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| One of Papeete's many street murals |
Once again, Mom was a trooper and decided was going join me for the walking tour of downtown Papeete, even though she is still
limping. We rented a Kia Picanto from our hotel and headed northeast to the “big
city.” Although the guy at the hotel rental counter said there was nothing to
see in Papeete (at the same time he was trying to sell us on snorkel trips), I
knew that the benefit of a tour guide was not in what exactly we were seeing,
but in getting a sense of the history and unique culture of Fiji. There are
many similarities between all the Polynesian cultures, from the Maori in New Zealand (“kia ora”) to the Cook Islanders (“kia orana“),
and Maohi ("ia ora na") in French Polynesia. But their histories, the timelines of the
interactions with Europeans, and their islands’ natural resources differ from
each other, making the people differ as well.
The ride started out uneventfully, despite heavy rush hour traffic
on the main road (of two) into town. It took a decidedly dark turn when one of the island's feral chickens jumped from a concrete barrier in the median right into the road in from of me. A split-second later, the poor chicken was just a puff of feathers in the
rear view mirror and I was left somewhat traumatized. I felt a little less bad about smooshing the chicken than I did the dozens of red crabs that I couldn't avoid, but I still cringe when thinking about it.
Parking spaces in the downtown area were about as easy to
find as chicken’s teeth, but we found a parking garage fairly quickly. After a
very quick breakfast of pastries and fresh juice at a corner bistro, we were
running late and hobbled off to meet our tour group. When we arrived at the tourist
office, we didn’t see a group and figured that they had left without us, but in
fact we WERE the group. It ended up being a private tour with a lovely
half-Italian, half-Fijian woman who had grown up in Singapore, Paris, and
London with French as her first language.
Throughout our tour, there were chickens
roaming in all parts, and when I described the road kill incident during the
drive in, she wasn’t surprised. The feral poultry are now just part of the
landscape and serve no useful purpose other than eating centipedes. Something
in the way that she said that, the omnipresence of wild chickens throughout
polynesis and the brainless way that the chicken jumped into ongoing traffic,
made me realize why there was an idiot chicken included as the sidekick animal
in Disney’s moana.
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| Cruise ship moored at the Papeete cruise terminal |
In a nearby park was a statue of Louis Antoine de
Bougainville, a famous French military officer, explorer and nobleman. He did a
lot of island discovering and mapping in his heydey (1760s) but I think most
people know his name because of the Bougainvilla flowering that was named in
his honor. Insie the government complex that hosts the islands’ administrative
units, our guide showed us a fish-poison tree which I thought was cool because
if you grind the seeds to a powder and add to water, you can stun or kill fish
for easy capture. We stopped by Papeete’s landmark Catholic cathedral to look
at the stone marking kilometer 0 of the road that circumnavigates the island.
Until COVID, the church was open all the time and operated as a soup kitchen. Over
our tour, we saw at least a dozen homeless men listlessly dozing in an alleyway
or sitting against buildings. in alley openings or against building columns.
Unfortunately, during COVID, there was an assault by a group of these men on
someone near the church, and they shut their doors for safety reasons.
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| Bougainville Park and a statue commemorating its namesake |
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| Kilometer Zero |
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| Territorial Assembly (Assemblée de la Polynésie française) |
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| Papeete Catholic Cathedral (c. 1875) |
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| Flower of a poison fish tree |
Our last stop was the Papeete Market with hours from 5:30 am to 4:00 pm. There were a bunch of flower sellers with bouquets of Polynesia’s unique flowers such as heliconia, red ginger, and tiare apetahi. Then there were the pearl jewelry dealers, the purveyors of lotions and essential oils, women weaving baskets, fans, and hats with fronds from the pandanus tree. Finally, we saw a section of full of colorful sarongs and Polynesian-style loose floral dresses. Just as she was about to explain the weaving process, we realized that it was time to get Mom to the airport for her 1:30 pm flight to TCC location #300, the Austral Islands. We probably missed about 30 minutes more of tour time, but our raison d’etre for this trip was to get Mom to TCC #301, so it was obvious where our priorities lay.  |
| Pauline, our walking tour guide, and me at the entrance to the Papeete market |
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| Église Getesemane de Mahina |
Next, I stopped to watch local surfers both in and out of the water. I later realized that there were two surf schools operating nearby, so these may have been less advanced surfers.In our tour we learned that surfingoriginated here and amazing the Europeans. In fact, Tahiti hosted the Olympic surfing competitions off Teahupo’o beach on the south side of the island.  |
| Surfers at Ahonu Beach |
Surfers in action I made my second stop after I caught a distant splash in the water out of the corner of my eye. I pulled over immediately and with my binoculars watched a whale breaching. Humpback whales come to Tahiti every year between July and November to give birth, and there are multiple tours in which you can swim and snorkel among the whales.
Whale breaching and blowing
Further down the road I stopped to see a small waterfall with carvings in the rock face and to take some photos along the beach.
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| View from the car |
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| View from the Pape'ana'ana waterfall to the beach |
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| Rock carvings at the Pape'ana'ana waterfall |
The main event was seeing the Fa'aruma'i Waterfalls, a location that is normally accessed by a small pedestrian bridge. There were men actively
doing maintence on the bridge, rendering the waterful inaccessible to casual
tourists. I, however, am an advanced tourist. There was no way that I had come
that far to not see the waterfall and decided to cross the stream with a little
scrambling up and down the riverbanks. After I neared the waterfall, I saw that
the other people I had been talking to on the stream’s edge had taken my lead
and were coming up the path.
Waterfall video
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| My route to the waterfall |
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| I'm here! |
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| Bamboo forest as I was leaving the waterfall |
I would have loved to stay longer to listen to the waterfall
or to even follow the Tahitian practice of bringing myself good luck by washing
in water from a waterfall. Unfortunately, the mosquitos throughout this valley were
the densest I have ever seen and there would be no lingering for a quick
meditation.
Mom wasn’t scheduled to be picked up until later pm, and I
really wanted to make sure that achieving her goal of 300 Travelers Century
Club sites was celebrated properly. I returned to the closed market but was relieved
to see a handfull of flower sellers around the outside. I purchased a flower necklace
and a flower crown and rushed back to the hotel to make a sign because my phone
was telling me that her flight was arriving at 6:20 pm. While sitting in the
parking lot of the airport, I got a text from Mom that she was just leaving Rurutu
and would see me at 8:20 pm. Oops.
Ukelele and myna bird sounds around the airport while I was passing time
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Madness at the airport the first time I went to pick Mom up. These are all cruise passengers at the end of their vacation
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Choosing to maximize the resort experience that Mom &
Dad was paying handsomely for, I had a drink and a snack at the waterfront bar,
enveloped by the humid breeze of a polynesian night and the light from thousands
of lights hanging from the bridge behind me and a pergola above me.
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View of the waterfront bar at Te Moana Resort
 | Obligatory toes at the beach photo
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Mom came in early, so I didn’t get be there when she walked
out of the gate. Nonetheless, I made her wait at the curb so that I could park and then come into the airport with the flowers and the sign. She was flying out again at 5am the following day, so there was no celebratory dinner, just room service and hanging around our hotel suite.
Flowers & Plants of the Day
The chicken in Moana! Now it all makes sense!
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