SURVIVOR TAHITI – OR
Laura and George’s Amazing Polynesian Adventure
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| The pool and beach in front of our hotel in Papeete |
I didn’t know really what to call this trip; Survivor Tahiti sounds a little more adventurous that it really was. We were told repeatedly by individuals that Tahiti was great because you could not freeze and could not starve. Now the weather was great. 85 degrees with just a light breeze most of the time. Some rain showers but they did not last long. As for eating off the land, we saw pineapple, coconut, guavas, mangos and several other strange fruits all along the roadways. The shallow waters around the islands were teeming with fish. Also there were chickens running loose all over. I think it would have been difficult to go hungry. So, I guess it was an Amazing Adventure, you can judge for yourself.
Friday – Our adventure started at 7am with our departure for LAX to catch our flight to Tahiti. The 805 and the 5 North provided it’s own entertainment but we arrived at Wally Park with plenty of time to spare. They shuttled us to the International terminal and we found the Airline’s check-in counter in moments. To our surprise, there was no line. We checked our baggage then headed off for an overpriced Mexican lunch from the food court.
Our flight was at 1pm, so we had the opportunity to enjoy the spacious, comfortable waiting lounge for several hours. Actually it was hard metal seats, dimly lit, crowded area undergoing remodeling but who cares, we’re going on vacation. We were entertained by at least 6 LAPD dog handlers running their dogs through training sessions in our area. We also had an officer zipping around on a Segway and another on a bike inside the terminal.
Laura had been concerned about seating on the plane since they could not promise us that we would be able to sit together, since she had purchased discounted travel agent tickets. It was no problem; we were given a window and an aisle seat. The window was behind Laura’s shoulder but at least we were together. Air Tahiti Nui was an interesting airline. Unlike many US carriers they provided extraordinary service. As soon as the plane leveled off, they were serving alcoholic drinks, sodas and fruit juices – no charge. They then served a hot meal and about 1 hour prior to landing they served a cold meal – fruit salad, quiche, & bread. In between the meals, they kept coming around with drinks. Each seat had its own TV screen. It was about 5 X 7 inches. They showed several movies at the same time during the 8 hour flight. I watched Kung Fu Panda and Laura watched Sex in the City. There was only one child in our section and it made it through the flight with only a minimum of discomfort.
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| open air market in Papeete |
Saturday morning we woke up and caught “Le Truck” to ride downtown to do some sightseeing. “Le Truck” is exactly that – a 5 ton truck that the bed has been enclosed and benches run down the sides and the middle. It was very cheap by Tahitian standards – only 130 francs a person which is a little less than two dollars. (75F = $1US) We got off downtown and found the open air market. We purchased our breakfast – a pastry and some juice and then we were off exploring the market – everything from fresh fish to refrigerator magnets were offered for sale.
We found the Tourist Information Office and were given directions to several other places, a Black Pearl Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral and a local beer boutique, which turned out to only sell logo clothing and such; no samples. We purchased a tomato/ham baguette for lunch, then caught another “Le Bus” and returned to the hotel. We had about 4 hours until we had to leave for the airport so we sat on the white sand beach in front of the hotel, ate our lunch, Laura then went swimming in the ocean.
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| Our timeshare resort on Moorea - Club Bali Hai |
Our room was nice. It had a queen bed and a twin bed, two unmatched wicker chairs, a wicker chest of drawers, a countertop with a microwave oven, coffee pot and a 4 burner stove top. No above counter storage, every thing was under the counter including the plates and glasses. No place to store the food, so we put it in the closet on the shelves there. There was a table and 4 chairs on the balcony as well as a chaise lounge. The bathroom was OK; the shower stall was about the size of a phone booth. It had the rainfall shower head which is alright for washing the northern portion of the body but the southern portion stays a little bit dry particularly if you have had some continental drift. No TV or radio, no phone, no bar and no restaurant. Night fell early so we crashed at 8:30.
Sunday – Morning comes early also. Besides the roosters crowing as of 4:30am by 6am, Laura was up and about. We ate pastries and drank juice that we had purchased the night before. We went down to the activities desk and signed up for the Motu Picnic Trip (a motu is a small island without a mountain) which included snorkeling with black tipped reef sharks and petting and feeding the stingrays. The stingray’s skin felt like velvet when you touched it or when they swam up and ran their body over yours. Very cool experience. We then went to a motu for a picnic. They BBQ’ed up some tuna and chicken; served French bread, a rice dish, spaghetti with vegetables and little wiener sausages in it with pineapple slices for dessert. They also had Mai Tai’s and beer to drink.
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| Our boat docked at the motu |
One of the staff showed us how to husk a coconut; crack it; and then gave us a taste of the coconut water. He then proceeded to shred the coconut and with the help of one of the young women in the group made some coconut milk.
We had about an hour and a half to snorkel, swim or walk around the motu. Laura snorkeled out for about 30 minutes. There were lots of brightly colored fish to see. Then she returned to bask on the beach. I, on the other hand, tried to stay out of the sun and was rewarded by only turning two shades of hot pink.
That evening, since we'd had a big lunch, we made sandwiches with the meat and cheese from the little market, which we learned was called a “Chinaman”. There are no markets on Moorea. A market is a large open aired place like we saw in Papeete. The little stores are called “Chinaman” because historically they have been owned by the Chinese.
At 5:30 each day except Sunday and Wednesday there is Happy Hour with Muk. He is one of the 3 partners who came to Tahiti in the 1950’s and built the Bali Hai Hotel and developed Club Bali Hai. They recently sold the Bali Hai Hotel; it is now called the Moorea Black Pearl Resort. Happy Hour is BYOB (remember no bar). We sat around and he talked about life on the island. He is an interesting old man, a pretty good story teller who gets better as the Jose Cuervo takes effect. Night fell early again.
Monday – We were up for pastry, yogurt, pineapple and juice for breakfast by 6:30. It is very calm and peaceful sitting on the balcony eating your breakfast looking out over the lagoon watching the boats at moor, listening to the damn roosters crowing and hoping that the cat creeping across the lawn is going to catch one for breakfast. No joy.
We rented a car to drive around the island this morning. The car we rented was a manual shift Citroen – no real problem except it stalled out in first gear really easy – I think Citroen is lemon in French.
We drove down the road with Laura as the navigator. She had an island map with places marked that we wanted to see or visit. Our first stop was the Moorea Distillery and Fruit Juice factory. We stopped to taste test the pineapple liquors, fruit juice and to look at their gift shop. No tour of the plant but you could watch a video except it was all in French. So we did not learn much that way. Taste test went well, no complaints there.
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| View from the Belevedere Lookout |
The next stop was the Belvedere Lookout, which gave you a very good view of Cook’s Bay (which he never sailed into), Opunohu Bay (which he did), and Mount Mova Roa which is best known as the mountain on Bali Hai from the movie “South Pacific”. We learned that the only scene filmed in Tahiti was the shot of the mountain. Everything else was shot in Hawaii because it was too difficult to get to and from Tahiti.
After we had driven up the narrow and twisting road to the lookout, Laura saw a trail leading off into the jungle. Shifting now into Survivor mode, she headed out to see a temple or whatever was at the end of the trail. We walked up and down through the jungle for about a mile and finally ended up on a cleared hilltop on which there was nothing but an old log lying on it. From this spot you did have a little better view of the bays than from the lookout. Then it was back down the trail to the car where we emerged soaking in sweat and Laura limping from a large blister on her foot. We did not encounter any vicious beasts; we only spotted several small lizards running through the underbrush.
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| Laura's salad |
We next drove to Hotel Les Tripaniers where we had been told to park on the road and walk down a long driveway/path to the beach. They had a very nice small white sand beach shaded by coconut palms. Laura went out snorkeling for awhile; I relaxed on the beach. The other thing special about Les Tripaniers was their beach front restaurant which was open from 12 – 2pm. Laura had a salad with shrimp/crab, pineapple and mango, covered with a coconut ginger dressing. I had a tribute to Jimmy Buffett – A cheeseburger in Paradise.
After that very good lunch, we continued on around the island. The further we traveled the less touristy things were to see. Now it was the local homes – small, often with thatched sides and roofs – some made of sheets of tin of varying sizes. I was impressed by the numbers and variety of flowering plants on the island. Saw many different color variations of the plumeria that I grow, there were also lots of hibiscus, ginger and other tropical plants that you can see in the local nurseries.
By 3pm, we had made the circuit of the island. We found a working ATM at the airport to replenish our cash supply. From the airport to Club Bali Hai, we traveled through the area of the island that has the majority of tourist shops. Almost all of them were selling Black Pearls and wrap around dresses called pareu’s. We stopped to purchase pastries for tomorrow’s breakfast and a cone of gelato to cool down prior to returning to the hotel.
Evening entertainment was the crab races, which had poorer odds than Vegas. They had a table with a course laid out and 4 crabs. You bet 100 francs on the crab you thought would win – if you chose correctly you were awarded 200 francs. They ran 4 races; Laura and I won 4 and lost 4 so we broke even. We then ordered a pizza from a place down the street that was highly recommended. They delivered so that was important since we no longer had a car. It was quick, the pizza was delivered in 15 minutes from the time we called in the order. It was very good but again expensive at about $30 for a medium pizza.
We even tried a dual kayak. It almost turned over on us. We did not have much freeboard and I could not sit upright as there was no back support. People watching us took video of our attempt; I expect it to be on U-Tube any day now. Laura did much better on her own. She paddled out and around some of the boats moored in the lagoon.
For dinner we walked about a mile to a place where a man came with his truck and sold rotisserie chicken and potatoes. Very good and on the plus side we even had leftovers for lunch.
Laura then went to a pareu tying class and I went to Happy Hour with Muk.
Wednesday started out fairly quiet until Laura decided that she wanted to walk back to the old Hotel Bali Hai to see what it looked like. We walked and walked until she decided that she had enough. We had come about 3 miles and were about ¼ mile short of our goal. We browsed through some of the shops. Laura found a black pearl pendant that she liked, bought it and talked them into giving us a ride back to Club Bali Hai.
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| Flying into Bora Bora |
Thursday was a traveling day. We were picked up at the Club Bali Hai at 9:30am; taken to the airport where we flew back to Papeete. We lugged our bags over to the main terminal and then waited for our 1:10pm to Bora Bora. This plane was much bigger than the plane that took us to Moorea. That was a Twin Otter, which seated 19 people, the flight to Bora Bora held 60+. It took 45 minutes flying time to reach Bora Bora. The airport is located on a barrier island so we were met by representatives of our respective hotels and loaded onto boats to complete the journey.
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| Laura resting on the deck on our bungalow |
We caught the free shuttle to go to dinner at Bloody Mary’s, which is an iconic restaurant. Very native looking – thatched walls and roof, sand floor, tables and stools made from coconut palm logs. The dinner was grilled right there in the front half of the place. We were given a choice of about 8 different types of fish, a teriyaki chicken or steak. I had shark and Laura had the steak. We had a coconut tart with vanilla ice cream which was very good for dessert
We returned to the hotel and had a late night. Lights were out at 9:30pm. We did have TV so we had been watching CNN to keep track of the world’s status. Friday – Awake again by 6:30am. We can’t get away from those roosters. We had signed up for the all-day shark/ray feeding trip. It included a trip around the island in the lagoon and a picnic lunch. The trip around the island was mostly long. They pointed out the various major hotels and resorts. The island is only 18 miles around so there is much less to see than what we had seen on Moorea. The sharks here were bigger but they were the same kind (black tipped reef sharks) as on Moorea. The Ray feeding was better on Moorea. Here, there were too many people in too small a space. The waves were rougher so you were bumping into each other.
The picnic lunch was a bit disappointing also. The food was not freshly cooked. I think they brought it over in another boat in thermal containers. There was a greater variety of meats to eat but nothing was really exciting. Laura kept going back for the chicken, not because she really liked it. She was feeding a couple of very thin dogs that made friends with her. The best thing about this trip was on the way back to the hotel, they stopped at what they called the Coral Gardens. It was about 10-15 feet deep with white sand bottom and outcroppings of rock and coral. They threw some chum into the water and we were surrounded with hundreds of small fish. Very pretty.
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| Motu where we had our picnic lunch |
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Saturday - We lounged around the bungalow until they came to pick up our bags a little after 11am. Our boat ride to the airport was not until 2:30pm so we wandered about until we walked down to a roadside restaurant called “The Bounty” where we had hamburgers for lunch. The trip back to the airport was uneventful as was the flight to Papeete. Then we had a 6 hour wait for the next flight.
It was an uneventful flight back to LAX. Both of us tried to sleep as much as possible since the plane landed at 9:30am and then we had a 3 hour drive to San Diego. We picked up our luggage, cleared immigration and customs in a flash and were calling for pickup by the Wally Park shuttle. They told us where to go and we were on the shuttle in just a few minutes. Things were going beautiful. But caution, gentle readers, it soon will go astray.
When we got to Wally Park, the other 4 passengers had valet parking; we had self parked on the fifth level. The driver dropped the 4 off and then drove us up to our car. As I was loading the bags into our car, I noticed that one of the bags was not ours. I yelled, Laura beat on the door of the van and the driver came back. We tried to explain to him that we thought that one of the 4 people who had gotten off (a Mr. Murphy) might have our bag and could they stop him before he left. No one seemed to understand what we wanted. We got down stairs and were turned over to a supervisor. They could not find a record of Mr. Murphy parking there so then I got worried that maybe I had picked up the wrong bag at the airport, they said they would take us back; so off we went. I was starting to loose my mellow. About half way there the driver turned around because they found the record that Mr. Murphy had parked there and had just left for his home in Pasadena. We got in our car, with his bag and headed for his address in Pasadena. The supervisor having taken our cell phone number was going to have them call us if they called Wally Park about the mix-up in luggage. We had almost reached Pasadena, when we got a cell phone call from Mrs. Murphy. We got directions and finally made the switch only 2 hours behind schedule. We got home at 3:30pm and were immediately knocked to the floor by two overly affectionate schnauzers that were very glad to have their people home from their adventure.
