Hotel Royal Tahitien Papeete

... victims to the stage and it was hilarious to watch their efforts. One of the victims is a guy from Toronto whom we’ve met. Besides looking like Jay Leno, he’s just as funny.

While in town I was on the look out for “She-men” I had read some Travelpod blogs about this Tahitian cultural tradition. The youngest daughter in a family is responsible for the care of elderly parents ...

... but whatever they had they were willing to
share.

Another interesting fact given the discussion in the US about
health care: the French government provides free health care; Areti
also had 6 weeks off before the birth of her child and 10 weeks after
– PAID. Plus, if there were any complications with her or her
child she could apply and probably receive more time off – how
great is that?

We leave MIL and go to ...

... to the gym once and decided that I would rather walk around the deck a few times. People are constantly on their fitness regime walking, walking and their are the crazy ones who are in the gym all the time. We find the air cond. on the boat very cold and have to go outside all the time to warm up. It is much nicer outside too. It is hard to imagine how much wter there is out there and the colour is beautiful. We have passed a couple of ships but apart ...

... and Gene insisted his driving skills were up to par. We whole heartedly disagree after riding with Gene all day. After numerous stalls, going forward instead of backing up, and a few near misses in the round abouts we came out alive. Mom thought a drink might have helped alleviate the fear throughout the day (While Genes driving was bad, still not as bad as the trip Debbie and I shared in Europe with Brian). We drove around the whole ...

... hold with flames billowing from the windows and the locals trying to extinguish it with a rather pathetic jet of water. At 5pm we set sail for our next port of call in Raratonga, 36 hours away, as this was the last time the Tahitian Princess was to visit the island of Tahiti as a final goodwill gesture the Captain gave three rather loud blasts on his siren as we sailed out of the harbour - quite a touching moment. We then continued our journey in a south westerly ...

just landed. This is supposed to be Paradise so I hope I'll have plenty of nice pictures to upload soon. For the moment it's dark so I'll see tomorrow. Everybody speak French, how bizarre!! I'm not much of a foreigner anymore. weird. There's a nice mountain (2200m) in the center of the island so I'm sure that will motivate me to skip the beach and the ...

The 767 from Santiago landed at nearly 9pm with its newcomers. We boarded and set off at 2210 for the five and a half hour, 2500 miles to Tahiti. We landed in Papeete, French Polynesia at 0340 and promptly reset our watches back FIVE hours - this was some time shift. Alternatively, you could say we covered 2500 miles in half an hour, who needs supersonic? A comfortable modern hotel, not far from the airport and we crashed out. Monday 10th The hotel was on the edge of a bay, north of ...

... a fairly lively place. A lot of the food in the restaurants is french based, and they even have Carrefour and Champion supermarkets. Unfortunately everything in Tahiti is really expensive.... it seems like all the produce has been flown business class from France, so even the cheapest bottle of French wine was around £7 and a 100g bar of French chocolate was nearly £2. People get up really early in Tahiti, and everything closes down at 5pm ...

... US Army. Also this past month I finished my 8th term paper and therefore have nothing left but finals for the next 3 weeks. The couple I was occasionally babysitting for moved out into the countryside where they have a huge yard for the little girl to run around in, and a fire pit. They invited me out for beer & bonfire so I borrowed my friend's car and took Amy, Irene, and Jana with me to see their new house. I got to see the family one ...

... the course of millions of years of evolution, but it certainly looks interesting. I borrowed a mask and a snorkel from a local spear fisherman who was working the reef, and met up with two new zealand women and a rough looking ex chicago cop named vic who happened to be staying at the same grounds as I. I'm going to hire a scooter to buzz around the island, and hopefully a few noteworthy views will present themselves to my camera and sketchpad.