Tahiti

“My mind is always soothed when I imagine myself sitting on my South Seas island at night.” - MARLON BRANDO

We arrived in Tahiti at Papeete at 10am today, and are scheduled to leave at 5am tomorrow. That gave us the evening in town and we made the most of it, or about as best we could. Brando lived here but purchased his own little atoll about 26 miles from Tahiti. Out there I’m sure the evenings were much more soothing for him than what goes on in downtown Papeete.

Today we did not opt for an organized tour. Papeete is what passes for a major city and is actually the largest metropolis on any of these islands. We wanted to see what it’s like to actually live in Tahiti, not what it is like to just visit here or be a tourist. Our goal was to walk around the streets where the locals work, and shop, and eat, and to try to get a bit of the flavor of life here. First of all, there is a lot of vehicular traffic; but the second you step into a crosswalk, traffic comes to a halt for you…just like it’s supposed to work for us back home, but never seems to (except in California). We did some fabric store browsing, looking at pareus (pah-RAY-oohs) in many flashy tropical designs and colors. Then we entered the Marche’ Municipal (City Market), a massive two story structure with foodstuffs of all kinds on the ground floor and handicrafts and clothing items upstairs. We spent over an hour in there checking out the goods, seeing what was selling and then bought a couple of pareus and t-shirts. Beautiful tropical flowers and arrangements were on display and so were all manner of colorful fresh fish. It was Friday so the place was jammed.

After a bit more street browsing, we sought out and found a bistro called PATACHOUX, a place we had seen on one of Anthony Bourdain’s NO RESERVATIONS episodes on the Travel Channel. We each ordered one of their specialty baguette sandwiches. As Bourdain noted, whenever the French settle in some place outside of France, they always seem to bring their bread with them. This place was no exception. They could have served us the bread alone with just a couple of pats of butter and we would have been in heaven. A little patisserie for dessert and we were back out on the street again, and we finally wended our way back to the ship which was docked practically in the center of town. After a couple of hours to rest up and change into some dry clothes (the humidity was brutal) we set out again to have some dinner at the little pier side park where they have roulottes. Roulottes are similar to our “roach wagons.” Every night after 6pm, about thirty of these little restaurants on wheels set up in the park and it’s reminiscent of a state fair midway with booths selling everything to eat you might imagine (except Italian sausages). I took some photos of some of the roulottes and have included them with this journal update.

We chose to eat at one called CHEZ AH LEON where they were roasting a “baby cow” on a spit over a charcoal fire pit, Veau a la Broche. We split an order of Poisson Cru (coconut cream style) and then we each ordered the veal, Rosemary with frites, myself with baked white beans. A gangload of food for about $40. Then we went over to another roulette selling crepes where Rosemary had a Nutella and banana crepe and I had one with chocolate and coconut. Best crepe I ever tasted, and I’ve eaten them in Paris. While we were eating our crepes, at the center of the plaza in the park, a local music and Tahitian Dance Troupe were starting a performance. One of the things we had wanted to do while on Tahiti was to go down to one of the major resort hotels where they have elaborate Tahitian dance performances a few nights a week and they are said to be spectacular. We also calculated that with a $50 cab fare each way and close to a hundred bucks for each of us to opt for one the grand buffets that accompany these dance performances, we were going to be much better off seeing the free performance in the park within a short walking distance to the ship. If you’ve never seen Tahitian dance before, it makes the Hawaiian hula look amateurish. This is high speed, energetic, action at its most frenetic, and certainly with sexual overtones (or were those undertones? … I’m so confused). There were hundreds of people all around the plaza watching the performance and we saw several little girls, of about six or seven, doing a good job of trying to emulate these dancers, hip shaking and swaying…it’s in their jeans…er uh, genes.

At nine o’clock, we left the park, returned to the ship and grabbed a seat in the Queen’s Lounge showroom, because the ship had arranged a folkloric show performance for us at 10pm. Guess what? It was a Tahitian dance show with both men and women, and a native ukulele and percussion band providing for traditional rhythms and tunes. Spectacular !!! All I can say is, these women seemed to have industrial strength weed eaters in the back of their grass skirts. What they appear to do with their rear ends would have any woman I ever met visiting a chiropractor daily, or at least carrying ice bags in their rear pockets.

Moorea, our next port, can be seen offshore as close as Egmont Key is to Pass-a-Grille. I think the entire voyage over there takes less than two hours (including undocking here and anchoring time over there). The tendering for us is expected to start by 8am…I need some sleep; we snorkel tomorrow. - RBM

Oct 9, 2009

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