French Polynesia is a series of 120 islands in the south Pacific covering an area the size of Europe – one reason it is so hard to get there – the south Pacific is really big. Tahiti is one of the largest islands with the largest city in Papeete that has the main international air connections and is the industrial hub as well. We picked Tahiti because it was “on the way back” to the US from Australia and we later modified our trip to make it a Thanksgiving holiday break and meet the girls with Sharon heading back to the USA (via Auckland). I returned to Melbourne for a couple of weeks.
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Between Youtube videos and personal suggestions, we ended up breaking the trip up into 3 days Tahiti, 1 day Moorea (45 minute ferry), and 3 days Bora Bora. Sharon and I had only 1 day in Tahiti because we were 2 days late arriving due to missing a connection in Auckland. I am glad we got the suggestions of Moorea and Bora Bora as Tahiti has very little, if any white sand beaches, and therefore a lot less translucent blue color water. Mostly black and sand/dirt/black sand mix and ended up with some of the best inland areas of the three islands we visited – I think mostly due to the better road access. The girls had 2 days there without us and basically hung out at the condo and relaxed.
Baie de Papeno’o
Belvédère
One our one day, we were looking for mountain hikes and waterfalls as well as a quick tour of the key beaches of the island – Annelise found a place to hike from called “Belvédère” and I found the same place on my trail map – but then we were debating which way to go around the island – I wanted to go by the 2024 Olympic surfing waves but Annelise said it was the wrong way. Turns out “Belvédère” means view point – we were looking at different places. But after checking the wave forecast, there were no waves and we drove clock-wise around the island and saw a waterfall as well.
Cascade de Faarumai
Except for McDonalds, food pretty reasonable with French food plentiful and no tariffs on French wine – so it is very cheap.
One huge plus for all the islands we visited – no people hawking and trying to sell you stuff constantly – makes it much nicer to visit and on our way out we were packed pretty tightly in our rental car for the trip back to the airport.
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