We leave Tahiti after discovering it truly is a paradise, and that paradise comes at a price.Arriving at Papeete airport is an experience in itself, with a Polynesian band playing local songs and flowers being handed out, giving the whole place a lovely scent. Incredibly warm too, as we arrived at midnight and it was still 28 degrees, and during the days it was 30-35 degrees and humid.
Our hotel was the 4-star Meridien – a bit different to our hostel experiences in Peru and Argentina... It is a beautiful set up with big air-conditioned rooms, our first proper bath since we left home, plants and trees everywhere, direct access to a lovely beach, and a unique sandy swimming pool.
The downside was the prices. We were totally shocked to find that breakfast was 27 Euros/24GBP – if we both had it, it would have been half the cost of the room! Internet was equally crazy – 9 Euros for one hour, 60 Euros for 72 hours. As we had not been able to upload pics and blogs for a while, I gritted my teeth and paid it.
We headed to the supermarket, a great big Carrefour nearby. Further shocks awaited as the cheapest bottle of wine was around 10 Euros,
as was a 6-pack of local beer. Without relaising, we paid 5 Euros per kilo for apples. We considered buying Champagne for New Year's eve and gave up when we found the cheapest was around 45 Euros... But we stocked up with breakfast cereal, bread, cheese and fruit and managed to avoid breaking the bank over the few days. New Year's Eve fizz was replaced in with a shaken up can of beer!We spent our time mainly by the pool and in the sea, enjoying a break from sight-seeing for these days. Probably there was more to do, but prices certainly encouraged us to make use of what was free – a fantastic environment, beautiful sea to swim in plus free goggles for snorkelling and free use of kayaks to explore the bay. The goggles gave us the chance to see the coral life that was just beneath the surface, unknown to us. While here we both finished fantastic books – The Lovely Bones by Alice Seabold and Train to Trieste by... – recommended reading for anybody.
On New Year's Day, the hotel arranged a cocktail and we made the best of some free champagne.
We got talking to the Hotel Manager, Dominic, who had been here in Tahiti for 10 years. We asked him how the local people managed to live, considering the high prices of everything. He said “people have a different lifestyle. They live from day to day and don't accumulate so much materially. The South Pacific Islands are rich with fruit – if you need to eat, pick a mango or something else hanging from a tree.”He also explained about the nature of friendship here on Tahiti, highly affected by the distance from everywhere (22 hours flight from France and England, 11 hours from Los Angeles, 6 hours from New Zealand). “The distances are so huge, so if a foreigner comes here to stay for some years, when he leaves it is almost certain that he will never come again. You get very close with people in a short time – the island is small so you meet people 2-3 times per week instead of in Europe maybe 2-3 times per month. But when you leave, that's it, almost certainly you will not meet again. When that happens for the locals a few times, they become a little cautious with the next foreigner – do I want to invest myself in a new but temporary friendship? It can make things hard for foreigners here. But if you stay for a longer time, the connection is very strong.”
Nicki asked him if he would be here forever. He waved his hand in the direction of the sea, a beautiful sunset developing in the distance, and said with a smile “what do you think?” We saw his point.
One beautiful little incident happened while we were here, a wedding on the beach. A small area was sectioned off with branches and leaves from the Palm Trees and traditionally dressed dancers gathered. A small boat brought the bride and groom ashore from one of the sea-huts and in the early evening heat, the heavily dressed couple were treated to a band (the same one from the airport, we noticed – it's a small world in Tahiti...) and traditional polynesian dance. They looked a bit confused when asked to dance, the groom gamely shaking it in his dark suit with 4 brightly attired Tahitian girls and the bride laughing with nervous embarrassment as 4 hunky men gyrated enticingly around her.
It was a lovely moment, but we also felt a little sad for them – it sounds a lovely thing to do to get married on a beach in Tahiti, but the reality is the group of unknown people gathering around and snapping you with the tack-tack sound of an ping pong match played by non-romantics in the background. The cost of going all that way meant that they had no more than half a dozen friends at the ceremony. Somehow it seemed a bit empty.
Language has been interesting, as French is the local lingo. Despite both of us having a good background in French, the last 6 weeks of concentrating on learning Spanish had us mixing up French and Spanish in the same sentence. As we head to New Zealand, we are both conscious that this is the first time we will have been in a native English-speaking country for 7 weeks. We'll miss the challenge but probably welcome the ease of communication.And so we move on to the next leg of the trip, back to Hostel world in Auckland for a couple of nights and to some more travel experiences in 2010.
