Island Tour

This morning’s excursion was a tour around the island. We were picked up from our hotel at 10 to 10, and our guide and driver Jean-Baptiste ("JB") introduced himself. We were the penultimate pick-up – one more stop at the Royal Tahitien – and we were off on a whistle-stop tour around the island of Tahiti. This would not include Tahiti Iti, or Little Tahiti, which is joined to the main island by an isthmus, due to lack of time.

Our first stop was Point Venus, which is where captains Wallis, Bougainville and Cook all arrived, in that order. There’s a lighthouse and a memorial there, and also a memorial to HMS Bounty, who stopped here for breadfruit. James Norman Hall, the author of the book, Mutiny On The Bounty, has a house and museum here. We wondered around a bit and took in the view, and I tried (and failed) to get a decent picture of the small finches that we’ve seen a few times here. The bird life has ben a bit sparse here – there’s pigeons and zebra doves everywhere, and the occasional frigate bird and tern, and of course the ubiquitous mynahs and chickens scratching around, but that’s been about it so far. These little finches looked cute. Turns out they’re red-browed finches, introduced from Australia. Oh well. 

Cook Memorial and lighthouse

The HMS Bounty memorial

Back aboard the bus, and JB was giving us a running bi-lingual commentary about all aspects of Tahitian life, including the surprising amount of reliance upon New Zealand. All their dairy, naturally, came from NZ, but so also does their social housing – provided in pre-fabricated form and assembled on site in around 6 weeks per habitation. The cost is low, particularly if you own the land, but even without that it was only around $50,000. Presumably heavily subsidised by the French taxpayer, as is much else around here, which accounts for the quality of the roads. Next stop was at the Faarumai waterfalls, also known as les 3 cascades. We only had time for the bottom-most fall, but it was still pretty impressive. 

Once more on the bus, and JB was continuing his commentary. It’s thirsty work doing this, as I can attest! He never let up, switching easily between English and French, but also schooling us in basic Tahitian. The next stop on our tour was at the Water Gardens, as the Botanic Gardens were shut whilst being refurbished. Also along this section of coast is the Paul Gauguin museum, which we had wanted to go to. According to Google Maps, it’s “temporarily closed”, but according to JB, it’s been shut for 9 years now. Thanks, Google! The Water Gardens contained some nice flowers and plants, and we wandered around under a light drizzle (the so-called “scattered thunderstorms” in the forecast, we presumed), before reboarding and going on to the final destination on our tour. 

Botany

A ubiquitous chicken

This was a cave. JB dampened down our expectations of what we were about to see, pointing out that Tahiti is only a small island, so only has small caves. The Grotte de Maraa was pretty big, but doesn’t lead anywhere, and you can’t go into it as there’s a lake at the bottom and a “No Swimming” sign next to it. We saw some fish in the water, though.

 The final leg of our journey brought us full circle as JB dropped us outside our hotel. We headed inside to snack on the cakes we’d made yesterday before heading up to the rooftop bar once more, to watch the sun go down, then headed back into town to dine at La Squadra.