Tahiti Country Club Punaauia

... 7 small communities, and a few hotels are still open. Because of the drop in tourism, there are at least 6 vacant hotels. This is definitely a place to get away from it all! No restaurants, no stores, no nightlife. The only hotels left are high rent, Hilton, InterContinental, Marriott, etc. and are made up of little tiki huts built right on the water. Average price is $600 a night. Continuing around past gorgeous beaches ...

Tahiti - 11th March 2009 Our next stop after Easter Island was Tahiti, we thought we deserved 10 days holiday on the beach after 7 months hard labour. We had booked 5 days holiday, via Expedia, in "Le Meridien", a flash 4 star resort on the west coast of Tahiti, as they were doing a special "5 days & pay for 4". When we arrived, we took a 10 minutes taxi ride from the airport to our hotel where we got our first surprise, he wanted £30 for that short journey ...

... and we should just visit and save purchases until later ports on the trip. This we found to be very sage advice and we followed it. Our first stop was a large indoor open market filled with flowers, carving, souvenirs, fresh produce, extremely colorful fish, and very friendly people. Through out the day, we were impressed with how casual and friendly the citizens of Papeete were. They enjoyed us visiting their city. No English is spoken, only French and Tahitian. The ...

... lagoon for one day at least. 1st day: visit of Papeete market, walk around, bought food at the market, checked out the beach... The plan is to do absolutely nothing all day the 7th, rent a car to do the tour of Tahiti the 8th, go to Moorea the 9th and a big walk up the mountain the 10th. I'll see after that. The 7th was highly successful in doing ...

... city and we breakfasted in an open sided, palm covered dining area looking over the sea, where small waves were breaking on the outer reef. We taxied into town to arrange our next move. The weather was very hot and sunny and I noticed the taxi's digital temperature gauge reading at 37 deg C. The rough conversion is to double the deg C temp and add 30 to bring it to deg F. I'll let you do this one - yes, I was surprised as well! We planned to try to go out to one of the 'Windward ...

... the buses stop and all the shops close. Taxis are incredibly expensive out here, so I was forced to adopt the early start and early to bed routine. Completely different from South America! It is currently summer out here, which is also the wet season. This meant grey skies and rain everyday. In fact, I didn't see the sun or blue sky whilst I was staying on Tahiti. After a few days I decided I'd had enough and headed to the nearby island of Moorea.

... time while I'm in New Zealand which was nice because they are fun to hang out with and Kiya is absolutely adorable. Last Friday marked the end of lectures so there was a campus-wide party/concert at the student union building called the Tea Party. Bands played from 11am-4pm but when kiwis party, they go insane - most of them were dressed in ridiculous costumes, as outrageous as American Halloween, and completely wasted by 9am. The Tea Party was a ...

... but turbulent as the swells were quite large and moving toward us as opposed to with us. I spent most of the trip engaged in conversation with Nina, a blonde girl from holland whom I had met earlier in bora bora, and unbeknownst to me had also spent the weekend on the island. We were both staying at the villiage pauline and for the rest of my time in bora bora she was my wingman at the bar and always seemed to offer an interesting perspective in conversation.

... white, shaded by towering palms and enhanced by vibrant water. I have made it a habit to watch the sunset from the beach bar at hotel bora bora while tilting back one or two ice cold Hinano Beers (sometimes more, depending on the sunset). On my first full day here I hiked around the island (about 32 km). It was a slow way to see the island, and unless you value that sort of perspective, I would not recommend such ...

... our way along a route mapped out by the friendly but crazy chicago cop named Vic. Our first stop was the Beachcomer Intercontinental Resort which has some of the nicest logings on the island. Among its amenities are a dolphin lagoon, and a turtle rehab center for all those strung out tortoises that have been known to attack tourists while looking for a quick fix. From there we worked our way clockwise around the island to beleveder ...