Papeete (Tahiti), French Polynesia - February 11

ice in a beer pitcher...brilliant!

Partly cloudy, 30 degrees, feels like 39 – so the weather report says, it was hot, but 39? And I’m absolutely sure I’m NOT getting used to it! NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

Another PM tour let’s us laze a bit, but we want to see the town, so we set out to explore a bit. There really isn’t much to it…a wet market, a handicrafts market, a Macdonald’s

lunch spot

(nothing regional, we of course checked), and a smallish downtown area. We saw a few restaurants and bars, but we were a bit early (before 11.) We finally stumbled upon what seemed like the bar district with a couple cafés open. One had misters to cool the air a bit, so we decided a pizza and some beer was a good idea…it was.

The pizza wasn’t the best in the world, but the beer was cold and the location was semi-charming. The beer was cold because of the beer cooling technology used…the pitcher had a separate ice

temple for human sacrifices

compartment next to where the beer was…brilliant! How have I never seen one of these before?

I am still wrapping my head around hearing French in a tropical place. Once at the café it was very French…everyone was smoking…don’t love it, but that’s how they do it. Things continue to be expensive…20USD for the pitcher. The interesting thing was that there were day and evening prices. 20 in the day or 30 in the evening…all drinks were priced 1.5times in the evening, food was the same.

male tiki

Our PM tour was called “Exploring Tahiti’s West Coast” We travelled by good ol’ big air-conditioned coach. Too much of these coaches can be hard on the head for me, but since we haven’t been on one for a while, I kind of

female tiki

welcomed boarding one.

We drove about 30 minutes down Tahiti’s west coast until we stopped at Arahurahu Marae, an ancient Polynesian temple site. Our guide told us about many fruits and flowering trees in the site. He mentioned that flowering and fruit bearing trees were planted to honor the gods. They were tall and lush and filled with fruits and flowers.

The main attraction of this visit was to see the temple. It was here that human sacrifices were made. Apparently, those who were sacrificed were volunteers, as the families of the sacrificed were gifted land and honor as a result of the sacrifice.

waterfall gloriousness

The next stop was another 30 minutes drive to arrive at the Water Gardens of Vaipahi. Here we listened as the guide described the many fruits and flowers we saw along with associated stories. This place was

hanging fern cave

extremely lush and filled with ponds, flowering trees and bushes and plants. In addition to the expected wild chickens and roosters roaming about there were also geese and ducks.

Back on the bus to make it to our final stop which was the Maraa Grotto, or what the guide called the fern cave. Our visit here was to the mouth of a cave, the base of which was a pool.

more hanging fern cave

The pool was fed by a lake on the top of the ceiling of the cave. From the roof of the cave grew a ton of hanging ferns…hard to explain, but awesome. There was a sign warning not to swim in the pool, but there were a bunch of guys jumping and swimming.

gorgeous flowers

Today’s tour was great, made great by the guide. The guide was a 20 something guy, the bus driver was his uncle and the supervisor for the tour was the guide’s mother!

the foliage is so thick