Despite my best efforts to sleep a little later this morning (knowing I would not get any sleep tonight on the redeye flight back to America), I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm at 6:15am. I spent a few minutes packing up the rest of my belongings as quietly as I could so DH could sleep a little later. I was surprised to hear a knock at the door at 6:45am… we had requested our breakfast be delivered between 7-7:30am, so they were 15 minute early! It’s a good thing I woke up early today!! This turned out to be a good thing because we ate our breakfast while we finished packing, and we were all ready to leave by 8am.
We needed to be out of our cabin by 9:30am so Jo Fe could turn it over for
the new guests embarking today, and PG asked us to be off the ship by 10am at the latest. Once that happened, we would be a bit stranded with our luggage, so our goal was to go to the market now, and then come back to the cabin before 9:30 to clear out the rest of our belongings. As we left the ship, we saw all of the suitcases lined up in a tent on the dock. We let the crew know that we would return by 10am to collect our bags, and that was fine with them.
La Marche is a large market located just a few short blocks from where the PG docks in Papette. They sell everything from souvenirs, to pareos, to jewelry, to fresh produce and flowers. Once we exited the cruise port area, we used the map provided in today’s daily schedule to walk about 5 minutes to the market. We had yet to buy any souvenirs for our friends and family, so this was the goal for today. Most of the stores sold the same wood tiki statues, soaps, pareos, tshirts, and jams, and they all had similar prices (although it was a bit cheaper at the vendors upstairs as compared to the vendors downstairs right near the entrance doors).
We bought a few souvenirs, then I had another mission to accomplish… I wanted to buy a black pearl! There were several stores upstairs who sold pre-made jewelry with pearls of many sizes and qualities so there was something for just about every price point. I was drawn to this store, called Mihiarii Pearls, because they had bins filled with hundreds of pearls and I was able to hand pick my favorite pearl and they would mount it onto the pendant of my choosing.
I thought this was so much fun, and it turned shopping for jewelry into an
experience I will never forget. I also picked out pearls to give as gifts, so the lady said they needed about an hour to drill and set all the pearls onto the pendants and we could come back later to pick it up.
By the time we were done, it was 9:15am and we needed to clear out of
our cabin by 9:30, so we hurried back to the ship to collect our bags. We still had 30 minutes before we needed to officially exit the ship, so we went upstairs to La Palette as that’s where they were still serving breakfast. As we snacked on one last delicious croissant, Will, the pianist from the Rolling Keys Duo, played a few songs as background music. He was finished with his performing duties and was waiting in La Palette to exit this ship just like all the other passengers, so I guess this is what he does when he gets a little bored haha
Promptly at 10am, we rode the elevators down to deck 3 and exited the
ship one last time. We were now officially homeless and needed to find a way to fill our day because our flight home wasn’t until nearly midnight tonight! Our original plan for today was to rent a car from the Downtown Papeete Avis location, throw our suitcases in the trunk, and spend the day driving around the perimeter of Tahiti and checking out the sites. I booked an automatic car months in advance and started to research places of interest in Tahiti. As the trip drew closer, we started to second guess our plans. After 2 long weeks of traveling and touring, would we really want to deal with driving a rental car in a strange city? Papeete is a fairly large city and is the one place in French Polynesia where you will see traffic… did we really want to deal with that? And while I did find a few places that might have been interesting to see, there was nothing that seemed like it was a “must see or your trip won’t be complete”. Ultimately, we decided to cancel our rental car in Tahiti about a week before we left for the trip (a very easy process btw- I just replied to my confirmation email saying we changed our plans and needed to cancel, and they replied to confirm. We could cancel up to 24 hours in advance of our reservation, and this was closer to a month in advance, so we knew it would work out just fine.)
Ok, so now what are we going to do? It would have been perfect if there was a place to store our luggage in downtown Papeete, but there is not. We considered renting a hotel room with an early check in time, just to have a place to stash our luggage, but by then, all the affordable rooms were booked. In the end, we decided to take a taxi from the cruise port to the airport and use their luggage storage room, then we would take a taxi back to the downtown area and hang out for the rest of the day before taking a third taxi back to the airport to pick up our luggage before checking in for our flight. It probably was not the best use of our time, but what difference does it make when we were mostly killing time for the day anyway?!
Ok, so back to today… After we exited the ship, we collected our suitcases and rolled them down to the end of the pier to exit the cruise port area. I left DH sitting on a chair on the sidewalk while I went back to the market to pick up my pearls. The shop said they closed at noon on Saturday and I didn’t want to risk missing them if we went to the airport first, so this just made the most sense. I returned with my precious cargo about 20 minutes later, only to find out that DH had made some new friends! There were 2 ladies who were also planning to take a taxi to the airport to drop off their luggage, so we decided to all share the taxi to save some money. This worked out so well because we found a taxi van sitting just outside of the port area, and she had more than enough space to haul all of our bags. She charged 2000xpf each way, plus 100xpf per suitcase (but we only paid for that in one direction since we were leaving the luggage at the airport). She was even willing to wait for us at the airport while we ran in to drop off our bags, so she could then drive us back downtown.
Side note: When PG gave us the disembarkation paperwork, it said that taxis can be hard to find near the cruise port and that they would arrange for a taxi to pick you up at a specific time for a $15 fee (plus the cost of the actual taxi ride). We considered doing this, but instead decided to take our chances because we knew the cruise port was very close to the ferry terminal, and in the middle of the downtown area, so we could likely track down at least one taxi! As it turned out, their information was only part of the story. Taxi drivers must pay a hefty fee to buy a permit which allows them through the security gates to enter the cruise port. Most taxi drivers do not want to pay for that permit, and therefore can only drive as far as the sidewalk at the end of the pier. Directly across the street from where the cruise ship docks, there is a taxi stand where you can find a taxi at just about any time of the day, but you will need to walk there and not everyone is that mobile (especially when dragging a 50 pound suitcase!). If you can not or do not wish to walk to the taxi stand, then yes, you should probably pay the $15 for PG to arrange a taxi for you.
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to the airport. The luggage storage room is located in the main hallway next to the currency exchange. They are opened daily from 6am-12 noon, then they close for lunch until 1:30pm and remain opened until 10pm.
It is really just a small room with shelves, so no real security aside from the
employees who work there. The lady took our bags from us and tied them all together with a string to make it easier to collect them later. I don’t think non-employees are allowed inside the storage room, but you should probably still have some sort of lock if you are going to leave your bags here.
Here are the rates to store your bags. It is flat rate for the whole day, and worth every penny to not have to lug the heavy bags all over the city haha
Once the four of us checked our bags, we piled back in the taxi for the 15 minute ride back to where we started our journey. With all the back and forth, it was now 11:30am and we could finally start exploring Papeete. Honestly, there isn’t a ton to see here. It is really just like any other city, and not nearly as beautiful as the places we had seen over the last 2 weeks. At mid-day on a Saturday, the city was quite crowded with locals doing their shopping and errands.
We stumbled upon several colorful murals on the walls of a shopping complex. The skies had been totally overcast all morning, so this added some much-needed color to our day!
We didn’t really have an agenda for the day, so we just aimlessly wandered the streets of downtown Papeete, snapping photos of interesting sculptures and buildings along the way.
Notice those threatening grey clouds in the sky? I never once on saw clear blue skies over Tahiti… what’s up with that??
We started to get hungry for lunch at around noon. Even though the PG was still docked just a few blocks away, we didn’t think they would let us back on the ship to eat in La Veranda one last time haha Instead, we went back to La Marche in search of something to eat. They have a bunch of food vendors selling grab-and-go kind of foods, so we picked this place and ordered a few slices of pizza. It was far from what I’d call “good pizza”, but it was edible and filled us up, so I guess it did it’s job.
By the time we finished eating and walked back outside, the skies had opened up and it was raining. Of all days for it to be raining, this was probably the worst possible day because we were essentially homeless. Had we still been on the cruise, we could have camped out in one of the indoor lounges and kept ourselves entertained for the day, but today, the only thing we had to do was walk around the city and that isn’t very fun in the rain. On top of that, we were carrying backpacks filled with all of our electronics because we didn’t want to leave that stuff in the airport luggage storage room, so now we had the added obstacle of trying to keep it all dry!
We could tell that this wasn’t the kind of rain that would stop in 10 minutes… this was an all-day kind of rain (and sure enough, it did continue to rain non-stop until at least 7pm). We needed a Plan-B. There is a small tourism office located just a short walk from where the PG is docked, so we went back over there to see if they had any ideas for us. The employee said that they have a 1-hour tour that drives around Papeete in a train, and it would be starting at 2pm in a park that was about a 15 minute walk away. It wasn’t ideal to have to walk all that way in the rain, but at least we knew that when we arrived, we’d have a dry place to sit and could kill an hour of our day.
When we arrived at the park, we easily spotted the train sitting on the sidewalk. The tour usually costs 1500 xpf per person, but the guide told us there was some kind of promotion today and it would only cost 1000 xpf! Ok! Sounds good to me, since we were already willing to spend the higher price just to get out of the rain haha The train looked kind of childish and it wasn’t the kind of tour that I would usually take, but desperate times call for desperate measures…
The train cars were not air conditioned so we had to keep the windows opened a little bit or it got very hot and stuffy inside. Unfortunately, that meant that the rain also got in, so we ended up opening and closing the windows throughout the tour a few times to get some fresh air and then to dry off. The tour is pre-recorded and alternates between English and French. It got to be a little hard to follow and pay attention because I was blocking out the recording when it was in French, and sometimes I didn’t even notice that the English speaker had started again. I didn’t take many photos on the tour, partly because there wasn’t much worth taking a photo of, and partly because the windows were hard to see out of with all the rain droplets.
The one and only photo I took during the tour was of this Chinese temple.
I’m sorry to say that Papeete really isn’t that nice of a city. It is kind of dirty and run down, and there really isn’t much worth seeing. I’m glad we did the tour as it satisfied my curiosity, but I don’t think I’d bother touring Papeete again if I ever return to Tahiti.
When the tour ended, we walked across the street to the Pearl Museum. Entrance was free, and it was an interesting way to spend another hour or so out of the rain.
There were 3 employees inside and they were all very happy to answer any of our questions, and they encouraged us to take as many photos as we wanted.
Some famous model once wore this pearl bikini
At the back of the museum, they have this exhibit set up with a small TV screen that plays a 15-minute movie about black pearls. It was very informative, especially since we didn’t get to visit any pearl farms, and it gave me a good appreciation of why these precious black pearls can be so expensive.
By 4pm, we had as much pearl knowledge as we could handle, so we went back out into the rain in search of a restaurant or bar for happy hour. Our original plan for dinner tonight was to visit the food trucks that set up along the waterfront every night in Papeete. We did not know if they would still do this in the rain, and it didn’t look like the rain would stop any time soon, so we wanted to find another location to eat and pass the time until we needed to go back to the airport.
We walked, and walked, and walked some more, but nothing was open! Maybe the restaurants and shops all close mid-day and hadn’t reopened yet, but it was totally dead down there and we wondered if we’d ever find somewhere to go. That’s when we stumbled upon the ONLY open bar on the main road- the Bora Bora Lounge. Not only were they open, they were crowded! There was a UFC fight tonight and all the locals came down to this bar to watch the fight. They had a good happy hour with special pricing on Hinano, and their dinner menu was extensive, so we decided to stay here.
I wish we had a bigger group than just DH and me because it would have been fun to get one of those giant dispensers of beer haha
We weren’t that hungry, but we knew we needed to eat dinner before going to the airport, so we ordered a pizza to share. Yes, I know, pizza again! But at least this pizza was much better than the pizza we had for lunch!
By the time we finished dinner and had our fill of Hinano, it was 6:30pm and I was sick of swatting the mosquitoes off my legs, so we decided to just head back to the airport early. It was still raining, though not as much as it had been earlier in the day, so we were glad we opted for indoor dining for dinner instead of trying out the food trucks. I’m not even sure if they were opened that night! After we left the Bora Bora Lounge, we walked less than a block and found a taxi waiting at the taxi stand. He quoted us the same 2000 xpf to get down to the airport as we had paid earlier this morning, so we hopped in.
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to a mostly-deserted airport. We went back to the luggage storage room to retrieve our big suitcases, and took a seat on a bench near the ticketing counters. I took notes in my trip journal and sifted through some of my digital photos on my iPad while DH read his book. After a little while, we noticed that more people were arriving and thought we should probably get in line to check in for our flight. Tahiti’s airport has a very small section for checking in, and it is divided into 3 lines. We asked an employee at the information desk and she said we should line up near Gate C. There were already 3 or 4 couples in line down there so we got in line behind them. Since there is no way to check in over the internet, the lines do grow quite long, especially when the big buses start arriving from the hotels with people who had dayrooms through PG. It then becomes even more chaotic because there are 3 flights that leave within 30 minutes of each other, and there are not signs anywhere indicating which line is for which flights, so people are walking around in circles trying to figure out where they are supposed to stand. What a mess!
Check in started at around 8:30pm, and we were happy to hear that
we were assigned our choice of window/aisle seats again for the flight home. The check-in lady asked us to put both big suitcases up on the scales together to make sure they weighed less than 100 pounds total (so there was no need for us to spend all that time last night shuffling items from one bag to the other to make sure both were under 50 pounds lol). Then she broke the bad news to us: DH had been randomly selected to go through a more intense security screening. When she printed out his boarding pass, it had the letter S printed on it a few times, so fingers crossed that you don’t have this on your pass! She selected one of our suitcases to go through an x-ray machine (I guess they’d don’t have the facilities to x-ray every checked bag??), and then she directed us down the hall to go through customs and security. We waited in line for about 10 minutes since all 3 flights of people feed into the same line, and then quickly got our passports stamped and proceeded through the metal detectors. DH had to remove his shoes and go through a pat-down (I did not, I just walked through the metal detector), and then he was escorted into an office where they inspected all of the items inside his carry on bags and asked him a bunch of questions. He was in there for about 10 minutes and said it was a very invasive, unpleasant experience. I think around 30 people on each flight are selected for this extra security screening, so at least he wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t the best way to end an already exhausting day.
By the time DH finished his screening, I had already entered the terminal area (I wanted to distance myself from him so they wouldn’t make me go through the same screening process for being his wife!). I had read so many reviews talking about how the Tahiti airport is all open to the outside, so I did not expect such a nice seating area inside the departures terminal! I was very surprised to see this large, fairly updated room with tons of seating available. As time went on, the room did fill to capacity because all 3 flights of people are waiting in the same room, so that alone made it worth it that we arrived at the airport so early because we had our choice of benches. I apologize that I did not take any photos of the terminal- I think I was photoed out by the 17th day of our vacation haha
The terminal has a small snack stand where you can buy food (just the typical pre-made sandwiches I think), and there was also a duty free store with all the usual liquor, chocolates, make up, and souvenirs. We did have a few francs left to spend, but I didn’t see anything here that I wanted. Since Wells Fargo had told me I could exchange any unused francs back to US Dollars, I didn’t see the use in wasting the money on something we didn’t want/need. (Side note: I had 10 francs worth of loose coins left over, so I asked the store employee if I could trade them in for a paper bill, and she was happy to help. Wells Fargo would not take back coins, so that worked out perfectly that I could trade it in for a paper bill.)
ATN started boarding the plane at 11:30pm for our 11:59pm flight. Luckily, it stopped raining because we had to walk outside and board the plane via a staircase from the tarmac. As we approached, I was thrilled to see that once again, we were flying on a refurbished plane! This time it was the Moorea (remember, Bora Bora is the lone unrenovated plane)
That was the last photo I took on our vacation… I definitely got lazy by the end lol
We took off promptly at midnight and had an uneventful flight back to Los Angeles. About an hour into the flight, they served “dinner” which was good because we ate our real dinner over 7 hours ago and I was starving! All of my research told me I would be served head cheese, so imagine my disappointment when they handed me a tray with a BBQ chicken wrap! Lol Actually, I wasn’t disappointed at all… I was thrilled that the meal was edible! I’m not sure if ATN stopped serving head cheese or if we just got lucky or what happened, but no complaints from me!
I spent the rest of the flight drifting in and out of sleep and looking through the thousands of photos I took over the last 17 days. At around 9am (Pacific time), the flight attendants came around to serve breakfast. I think I had a cheese omelet and DH had waffles, but I’m not 100% sure because I didn’t take a photo. See, this is what happens when I get lazy and stop using my camera… I forget the silly little details!
Overall, the flight was uneventful and we landed in Los Angeles on time a little after 11am. Remember how there were 3 planes leaving from
Tahiti within 30 minutes of each other? Well the plane leaving just before ours at 11:45pm was also an ATN flight heading to LAX, so they got first dibs on the gate at the international terminal. There was no gate available for us, so our plane taxied out to some remote location where we got on buses that took us to the main terminal. Customs was a unique experience as they have about 20 kiosks to automatically scan your passport and clear you to proceed into the airport to collect your checked luggage. The kiosk prints out a little receipt… don’t lose this paper! No one was there to tell us, so luckily we kept ours handy because someone collected that receipt before letting us leave the terminal!
We had a little over 3 hours until our Southwest flight back to San Jose, so we opted to wait for the airport shuttle bus instead of walking between the terminals like we had done 2 weeks ago. Of course, we saw the shuttle pulling away from the curb just as we arrived, so we had to wait about 20 minutes for the next bus to come around. When we arrived at Terminal 1, we checked our big luggage, went through security again, and had about 90 minutes to grab some lunch before it was time to board our flight. Those of you who fly Southwest Airlines know that the most annoying part is having to check in for your flight at exactly 24 hours prior to departure to secure a good boarding number. We usually set an alarm on our phones for 5 minutes before check-in time to make sure we are ready to go, and even then we rarely get the A boarding group. Well, at 24 hours prior to the flight, we were still in Tahiti! We weren’t sure if we would be able to find a wifi source, and even if we did, we doubted it would be a fast connection. Instead of stressing about it, we paid the $15 fee to use their Early Bird check in service. This was a fantastic use for the service as Southwest automatically checks you in for the flight and you are (nearly) guaranteed an A boarding number! When we are in America (even on a return flight home while still on vacation), I doubt we will pay the extra money, but when traveling internationally, this worked out perfectly and I would definitely do it again! We got A27 and A28… yippee! Our flight from LAX to SJC was much less eventful than our flight down 2 weeks ago, and before we knew it, we were back in San Jose and riding in an Uber back to our house.
Well… that’s all she wrote, folks! I hope you found this review informative and enjoyable to read, and please let me know if you have any questions!
Dana's Destination Diary 