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Papeete, TahitiFeb 10, 2009
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Black Sand beach from overlook
Ernie at lighthouse, tahiti
Outrigger canoe at beach
Today we visited Tahiti. As soon as we pulled in in the morning we saw some of the trademark "Black sand" and beautiful waves. We took a tour today and saw the whole Island. We docked at the capital town, Papeete. It was quite built up and just like so many Caribbean islands, has way too many cars and lots of traffic in the city. When we left the city, the small towns and residential areas looked alot like the keys to me except there are Mountains in the middle of Tahiti. Really big ones. We quickly left the city and traveled primarily a coastal road stopping at waterfalls, botanical gardens, scenic overlooks, blow holes and Polynesian temples. We also stopped at the Gauguin museum and had a Polynesian lunch buffet at a waterfront restaurant. We had the Executive chef from the ship on tour with us and he inspected the kitchen at the restaurant. He then ate just about everything on the buffet so I guess the kitchen passed the inspection. He also took lots of photos of flowers all day and the next day he had the vegetable carvers make the flowers out of fruit and vegetables which was pretty cool. At one stop we were very near a black sand beach, so we ran down there and scooped up a bag of sand and found some coral and a cowrie shell. Everything was extremely expensive on Tahiti. For example a beer can cost $13 US dollars. We tried to pick up a few supplies at the grocery store before returning to the ship, but the inventory was slim to none. Plus very expensive. We decided if we return we will take the ferry to Moorea. It is not as built up and you have better access to beaches there.
