We had an idea to finally visit Australia, also known as the “Land Down Under,” and after a lot of research, we came up with the following 29-day adventure (and do not ask me why I did not make it a 30-day adventure…I really do not know why I did not just add one more day to this wonderful trip).
Well, here it goes:
We left Tampa and flew (non-stop) to Los Angeles (yes, the dreaded LAX Airport). We arrived early and had to sit in the airplane on the tarmac because no gates were available for our early arriving flight! (FYI: I will probably never fly into LAX again…it is a crazy airport inside and out!) Thank goodness our Travel Agent (wonderful Kathy at Beach Travel) allowed 4 hours for our connecting flight to Papeete, Tahiti.
We did not get off the airplane for an entire hour! Finally, they found us a gate and let us deplane. After a 5-hour flight and an extra hour sitting on the tarmac, we were a little tired and hungry. We ate at a nice airport restaurant and then made our way to the Tahiti Air terminal. We got to our gate only about 2-1/2 hours before our international flight to Tahiti. We prayed that our luggage would make it on our next flight to Tahiti. After boarding the plane, we decided to try to stay up all night until we landed in Tahiti at around 11 p.m. (Tahiti time)! That way, we would be automatically on Tahitian time the following day after sleeping around 6-7 hours at the hotel. So, while everyone else was sleeping on our long flight to Tahiti from Los Angeles, we stayed awake watching funny movies…and trying (unsuccessfully) not to laugh too loudly. I think most of the people (and stewardesses on the airplane) thought we were nuts. However, we actually had a very good plan!! Sure, we were groggy and more than a little tired, staying awake for around 23 hours, but it worked! (Who said older people cannot stay up for a long time?) We grabbed our luggage, hailed a cab, and headed to our French Polynesian hotel to get some much-needed sleep. The next morning, we were up and ready to see what the Island of Tahiti had to offer.
Tahiti is 5 hours behind the center of Florida (FL).
We had reservations for five nights in Tahiti. We stayed at the Black Pearl Resort, now known as Le Tahiti by Pearl Resorts, just 15 minutes out of Papeete and close to the Papeete Airport. The French Polynesian hotel was very beautiful, with blackish sand beaches and beautiful ocean views. It had huge Tahitian-style open areas for eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a nice-sized pool. Our room faced the Island of Moorea and had the biggest covered balcony we have ever had at any hotel. We watched the sunset every night over the Island of Moorea right from our balcony. Our room was spacious, the beds comfortable, and the restroom a very nice size, with a walk-in tiled shower for two! (Can I hear a big yahoo)? The only bad thing about our hotel was the crazy roosters that decided to start crowing around 4:30 – 5:00 a.m. every morning on the island. (FYI: We now carry earplugs with us when we travel because of those awful roosters!!) Also, the television at our hotel only had French speaking channels and CNN!! (CNN…as far as I’m concerned, one of the worst stations ever! Sorry to all you CNN lovers out there!) No wonder a lot of foreign people do not like Americans…they all think we are like the wacky people they watch on CNN!!
The next day, we relaxed and just stayed around the hotel to check out the amenities available on the hotel premises. We arrived so late the night before we did not even see what the hotel looked like until the next morning.
Of course, we also walked along the beaches so we could take some pictures of our hotel and the beautiful scenery around the area. (FYI: I thought the dark sand beaches in Tahiti were not as beautiful as the black sand beaches we have visited many times on the Big Island of Hawaii.)
Also, for your information, there were no women walking on the beach (or at our hotel) missing the top part of their swimsuits. Most people think that is what is expected when visiting the Island of Tahiti. All the men and women we encountered on the beach and at our hotel were properly attired.
The next day, we decided to visit the town of Papeete and found out when transportation was available into town from our hotel. To me, the downtown area of Papeete looked just like any other island town. Sorry to all those who thought Tahiti would look more tropical and more exotic than all the Caribbean Islands right off the coast of Florida! I did not find that to be true at all. Of course, Papeete had some nice shops to buy some of those wonderful tourist-y items you just cannot live without. They also had some really nice “island-style” restaurants where you could relax and grab a bite to eat. So, after our adventure in town, we hopped back on the trolley and rode back to our hotel for the evening.
About Papeete
Description:
Papeete, on Tahiti, is the capital of French Polynesia, a group of islands in the South Pacific. Beside the port, busy Place Vai’ete fills with roulottes, or food carts, in the evenings. Nearby, the large Marché de Papeete market sells local produce, fish and handicrafts. The Robert Wan Pearl Museum focuses on the local pearl industry and sells jewelry. A red spire tops the 19th-century Notre Dame Cathedral. ― Google
We booked a Tahitian (Sunset) Dinner Show at our hotel for the next evening. We were looking forward to seeing all those famous Tahitian dancers strut their stuff! The show was very entertaining, and the food they served was very good. Those dancers had some great moves, and, yes, the Tahitian women sure knew how to shake their grass skirts! (And, yes, ladies, the island men were quite impressive too!) The weather that evening was very beautiful, and the sunset was quite marvelous. Overall, the entertainment and dinner show at our hotel was wonderful and worth the price of admission.
The next day we planned to see the “inner” part of the Island of Tahiti and booked a tour with a local company (Marama Safari 4 x 4). They picked us up at our hotel in an open-aired white pick-up truck with bench seats attached on each side of the truck in the back. We thought (to ourselves) that it was not the most safe-looking vehicle for a tour! It did have some seat belts (that we definitely buckled) and a large rollbar…Yay!! That made us feel just a little bit better. So, (we said a quick prayer) then jumped into the back of the truck, buckled up, and raced down the roads to all our scenic destinations. (FYI: Some of those roads included freeway driving! Needless to say, my hair was a mess all day long!) All safety worries aside, we did see many beautiful waterfalls, green tropical mountains, and some quite huge and ugly New Zealand long-fin eels. (Our tour guide had some food to feed them.) They would come up out of the water so they could eat the food that he was dropping in the water near them. They were way too large and eerie-looking for me…I did not get near them! I did take some great pictures of the eels, though. I wonder how they got to Tahiti in the first place?
One of the Tahitian tour guides (the one feeding the eels) was awesome and could actually speak English! Yay!! Unfortunately, he was not our tour guide. We struck up a conversation with him anyway because I wanted a picture of him! Well, come to find out, when I asked him if he was born in Tahiti, he said that he was not. He was actually from Vegas!! (That is Las Vegas, Nevada, for those who do not know about “Vegas”.) Go Figure!! We laughed about that, and I told him his “outfit” was awesome. I also told him that we were a little disappointed that he was not born in Tahiti. (He sure did look like he could have been.) He was a lot of fun, though. We laughed, and then I asked him for a picture. That’s when he jumped up on a nearby rock to pose for me (and, I guess, all of the other picture-crazy tourists who were too afraid to ask him for a picture themself!). I got some great pictures of him on that rock with the beautiful scenery in the background. We still talk about our encounter with our “Tahiti Tour Guide from Vegas” whenever we talk to friends and family about our time in Tahiti!
FYI: Some of the other tour guides could not speak anything but French. Which was very awkward for us…we do not speak or understand any French words at all!
(Thank goodness for a German tourist we befriended on our tour; he was extremely nice and would let us know what our French-speaking tour guide was talking about!) So, here comes another one of Alma’s Travel Tips: When you book a tour in a foreign country, make sure your tour guide can speak English and stays with your tour all day!! We had an English-speaking tour guide when we started the tour, but he left after only being with us for a few hours.
Some more important information regarding Tahiti: When we looked into (possibly) taking a boat or a ferry over to the Island of Moorea (which was not that far away) for a day so we could visit another island, the only time available to us was super early in the morning. The Concierge Desk informed us that we would have to leave our hotel (by taxi) around 4:00 a.m. in order to get to the boat dock for a conveyance to the Island of Moorea by 5:00 a.m. Also, the ferry going over to Moorea would only drop us off at an industrial port, not in the actual town. We were also informed that no buses or shuttles pick people up from the industrial port area. We would have to walk to town. Also, they did not have daily ferries going back and forth (all day long) between the two islands. The only ferry back to Tahiti was returning around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. So, even if you happen to get an early ferry over to Moorea, you would not be able to return to Tahiti until much later in the day. We decided not to chance the trip because we were unfamiliar with the Island of Moorea. (Note: I felt that Tahiti (once you arrive on their island) wants you to stay on their island. They do not make it easy for tourists to go visit other islands once you arrive in Tahiti!)
The next day, we arrived at the Tahiti Airport and boarded a plane to Auckland, New Zealand. The flight was only 6 hours. However, we were flying over the International Date Line and would lose an entire day! So, we landed in Auckland, New Zealand, around 2 p.m. (officially, it was a day and a half later – we lost a day!) and then got to our hotel right before dinner time. We stuffed our luggage in our very nice hotel room at the Crowne Plaza/Auckland, 128 Albert Street, Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010, New Zealand, and then walked around the area to see if we could find a place to eat dinner. While searching for a restaurant for dinner, we noticed a very tall Tower about 2 blocks from our hotel. We were too tired to check it out that night, but we planned on returning to the Tower the next day.
The next day, after we ate a great breakfast at our hotel, we visited Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand. It was a fun trip up to the top, and we took some great pictures of Auckland from the top of the Tower! They have people (crazy ones) that go up to the top of Sky Tower every day just so they can bungee jump off of it! (Crazy indeed!) We watched a lady do just that while we were at the top of the Tower! We, however, did not bungee jump off the Sky Tower because…(just let me think about a good excuse for a moment)…Oh yeah…it was not on our personal bucket list, and…we are not crazy! (Yet!!) That sounds like a great excuse to me!! LOL! Also, at our age, we are not really sure our old bones would survive a bungee jump! We have climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge (awesome pictures are coming real soon of that adventure), and we have walked across very tall bridges, like the New River Gorge Bridge (while wearing safety equipment, of course), but that is totally different! No jumping off of a high structure was involved!
We jumped on a “See Auckland in a Day” double decker tour bus for part of the day and then walked around Auckland for the rest of the day. “We shopped until we dropped” and checked out many different areas in the city. Auckland is a great walking town, and everyone we met was so nice! We had to, unfortunately, get back to our hotel after dinner so we could pack and get ready for our next adventure…A 13-day Cruise around New Zealand and over to Australia!! We were going to board the Majestic Princess Cruise Ship the next day!
We would have liked to stay a few more days in Auckland, but we had only planned 2 nights before boarding the cruise ship. If we ever get to visit New Zealand again, we will plan to stay longer than just 2 nights in Auckland! The city was a lot of fun, clean and beautiful… and we really enjoyed the amazing people that live there! They all love Americans!! That is hard to believe…but, after all our travels, we actually found a place where they love us!! Yay!!
STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 OF THIS BLOG (NEXT MONTH) FOR OUR ADVENTURES DURING OUR 13-DAY CRUISE AROUND NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA…
Add comment
Comments