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Zoe and Ed's Travels
Bonjour! Nous sommes à Tahiti. We have been here for three days, soaking up the French culture and some of the French food as well. Unfortunately our budget doesn't stretch to French wine (especially as we spent all of our money on hiring a car for a day).
In spite of what everyone we met said about getting out of the capital, Papeete, as quickly as possible, we have been enjoying it here. It is quite warm, and so we have been avoiding anything too strenuous.
We arrived in the small hours of Friday morning, and spent a glamorous first few hours in paradise sleeping on the floor in the airport. Once the buses started running we headed into town and after a bit of a sweaty walk around town with our packs we found a 'cheap' hotel (only 35 pounds a night to you, Sir). In fairness we do have a toilet and hot shower in the room, and a fridge we can make use of, which helps with trying to save money on food. There is, however, no kitchen, so we've been forced to subsist on cheese, salami and pate, which is a terrible hardship for us as I'm sure you can imagine. We have been eating out in the evenings, at the 'roulottes', which are a whole collection of food vans which pull up together on the quayside every evening. There's some great stuff on offer, and it's cheaper that the restaurants. On the first night I (Ed) had special chao mein (indeed there was so much of it that I had to leave some, which is almost unprecedented) and Zoe had duck in Tamarind sauce, both from a Chinese van. Yesterday we shared a mixed meat couscous dish, which was very tasty. It still costs around 6 pounds for a dish, but as there's enough to share (bulked out with the free bread they give you) it works out pretty cheap.
Yesterday during the day we hired a car to do a tour of the island. It is a beautiful and extremely lush island, with a mountainous interior. There is essentially only one road outside the capital, which does the tour of the coast. We stopped off in various places. Our first stop was at Carrefour to stock up on food, after which we went to a marae (a Polynesian meeting house/temple sort of thing). Then we stopped off at some grottoes for a picnic lunch of bread and salami and cheese. In the afternoon we went to the Gaugin museum, which contains good detail on his life as well as a few reproductions of his work. We stopped off at a beach in the late afternoon. The plan was to do some snorkelling, but the water was so shallow and clear that we just strolled around in it looking at the marine life instead.
Today we have been doing very little - just lazing around the town a bit. Most things seem to be closed on a Sunday. We popped into the market this morning to see the fish on sale. There was a mixture of large ocean fish and colourful reef fish for sale.
Tomorrow we are going to catch the ferry to Moorea, the neighbouring island, where we plan to stay for three days. Apparently there should be some good beaches over there, but apart from that not much to do. Which is fine by us!
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