TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, TAHITI

DAY 25 This morning we awake in the harbor of Papeete, Tahiti. The clouds are lowering over the peaks behind the town but the cruise director says there is no rain in the forecast. Yeah, right! By the time we get off onto the dock, it is misting and we are looking for the car from Top-Dive that is supposed to pick us up at 9:30AM for our single tank dive. We look and we look!

Carolyn gets the lady at the Tourist Bureau to call and they tell us the car is on the way. One finally shows up after 10:00AM but he knows nothing about us and is looking for five people to go whale watching. He offers to take us but there is no way he is going to fit seven passengers and himself in his small jeep. Furthermore, we have a car reserved for 1:00PM and we want to be back for that so we cancel the dive, dump our gear back in our room and walk up past the Town Hall

to the car rental center to check on the car. We are told it is available now so we pick it up and head out for our tour around Tahiti.

Traffic is horrible! We head east out of Papeete, clockwise around the largest part of the island. Our first stop is at Point Venus, on the edge of the bay where The Bounty anchored. There is a tower here and a monument to The Bounty as well as a small mall with people selling shell crafts. We buy a carving of a turtle to add to our collection.

Before getting back on the highway, we stop at a market and buy some bread, cheese, wine and other essentials. By now it is raining fairly steadily and we must be very careful driving the twisting, coast road. At times, it rains quite hard. At other times it is just rains. We see the turn off to Tahiti Iti, the smaller of the two parts of Tahiti but it is raining and the guide book has nothing to recommend down there.

We do stop at Mara’a Grottos but all but Teanataetae Grotto

are mostly closed off by men using chainsaws to cut back trees and vegetation around the grottos. It looks to us like they are messing up an area that is quite pretty. Next we stop at Mare Aruhurahu and walk up to and around it in an increasingly heavy rain. It is nicely restored and you can get a sense of the religious.

It is getting on toward 4:00PM by now and we want to return the car so we head into downtown Papeete; what a mess! One way streets, heavy traffic, no left turns, etc. make for an interesting time as we work our way to the car rental agency.

Leaving the car agency, we walk down to the Marche’, the big city market.

It is closing down, but there are still flower and food stands open on the first floor. When we walked by on the way to Avis it was a hopping place. Next we walk around several blocks looking for the Tahiti Pearl Market. Finding it on the second floor of a building near the market, we (Carolyn) examines hundreds of baroque Tahitian pearls. After much looking, she buys several loose pearls as potential gifts and to add to her personal collection.

It has been a long day and we return to the ship damp and tired. As the evening wears on, the rain comes down heavily

 and we are glad to be in our nice room with a good meal under our belts. The ship sails for Moorea early tomorrow morning.