Ooooh La La La en Vacance

Dear all

 The last few days have been spent doing something that Dean is rather fond of 'sweet fanny adams'! LOL. No seriously the two reasons for our 9 days stopover in Tahiti was firstly to connect with Easter Island our next stop without having to fly over and back again vis Santiago & secondly to get some well needed R&R. I can hear you all laughing from here! but seriously, travelling everyday & living out of a suitcase can be pretty tiring too - no big fat sofa to lounge on every night you know! Well big raspberry blow to you anyway  - we did it! We found a lovely little homestay in the south of the island in a place called Papara.

 The owners Thierry & his wife made us feel so welcome despite the fact that my french was learnt over 25 years ago & Deans was as good as their English! - the Anglo/Franco dictionery was in full use all week! The garden was on a large plot & overflowed with fruit trees and palms. Their little dog Rocky was the boss in the garden making sure everyone was safe, even of he did chase the chickens when he thought we weren't looking! The massive bowl in the living room constantly overflowed with fresh avocados, bananas, coconuts, rambutans, bread fruit, papayas & logans, which we could help ourselves to each day! Delicious!

As they both worked we could spent most of the day on our own around the property reading and generally relaxing, but we also ventured out onto the very famous black beach across the road. The black sand makes it too hot to really go there in the day unless you are a local with asbestos feet. However towards the late aftrenoon it was lovely to wonder down, have a swim & watch the sunset - something we did most evenings. There is also an area where you can snorkle the small reef & at the other end of the beach is some great high rollers. A perfect beach really! 

  

Papara is also the main producer of fruit and veg for the island so we had access to probably the best salad ingredients that we had seen all tour. There was also a great fish shop just a hundred yards away, where the mahi steaks and the tuna were coming straight off the beach/boats. Even Dean enthused!

We did manage to peel our selves off the loungers twice, once to visit the capital, Papeete & the other we hired bikes from the hostel and cycling around the coast road to the Gauguin museum & a Botonical gardens. The only other time we altered our state of total relaxation, was when the earthquake in Japan occurred & we were rudely awaked at 4.30am by the texts from everyone a good 6 hours before the Tsunami even reached us! Although I giggle at that, it was serious and the first of the society islands in this group had a 5m high wave, luckily for us only the northern part of the island was evcuated and they only had a wall of water 70cm high. This is due to the fact that the area is full of hundreds of small volcanic islands which helped to break the wave amplitude down. This didn't happen elsewhere in the Pacific as the shallow waters near the mainland & the larger islands  means that the waves normally grow as they approach land. Still it added another layer of adventure to our tour & thanks to everyone for thinking of us..........

Our next stop is probably going to be the highlight of my whole trip as it was the first name I put on my wish list when we first started discussing the trip & has been facinating me since I was a little girl ..... Easter Island

Notre Dame - Papetee

Museum entrance