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Traveler Erikd
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the adventure begins

2004-09-22, tahiti, French Polynesia

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We arrived in tahiti at 2:40am after a 3 hour flight to L.A., a 3 hour wait there and then a 9 hour flight to Tahiti. Stayed in the airport till daylight which was about 6:00am and hopped on board a public bus, called a le truck. I was pretty sure it was going to the ferry dock, some local guy who didn't speak english said it was. Made to the ferry dock, local guy told the bus driver to let us know when to get off. We caught the first ferry to Moorea, about a 30 minute ferry ride. Moorea is a beautiful island, very lush, lots of palm trees, cool aqua blue water, high mountains.....this place is paradise. When we got off the ferry, we wandered around a bit and missed the public bus, taxi's are too expensive so we had to wait for the next bus to leave which was in 2 hours, so we hung out on the dock. Finally made it to the place where we were staying, Moorea camping. it's a little place on a nice stretch of beach, not too many beaches here, mostly lagoons. The place is a little run down.....actually the place is a dump but it's cheap and the location is first class. We started to unpack and noticed and ant hill in our room so we got another room and same thing, third room was ok. After we unpacked we chilled out on the soft white sandy beach, the water was crystal clear, hot sunny, over 30c, this is why we came here!!!! We just hung out on the beach for the day and went snorkeling, swam out to a little island, called a motu, saw some fish and just relaxed, was tired after a long travel day. That evening we just walked to the store, bought groceries, made dinner and crashed early. The next day woke up to rain.....NOOOOOOOO, was warm but raining. Made some breakfast and decided to rent some bikes and check out the island. The rained stopped after about an hour and cleared up to a beautiful day. We biked around for about 5 hours, my ass was sore. Really nice island, a lot bigger than i thought it was. Rode back to the beach and hung out there for the rest of the day. MAde dinner that night, met some english speaking travellers, so far all of the people we met were french speaking so it was nice to talk to some people, 2 girls from Ireland. Island life means no late nights, the place shut down at 9:30, all lights off, so that means early mornings, most people up and out at 7:00. Day 3, didn't do anything, ass was still sore from bike ride. Decided to get tattoo done, walked to Roonui's studio, a well known tattoo artist and checked out some designs...really cool stuff. I decided on getting a manta ray with sharks tattoed on my back, made an appointment for the next day. Roonui's a super cool guy, a little intimedating at first, he's covered in tattoos, his wife is really nice too, turned out she is from MOntreal. Day 4, woke up early again, those damn roosters, we signed up for a shark and sting ray feeding tour. We took a boat out a ways a hopped out of the boat and fed some reef sharks, stayed there for about 30 minutes...coooooollll. Then we all hopped back on the baot and went out to another spot, jumped in the water and about 10-15 big sting rays came swimming up. They would swim right up onto your chest, they are really soft and friendly plus we were feeding them........super coooooooooooolllll. After that the boat took us to a motu (small isalnd) and hung out for an hour. Tour took about 3 hours and was the best $15.00 we spent. As soon as we got back to beach I had to hurry and shower and get cleaned up for my tattoo. I rented a bike and rode over to roonui's place, tattoo took about 2 hours and turned out really good, very happy with it. I wasn't to sure what it was going to look like because he traced a bit but most of it was free hand. The next day we flew to Ra'iatea about a 40 minute flight. It's a a lot bigger that Moorea but not as picturese, a lot more lush.We spent 3 nights there on a horse ranch, small horses here kinda like ponys.While we were there we went on a hike one day up to some waterfalls and the next day we hung on a motu for the whole day, dropped off at 9 and picked up at 5. Not much to do on this island, everything all spread out and not too many beaches.The owner of the ranch was a super nice guy, the first day there we noticed that my document holder was missing which had all my ID, passport, plane tickets, credit cards, etc. evrything, the owner, Patrick drove us down to there airport and talked to some people there and they located it, it must have fell out of my bag on the plane and it was going to be sent the next day, thank god this guy knows a lot of people, what a releif....was stressing out huge. Patrick also arranged our ferry to Bora bora, we were planning on taking a ferry there but there were none going there for the next 3 days so he got us onboard a cargo ship there, which took 6 hours, on a regular ferry it would take 90 minutes. We arrived in Bora Bora and this place is paradise this is the bomb, the most beautiful place I've ever been to.The colour of the water is just amazing, something that you have to see. We were only going to stay for 2 days because it is so expensive here but changed to 3 days. We rented bikes and rode around the island, 30km, gorgeous, by far this was the best island, worth the extra expense.We flew back to Tahiti and tommorrow we fly to the cook islands.


 
 

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