Port, Papeete, Tahiti

At the Papeete port again, using a free wireless...

Yesterday (2010-04-19) visited the Gauguin Museum at the other end of the island some 55km from Papeete. The way the public buses work here is confusing and unreliable, so it took us 3 hours to reach the museum and to come back we had to hitchhike because the last bus back to Papeete seemed to have left already at 14.30. After 10 minutes of hitchhiking we got picked up by a nice Chinese businessman (2nd generation Tahitian) who seemed to own everything on the island, from flower farms and quarries to supermarkets and pearl shops.

In the museum we learned that Gauguin was obsessed with his Peruvian ancestors which made him consider himself half-savage, the nature which he tried to explore and connect to more in French Polynesia. Upon arriving there the Polynesia was unfortunately already too French. Gauguin had a wife and 5 kids but for the most part of his life they seemed to be living in Denmark away from Gauguin (the wife was Danish).
Anyway, his paintings are interesting, mixing motifs from different cultures, consider e.g. Le Grande Buddha (1899) which features the Last Supper, Buddha, a Maori woodcarving, two Tahitian ladies, and a dog.

The day before yesterday (2010-04-18) traveled for 9 hours from Bora Bora back to Papeete. The ferry King Tamatoa is new and comfortable but the food on-board is expensive and comes in tiny quantities and the audio-video program consists of the same hula-girl show played over and over.

Bora Bora is a small island (38 km2) with a big tourist industry (1218 hotel/pension rooms). The big and expensive resorts (Four Seasons, InterContinental, Sofitel, etc.) are mostly located off the main island on the smaller motus (islets) surrounding the main island on the coral reef. The people who stay there probably never visit the main island as they are shipped to the resort directly from the airport (located on another motu), unless of course they choose to dine out at the Bloody Mary's restaurant which has hosted many celebrities over the years, from Kareem Abdul Jabbar to Sen. John McCain (240 names are listed by the front entrance).

On 2010-04-17 bought the snorkeling equipment (it was not possible to rent it anywhere) and biked around the island (35km) looking for a nice beach. Unfortunately, the nice beach is only found on the southern tip of the island, where all the resorts and pensions are as well, so one cannot find a solitary beach experience on Bora Bora...
(While snorkeling on the main public beach saw two manta (?) rays hovering over the bottom of the lagoon. One can easily spot them from the distance because the water is so clear.)

Huahine came much closer to paradise. It is bigger in area (74 km2) but much less developed touristically (236 hotel/pension rooms). We had a private bungalow on the beach on the south coast of the island. One could take a kayak, paddle out into the lagoon, and dip into the clear and shallow water. (It was difficult to swim by the beach because of many sharp dead corals and sea urchins.)

On 2010-04-15 rented a scooter and biked around the island. There is quite a lot to see considering the size of the island: a vanilla plantation, a pearl farm, tame eels that eat from your palm, old stone platforms for human sacrifice (marae). The local people are friendly, smiling and waving all the time.