Paradise and Big Heads

Wish you were here? The Radisson Plaza, Tahiti
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Tahiti and Moorea

Well, after a 5 and a half hour flight from Auckland we arrived in Papeete, Tahiti, about 18 hours before we left, so we had the experience of waking up twice on 2 February. Strange. We arrived at about 8.30pm and the captain mumbled that the outside temperature was 85 degrees... or did he say 55? Fortunately it was the former and we were hit by that lovely hot air blast as we left the plane. Naomi happy.

After failing to find "le truck" outside the airport we jumped into a taxi which took us to our hotel, the Royal Tahitien, in the outskirts of Papeete.  A disinterested guy on the front desk eventually told us (after the taxi had left) that we´d not be staying there because the air conditioning was broken in our building and the rest of the hotel was full.

The beach at the Radisson, Mahina, Tahiti
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After waiting for another taxi to turn up (9.30pm by this point), we were driven (at the hotel´s expense) to the Radisson Plaza in Mahina - a considerable free upgrade to an ocean view room in a 5* newly-built modern hotel. To say it was right up our street would be an understatement. We were too late to do anything in the evening but we got up early the next morning to have a quick swim in the pool and dip our toes in the sea (warmer than NZ it´s fair to say).

There is a lovely black sand public beach in front of the hotel (nothing like the Canary Islands) and loads of local kids were enjoying playing on the beach which we thought was great. Not all of the hotel guests seemed to be of the same view, one older guy asking us to shut the gate because "it is the only thing separating us from them". I guess you get those people everywhere. We were a bit gutted to be leaving the hotel after just one night but we´d booked 2 nights in Moorea, the smaller next-door island so we had to pack our bags.

The beach at The Moorea Pearl and Spa Resort, Moorea
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Moorea is only a 40 minute boat trip away from Tahiti and we had no problem getting across the next day.  We took the public bus to our resort which was good fun and saved some money too. In the safety of Oz and NZ I´ve missed that nervous feeling of not quite knowing whether you are going to end up in the right place.

I am fairly sure that we may be the only people ever to have turned up at the Moorea Pearl and Spa Resort on the public bus with backpacks. It´s just not that type of place. The staff did look a little bemused. Our "European-style" garden room was really nice, although the price per night was probably about the same as a month´s stay in a decent hostel in Peru. It´s not really fair to draw comparisons because everything in French Polynesia is ludicrously expensive. Even a stay at a shabby hotel costs is expensive so we thought we might as well do it in style. We avoided eating meals at the hotel as much as we could on the basis that the evening buffet was 50 GBP each! Bread roll anyone?

Locals showing their fire juggling skills, Moorea
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We decided not to do too much and just enjoy our amazing surroundings, so our 2 nights and 3 days were spent swimming in the pool, snorkelling under the over-water bungalows (fantastic fish but very damaged coral) and topping up our dwindling tans. It was really nice to get a taste of the other type of honeymoon that we could have had. To be honest we both could have stayed longer!

After getting the ferry back over to Tahiti to catch our flight on Sunday evening we were a bit stuck with there being no taxis in sight. Amazingly the woman taxi driver who had taken us to the port from the Radisson spotted us and even though she was with her family and off duty, she drove us to the airport and even refused to take any money from us. She is the winner of our Good Samaritan award. Perhaps it was our payback for helping Kirsten out with a lift in NZ.

Maui, Easter Island
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Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

Another 5 hour flight brought us to Easter Island, where we all queued up in the unexpectedly baking sun outside the terminal building to get through passport control (it´s officially Chilean territory). Our clocks had gone forward 5 hours so we missed out on any meaningful sleep.

We got a taxi to our hotel, the Iorana (not bad) in the outskirts of Hanga Roa - seemingly the only inhabited part of any note on the island which is all of about 10-15 miles across. It was midday by the time we got to the hotel, giving us 24 hours to see as much as we could before our flight to Santiago. The half day tours sounded very limited so we took the plunge and hired a car. And then it rained. Hard.

Excuse me Signor. Speeka de Eeeenglish?
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Imagine the scene as we set off in our Suziki Jimny after a 10 minute conversation with the car rental person which basically consisted her trying to explain to me in Spanish what the rental agreement said and what I had to do, and me looking at her blankly, not even knowing how to say I didn´t understand. I gave her $50 and that seemed to do the trick. We drove around the tiny town of Hanga Roa in the pouring rain, on the right-hand side of the road, unable to find the tourist office, with very little money, having had no sleep. It was a low point. We eventually found the tourist office to try to get a map. It was shut. We gave up on that idea and went out on the road in search of the maui - the giant stone heads that Easter Island is famous for.

After several dead ends we struck it lucky. We quickly learned to stick with the tarmac and leave the unsealed roads alone as much as possible. The maui were quite stunning in a rugged, ancient way and we were glad we stopped to see them. We saw pretty much all of them in about 4 hours so we were glad that we weren´t staying on the island for days as there isn´t too much else to do.  It was festival time in Rapa Nui, so I watched the locals playing some football matches on the island´s only pitch (floodlit). The stray dogs - only outnumbered by the stray horses (!)- also joined in.