Tahiti and French Polynesia

Apologies for this post being out of sync but I wanted to write about Bora Bora whilst sitting admiring the lagoon – I’m still admiring it now but it has rained like mad all day, worthy of Manchester though several degrees warmer. It was raining so hard that even the black egret which guards the small island off the beach decided to take the day off. We spent the day in attractive plastic bag ponchos kindly provided by the hotel, not glamorous but very efficient, though John managed to wear his as if it was university regalia and still looked distinguished! Now it has stopped and the green water is calm again under a soft grey sky. Today John took me back to the Pearl Farm we visited on the Jeep tour and we chose two Tahitian pearls (black for the man and silver for the woman) on a white gold pendant as an early valentine and anniversary present – so lovely. We had a fun and bumpy ride back on the shuttle boat across a rain lashed and wind swept lagoon.
We flew across the Pacific to Tahiti via Easter Island where we broke the 12 hour flight for a couple of hours in a very windy airport garden. They’d kindly placed one of the famous statues in the airport to provide for photo ops. LAN Chile was a comfortable airline with good films, once we’d persuaded them they were running a flight to Tahiti. Airlines will insist on pretending it’s night time, even on a daytime flight, by closing all the blinds and handing out blankets. As we were gaining 7 hours and were due to arrive at bedtime in Tahiti, which would be morning in Santiago, I was trying hard not to sleep much so that I could readjust the body clock. We did manage it though and were lucky enough to get upgraded to a lagoon view room so we woke in the morning to a beautiful view of the lagoon and the mountains of Moorea rising out of the sea. The Tahiti Intercontinental was lovely and it was fun to be in a little bit of France after trying to make ourselves understood in Spanish. We took a walk into the nearby town to get some money from a cash point in Carrefours and had a chat with some French ladies about the difficulties of yet another currency (French Caribbean Francs). Tahiti is really funny as the streets looked like somewhere in France but just the other side of the trees is the amazing blue lagoon and the Pacific. We spent the rest of the day lounging in the infinity pool and admiring the fish and the turtles in their lagoonarium before a delicious dinner over the water. They had a washing machine and dryer for guests which was very civilised and which I put to good use!
The next morning we took the smaller plane to Bora Bora, admiring the islands from the air and were met at the tiny airport by a band, flower garlands and a boat to take us to the hotel. I realised I had managed to catch a streaming cold along the way and that it wasn’t an allergy to all the Monoi flowers strewn around the room and our necks so snuffled my way through our first few days. Watching Tahitian TV is fascinating, the presenters all seem to be enormous ladies, dressed in brightly coloured floral outfits with huge flower wreaths round their heads – can’t see it catching on at the BBC!