Tahiti wascovered with the clouds as we arrive early in the morning. The east side of the island is windy and wet and fortunately the town and marina are on the other side. This is the trade wind side.
Tahiti has been fun and as it was their time for celebrations so there was a lot to see. The island itself is a busy place compared to all the other little islands that we have been to. The anchorage was also busy and deep which meant that you had all your chain out with lots of boats very close to you. One evening a wind came up and many boats had problems with their holding. We fortunately held fast as there is nothing worse than trying to anchor in a very crowded deep anchorage in the dark. The sun sets in the west over the island of Moorea that always formed a lovely backdrop to the anchorage.
The town had shops were you could find anything you wanted but all very expensive. Near the marina we have a lovely large supermarket that made getting foodstuffs easy and downtown there is a super fresh produce market. All around the streets there are stalls as well as shops that are selling pearls. I guess that out on the smaller islands is the place to get them as there are not as many tourists to inflate the prices.
Most of the women dress beautifully and they all love their hats with real flowers on or else just the flowers on their heads. The flowers are often made up ready to purchase along the roads or in the markets and the scents are absolutely beautiful. The flowers around the market for wearing and as bouquets are so colourful.
All over in the streets you find groups playing local and traditional music so there is always a good buzz around town.
We took a bus and travelled south of the marina as far as it would go to see some of the island. We went with the folk from Gabber and Promise and had a wonderful day stopping at the cultural museum on the way back. We had lunch on the beach at a little restaurant where we sat watching the surfers try their luck. At the pass that we go through they have boats that take the surfers out there and ride the big waves.... not much room for error as the coral is never too far from the front of the wave. The idea is to surf the wave and follow the break till it ends at the pass were the water gets deep again ... this is fine as long as you do not fall off. In August they have one of the world large wave competitions here.
On Bastille day we went to the Polynesian games held on the grounds of the museum were they have stone lifting... up to 160kg. The time starts as soon as the competitor lifts the stone clear of the ground and stops once he has the stone on his shoulder and has his left arm outstretched ... in the 100kg division the time winning time was 2.44sec.
The other section that we enjoyed was the throwing of spears/javelins at a coconut at the top of a flagpole. Each competitor has 10 spears and they have a set time for all of them to throw their spears at the same time. They do this a few times and then see who got the most spears into the coconut. There would be over twenty spears in the coconut at the end of each section. At the end they had a team section won by a local team. Many of the teams come in from the surrounding islands. All the participants in all of the events dress in tradition dress and the activities are interspersed with Tahitian dances.
Well time to let the hair down and its weekend so many head for the shallows of the reef where floating restaurants, bars etc. park up and the locals arrive in boats and bits to swim and party. It is shallow so people just stand in the water thats waste deep. some play games like volleball. its just one big party.
