Travel with Dale & Margaret

We arrived in Papeete this morning at the sinful hour of 4:45 am local time.  The Air France 777 flight was almost uneventful until we were on our final approach.   Tahiti, let’s face it, is just a tiny speck of an island in the middle of a great big ocean, and once in a while, I guess, the pilot misses.  In our case, the pilot determined at an altitude of 300 feet that we had too much tailwind, so as we were about to touch down he gunned the engines and climbed rapidly to 4,000 feet.   Dale used to have a private pilot license, and has done many go-arounds in small planes over the years, but with 8 million miles of commercial flying between the two of us, Dale has only had one aborted landing (in England) and I’ve experienced none.  One of the flight attendants, who has been flying this route for nine years, told us has never had this happen before!  A little too much excitement for 4:30 in the morning!

With that part of the adventure behind us, we set out to find the bag storage area at Papeete airport, checked our 3 large bags, and set out to find a taxi to take us to the pier to catch the ferry to Moorea.   We found a taxi and “Popo”, our driver, gave us some good insider info on Tahiti.  You can see her below in the video link.  Her advice to us: 1. It is very expensive.  2. They don’t negotiate prices, the saying she used was “we’re not in Mexico” and 3. Get local money from the ATM or pay with a credit card, it’s the best exchange rate and if the locals, who will accept dollars and euros, do the exchange, you’ll pay much more.

Popo brought us to the pier and as we pulled up to the ticket area, we saw a strange looking man staring at our cab.  He walked up to the window…just inches from Dale’s face and slowly raised his middle finger (Dale thought better than to take a picture of it)!  Popo said “Welcome to Tahiti” (not a very nice welcome to say the least).  She explained that there had been a large party in the downtown area the night before and that he must still be drunk or something.   Made me a little nervous to get out of the cab!

We were told that there were no restaurants open and that there were public restrooms.  Well, Dale went on a walk-about and, after finding the locals cleaning the public restrooms less than friendly, was enterprising and found a nice café with a clean restroom, good coffee and some nice French pastries!  He came back just as it was time to get tickets for the large ferry which that was leaving at 6:45 am.  There was also a catamaran that was leaving at 7:30 that was faster (1/2 hour vs. 1 hour), but we figured, for the same price, we should just go!

The ferry was LARGE and very industrial.   We boarded by walking up a steel ramp where they were also loading cars and tanker trucks.  The ferry had three levels, lots of viewing options and a nice café with outdoor tables at the back of the ship.  Very clean and nice restrooms too!  The engines were quiet, the ride was smooth and there were only about eight people in the air conditioned seating area at the front of the ship.

After getting me settled with our bags, Dale took a walk-about to get some video and stills and help some locals take their pictures with their point and shoots, cleaning their lenses, taking them off night scene mode and so on.  They were all very appreciative, or so he tells me.  We arrived in a scenic Moorea harbor, found a nice cab driver, his wife threw our heavy bags in the back of the van (shrugging off Dale’s attempts to help), and we drove 15 minutes to the Pearl Moorea Resort and Spa.

We got to the hotel at 8:00 am where we were warmly greeted.  They gave us with some cold fruity drinks and moist towels while the check-in staff set about finding out if our room was ready.  And, Voila! our room was ready (this is a blessing after a red-eye and given that it was so early in the morning)!  Dale filmed some video of the check-in process and we were taken to our over-water bungalow.  Wow!  What can you say?  Spectacular?  Incredible?  Crazy good!  I unpacked and Dale took some more pictures of the area.  We then took a 10 minute walk to town where we bought some basic items including vodka, tonic, limes, Coronas, wine and cheese (just the essentials!) and came back to relax in our room.

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