us to the beach, but when I asked if he could pick us up later he was not interested. He said people returning from the beach were wet and sandy and he wanted nothing to do with that. I didn’t want to wind up at the beach with no way back, so we asked if there was somewhere else he could take us. He suggested a black sand beach near a hotel where we could call for a taxi when we were done, and we agreed.

The black sand beach was near the “Le Tahiti” hotel. It was no good for snorkeling, but it was pretty and the water was warm. We enjoyed some swimming and relaxing. When it was time to head back we had the hotel call us a taxi. The driver who came was infinitely more pleasant than the guy who had driven us out and we had a nice conversation on our way back to the ship.

Liz’s dad Tom was also due in this day, but not until much later. Thomas was very excited at the prospect of his grandfather coming on board and headed down a couple of times to Tom’s room to see if he was in yet, but just missed him. We’d have to wait until the next day.Les mer