Day 245, Year 1: Windbird in Tahiti
Date: Monday, June 19, 2006
Weather: Not Recorded
Latitude: 17 degrees 35 minutes S
Longitude: 149 degrees 37 minutes W
Location: Anchored Near Marina Taina, Papeete, Tahiti
Windbird has arrived in Tahiti. We haven’t seen much of it yet, but it is certainly the biggest city we have seen since Panama. Moorea is such a quiet, low-key island. I can tell already that Tahiti is not. The sail from Moorea to here is about 28 miles from anchorage to anchorage. The pass between the two islands is only ten miles wide, but Cook’s Bay is a few miles from the pass. And once you get to Tahiti, you enter the Passe de Papeete and have a few more miles to go up the Chenel de Faaa. The reef separates you from the ocean and the airport is on your land side. When you first enter the pass, the city of Papeete is directly in front of you. Some people stay on the quay in town, but theft there is rampant so we decided to head to the area near the Marina Taina in “suburbs”. It is three miles from here to town by boat, but I’m not sure how far it is by land. This we will discover tomorrow.
We are anchored in a little bay close to the Marina Taina. The view from our anchorage across the reef is of Moorea with Tahiti’s resort hotels in the other direction. We can use the marina dinghy dock, the expensive laundry ($11US per load to wash and another $11 per load to dry, and the showers there for just a $10US deposit that is returned when we turn in the key. The marina is very modern and the facilities are better than anyplace we have seen on this voyage. We can purchase time on the marina’s wireless internet connection. They actually sell an antenna to boost our capacity to receive the wireless onboard. We have been looking for an antenna like this since we were in Bonaire, but have not found one. Matt, the internet guru here, is a very friendly and helpful young man. He will come to the boat with an antenna and let us see if it gives us the needed boost before purchasing. If we can’t receive wireless on the boat, at least we can take our computer into the marina and communicate from there. When we walk through the marina and out to the main road, it is just a stone’s throw to the left to a traffic circle where we can hop on Le Truck. Le Truck is the cheaper way to travel into Papeete, but you do have to transfer. To the right, we can catch the Tahiti “Greyhound” bus with air conditioning. The cost is $2US per person into Tahiti and another $2 back home. If we walk about 10 minutes to the left, we reach a huge shopping complex called Carrefour. We walked there today and were in awe of the huge variety of things available. Some things are extremely expensive ($11 for a US fresh artichoke) but others are very reasonable ($4 for a frozen chicken). Drinks are the really expensive items. It costs about $50 for a case of beer and about $15 for a case of coke. But you have to eat and drink, so you just pay the price.
We are looking forward to exploring downtown Papeete tomorrow and will report on that venture in tomorrow’s log. Every day is a new adventure and we are very much looking forward to our explorations here in Tahiti.
 |
| 060619 Day 245 Society Islands–Moorea to Tahiti |
