TAHITI, FRENCH POLYNESIA

I’m writing this 18 months after I was in Tahiti, but I’ve got some nice photos and a few stories, and I want to finally complete the RTW part of my site, so here goes:

Just before I boarded the plane from Auckland I was standing near some phones and I overheard an English guy calling to make a reservation at the hostel I was planning on going to for my only night in Tahiti before taking the ferry to Moorea the next day. I introduced myself and before he hung up I got him to reserve me a bed there as well. I think his name was David and he was heading to Los Angeles from Australia and had arranged a 7-day stopover in Tahiti on his way.

The Tahiti guidebooks I saw cost around $40 in New Zealand and I didn’t really need a ton of information for my few days there so, possibly for the first time in many years, I decided to forego buying a guidebook. I read a few sections while in bookstores so I had an idea of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, but it still felt a bit strange to me to not be armed with a book.

I only had 4 nights in Tahiti (or so I thought, but we’ll get to that later) and I had decided after one short stay in a hostel in the capital city of Pape’ete I would head out the next morning on the ferry to the nearby island of Moorea. I was chatting with David for a while longer in the airport and I convinced him to also buy a bottle of booze from Duty Free because I’d heard that prices of everything are extremely high in Tahiti. I bought a bottle of vodka and stuffed it into my carry-on and boarded the plane.

This was a large full jet and there were a few girls teams (of a sport that I’ve forgotten) on board from all over Asia, all heading to a tournament of some kind in Tahiti. One team in particular kept singing a group song over and over, which would have been annoying, but it was actually a very nice song. Tahiti and New Zealand aren’t terribly far apart by the way. We left on a Wednesday afternoon and arrived on Tuesday evening, crossing the international dateline, of course.

The plane touched down gently and we all walked off and then through customs. I found David again and we decided to share a taxi to the hostel. Taxis are outrageously expensive there so it cost about $20 even though it was like 5 easy miles from the airport. I thought about taking the city bus, but this hostel seemed to be fairly well hidden in a non-descript neighborhood so the taxi was the right idea.

It was around 9 p.m. when we arrived at the hostel, which was basically a medium sized single story house in a residential area about half a mile up the hill from the harbor. I planned on being on the ferry that left for Moorea at around 7 the next morning, so I didn’t want to pay a fortune for a room, or even a mini-fortune for a private room at this hostel. For the first time in my life, I opted for a dorm bed in a 6-bed room. David took another bed in that room and when we went to put our bags down we discovered 3 of the 4 remaining bunks to be already occupied with what appeared to be locals, and they were already asleep shortly after 9 p.m. David and I each took a few slugs off our respective bottles and headed off to see what the nightlife in Pape’ete is like.

I had read about this before I arrived so I wasn’t surprised, but Pape’ete is not what you’d expect it to be. The city has a population of around 125,000 (although only about 25,000 live in the city center) and it’s fairly dirty, falling apart, and not at all glamorous. I suppose all the people who support life in this part of the world have to live SOMEWHERE, but it’s nothing like the island paradise most people probably assume it might be. I’ve never been to Hawaii, but people say the same thing about Honolulu, although that city is much larger and I hear there are glamorous parts to it.

We walked through the maze of streets with an emphasis on trying to remember the circuitous route for when we walked back to the hostel a few hours later. We passed a few places that looked pretty dead and then settled on a large bar with a patio right across from the harbor. We took a table outside and had a couple pitchers of Heineken for around $15 a pitcher. That’s not cheap, but it could have been worse.

Around 11 p.m. the place turned into more of a nightclub with a DJ spinning inside. There was now a doorman standing just a few yards from where we were drinking and we decided to go inside. My strategy was to pretend that we shouldn’t have to pay since we were already there before the cover charge kicked in. So I walked straight past the bouncer with a determined look on my face and I made it. David must have hesitated because when I saw him next he said they made him pay to get in.

I felt a little bad about that, but I was about to feel worse. The place was starting to fill up and the music was sounding good, but only after about 10 minutes I was thrown out of the place because I was wearing sandals (but with long pants). This was Tahiti for chrissake! And it was like 75 degrees outside every night! I’d worn those same backpacker sandals to dozens of places on my trip and never had a problem, and now I get kicked out for wearing them in Tahiti?

Oh well, I wasn’t in Tahiti to party ‘til dawn anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal, but I saw David as I was being escorted out and he followed me out too. He had just paid around $15 to get in and he chose to leave with me rather than stay on his own. I don’t think he was upset, but it was a weird thing to have happen.

We found the hostel again pretty easily and I climbed into my bunk. Fortunately I was pretty worn out and the drinks added up quickly enough so I nodded right off to sleep, in spite of being in a room with 3 strangers plus another guy I just met.

I magically woke up around 6 a.m. and packed my stuff without even showering and walked down to the harbor again. There are a few different ferry companies leaving from there, but I found the one I wanted that was leaving first and bought my ticket for around $10 and waited. The cars and passengers loaded on board and we set sail, arriving in Moorea less than an hour later.