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Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Moorea
Moorea is just 30 minutes with the Ferry from Tahiti. They go often and you can even choose for a fast (30 min) or a slow (1 hr) ferry. We took the fast one early in the morning. We planned to go around the Island and do some snorkeling. The weather was perfect and we had some stunning views along the bus drive on Moorea. We stopped at (Pension) ‘Les Tippaniers’, this place is truly the best to stay on this island. It’s stunning, it has the perfect snorkeling location, a beautiful restaurant on the beach and above all it’s affordable. We wanted to be spontaneous and stay for the night, but unfortunately it was fully booked. So we rented our snorkel gear and went snorkeling….this was really AMAZING! The most beautiful snorkeling session ever. It was really like swimming in an aquarium, all kinds of colores fish, turquoise, yellow, purple, blue, spotted, stripes and everything you just can’t imagine!!!! C’est Superb!!!
See it yourself!
See it yourself!
Flavour? Tahiti
Sometimes Nature can get in the way with your Plans. This is what happened with our visit to Tahiti…The plan was to go to the Society Islands in French Polynesia, but because of a tropical storm, we had to cancel our flights to Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora, Maupiti & Raiatea. Off course they don’t bother to fly in this kind of bad weather, but after our Siargao experience in the Philippines we’d prefer not to fly when there’s a hurricane passing by.
The Islands aren’t much fun under these conditions, and flying can be very dangerous when a tropical storm gets a Name. So staying on Tahiti Island was the best option, we’d thought. But activities are getting a “real” adventure with such heavy weather and snorkeling for instance isn’t a good idea too.
The first 3 days on Tahiti we stayed at Pension “de la cockroach” (nothing else available for a normal price) and we watched the rats, cats and mice running all over the place. We spend those three days in an internet café in Papeete, searching for a (way) better place to stay. After three full days of searching and lobbying, we finally found a better place to stay: Pension de la Plage, which is a very good place for your money value, half an hour outside Papeete by bus, private cabin, swimming pool, good food & drinks…
Papeete the other hand, is really a disgusting city. Not only the center itself is completely dirty, smells and full with unorganized traffic, but also the people are really French (if you know what I mean). So, according to them, we are the problem! They are rude, aggressive, really arrogant and you ‘re guilty right away until proven otherwise!! And if you think that’s all, even the Banks are rejecting (all) your cards with French arrogance (only FRENCH maestro cards are accepted?! HELLO, is anybody aware of the possibility that there could be tourists from outside France?!?!). That’s the vibe hanging around in Papeete. So you can withdraw with credit cards but that’s only up to 300 Euro’s a week, the bank clerk explained to us. So only if you are French (French I said, not speaking French, that won’t help you either) or a filthy rich American (I don’t have anything against them, they are the lucky bastards), you’ll have a great time on Tahiti. Because Americans have the privilege of special packages if they fly with a certain airline and they’ll stay in the most expensive (for us) hotels for the most ridicules (cheap) prices. In those hotels, like Le Meridien where we stayed for one night, the staff is overfriendly and they do everything for you.
Then we have public transport…”Le Truck” are private owned “mini truck/busses” by locals (picture yourself a big taxi). They are good, funny and easy to take. The normal busses, that goes outside the city, are a different story. Even the information centre doesn’t know when they arrive or leave. But everybody says (even the bus drivers) “Just wait somewhere along the road and wave your hand to stop one of them. Once we waited 1 hour for our bus to go to Teahupoo…Yep, THE most famous wave and surf spot on the planet! According to the bus driver it shouldn’t take us more then 2,5 hours to get there (only 50 km, island style?). Well it took us 5 hours, because the bus driver forgot to tell us that there was a connecting bus we had to take and wait for 1 hour minutes (38 degrees outside), not really a problem, but after the connecting bus arrived the bus driver took a break with some bakery mammas for another 35 minutes!
You can stop a bus on every place you like. That means if you are in a FULL bus, you stop every 50 meters (NOT KIDDING!!!). Everybody gets dropped-off in front of there houses in Tahiti. After another 45 minutes we arrived finally at Teahupoo… … … guess what…it was FLAT!!! So we took the same bus back, because the bus driver wasn’t sure when (or if) another bus would arrive. We didn’t want to take a risk because we were leaving later that day/night to Los Angeles.
Despite of all these “Island charms” on Tahiti, they didn’t even invent Malibu (or something similar).
But Moorea is was really beautifull!! We where so tired of Tahiti, that we took a (boat)trip to Moorea. Definitely the right decision…
The Islands aren’t much fun under these conditions, and flying can be very dangerous when a tropical storm gets a Name. So staying on Tahiti Island was the best option, we’d thought. But activities are getting a “real” adventure with such heavy weather and snorkeling for instance isn’t a good idea too.
The first 3 days on Tahiti we stayed at Pension “de la cockroach” (nothing else available for a normal price) and we watched the rats, cats and mice running all over the place. We spend those three days in an internet café in Papeete, searching for a (way) better place to stay. After three full days of searching and lobbying, we finally found a better place to stay: Pension de la Plage, which is a very good place for your money value, half an hour outside Papeete by bus, private cabin, swimming pool, good food & drinks…
Papeete the other hand, is really a disgusting city. Not only the center itself is completely dirty, smells and full with unorganized traffic, but also the people are really French (if you know what I mean). So, according to them, we are the problem! They are rude, aggressive, really arrogant and you ‘re guilty right away until proven otherwise!! And if you think that’s all, even the Banks are rejecting (all) your cards with French arrogance (only FRENCH maestro cards are accepted?! HELLO, is anybody aware of the possibility that there could be tourists from outside France?!?!). That’s the vibe hanging around in Papeete. So you can withdraw with credit cards but that’s only up to 300 Euro’s a week, the bank clerk explained to us. So only if you are French (French I said, not speaking French, that won’t help you either) or a filthy rich American (I don’t have anything against them, they are the lucky bastards), you’ll have a great time on Tahiti. Because Americans have the privilege of special packages if they fly with a certain airline and they’ll stay in the most expensive (for us) hotels for the most ridicules (cheap) prices. In those hotels, like Le Meridien where we stayed for one night, the staff is overfriendly and they do everything for you.
Then we have public transport…”Le Truck” are private owned “mini truck/busses” by locals (picture yourself a big taxi). They are good, funny and easy to take. The normal busses, that goes outside the city, are a different story. Even the information centre doesn’t know when they arrive or leave. But everybody says (even the bus drivers) “Just wait somewhere along the road and wave your hand to stop one of them. Once we waited 1 hour for our bus to go to Teahupoo…Yep, THE most famous wave and surf spot on the planet! According to the bus driver it shouldn’t take us more then 2,5 hours to get there (only 50 km, island style?). Well it took us 5 hours, because the bus driver forgot to tell us that there was a connecting bus we had to take and wait for 1 hour minutes (38 degrees outside), not really a problem, but after the connecting bus arrived the bus driver took a break with some bakery mammas for another 35 minutes!
You can stop a bus on every place you like. That means if you are in a FULL bus, you stop every 50 meters (NOT KIDDING!!!). Everybody gets dropped-off in front of there houses in Tahiti. After another 45 minutes we arrived finally at Teahupoo… … … guess what…it was FLAT!!! So we took the same bus back, because the bus driver wasn’t sure when (or if) another bus would arrive. We didn’t want to take a risk because we were leaving later that day/night to Los Angeles.
Despite of all these “Island charms” on Tahiti, they didn’t even invent Malibu (or something similar).
But Moorea is was really beautifull!! We where so tired of Tahiti, that we took a (boat)trip to Moorea. Definitely the right decision…
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