10.11.09
We’ll. I’m back. I’m writing this to you from my apartment in San Francisco. It’s classic San Francisco weather today: foggy with a temperature in the mid 50’s. This city seems so cold and gray after all that tropical heat and sunshine. It’s weird wearing clothes instead of a thin tank top and shorts and I still haven' t shaken the habit of greeting and thanking people in French. Bonjour! Merci!
I was terrified to weigh myself after gorging on French food for two weeks. I’ve only gained 5 pounds, even though I feel like I’ve gained 15. I shuddered when I saw the baguette rack in the supermarket yesterday afternoon and just thinking about chicken makes me retch. I didn’t talk about this much in any of my blogs, but I had to eat a lot of meat while I was in French Polynesia. I’m normally a vegetarian who eats simple healthy foods, but that’s basically impossible in FP. The food there is all very rich and vegetarianism doesn’t seem to be part of their vocabulary- every lunch and dinner meal is a million calories and includes meat. I’m not dogmatic about my vegetarianism and have a personal policy that when I’m traveling in a foreign country I go with the flow and eat what the natives eat. If you are a vegetarian who thinks eating animal flesh is absolutely unthinkable , cross French Polynesia off your list right now. Forget about it. You’ll starve to death.
You may have noticed that the date on my blogs never matched up with the date I posted them. That’s because I only had internet access at one place in French Polynesia. I composed the blogs in Word and then posted them posthumously. However, this one you’re reading right now was really composed on the morning of the 11th since I’m back in internet land! I suggest you keep checking this blog in the coming week as I am planning on posting photos and videos of our trip.
I’m going to give you some final thoughts about our trip before I launch into what happened during our last day in Tahiti Nui. I worry that since my last few entries were a tad negative that you have the impression that we didn’t enjoy our trip there. Not true at all. We both had an incredibly fun time and loved French Polynesia. The problem is that the trip was a bit too long- we were there for 17 days! We figured out the magic number for an international trip is 12 days. Just enough time to get a flavor for the place, but not so long that it gets old. I’d tell anyone who is considering going to not stay there for more than 2 weeks and just visit the islands of Tahiti Nui, Moorea, and most of all Bora Bora. The smaller islands of Huahine and Raiatea aren’t worth it. Anything you want to see and do is available and much easier on the larger islands. We found ourselves doing a lot of thumb twiddling and experiencing a lot of language barrier related awkwardness on the smaller islands.
So…our last days in Tahiti Nui. Last I wrote, we had just arrived at Le Royal Tahitian in Papeete. The following day we decided to walk the several miles to downtown. It was an extremely hot and sunny day and I felt like I was going to fall over since there wasn’t any shade on the road. Getting into town was a relief since there was more shade under the buildings. Papeete is a very grimey town with busy streets packed with cars and people. We spent the afternoon poking around stores, sitting in cafes people watching, and visiting the blissfully air conditioned Robert Wan pearl museum. There were some pretty interesting dioramas and amazing giant pearl jewelry for sale that cost millions of dollars. Robert Wan possesses the largest, most perfect pearl in the world. I stared at that baby for quite awhile.
We had dinner in the downtown Papeete plaza where about 30 roulottes (moving food vans) gather every night around 6 pm. The roulottes serve French food like steak avec frites (steak & fries,) poisson cru (raw fish in lime juice and coconut milk,) crepes, and lots of Chinese food. We took some pictures and a video of the scene – it was really neat. I wish they had something like that in San Francisco but with food like Indian, Middle Eastern, and Mexican.
On our last day in Tahiti, we checked out of our hotel and rented a car from some place the hotel receptionist called up. A Tahitian man picked us up at the hotel and drove us to the car place. On the ride there he asked us if we were Americans and where we were from. When he found out we lived in California he got very excited. He told us he loved American music, especially the Red Hot Chili Peppers since he surfed and they had a beach vibe. He also loved Metallica and NOFX. Then he mentioned he loved American video games and movies and how Americans loved challenge and action. He said French movies- no good- they’re always making love.
The car we rented was a total piece of crap! It was “Chery” model Chinese car. I think it was supposed to be a “Chevy” knock off. Halfway around Tahiti Nui, we stopped at a gas station and realized we couldn’t shift the car gear into park OR reverse. We made it a point not to stop anywhere we had to reverse. To park the car, we put it in neutral and used the emergency brake. I couldn’t open my passenger door, Mike had to let me out from outside. I was totally freaked out- it was a total death trap! Mike nicknamed it “Time” since it could only go forward- never backwards. I was relieved to get out of that thing and into line at the airport.
The flight home to LAX was relatively uneventful. We both slept as well as one could sleep sitting upright. Our flight from from LAX to SFO was delayed because of (surprise) fog. We’re both still recovering from jet lag and haven’t even unpacked yet.
Stay tuned for videos and pictures this week!
