What time is it there?!

We needed to be at the airport for 5am on Saturday, but because of the lack of late night/early morning ferry service we needed to leave Moorea on Friday morning. This meant that we got to have a bit of a look around the main town of Papeete (and quite an adventure finding a cheap hotel bed for the night).

According to our book there are only 200km of road on Tahiti, but they are filled with some 35,000 cars. It’s fair to say that traffic is not good! This combined with the palm trees and local markets means that downtown Papeete looks a bit like somewhere James Bond might have visited back in the dodgy 70’s Roger Moore days.

We avoided the taxis this time and decided we had better try out ‘Le Truck’ just for the experience. Le Truck is what passes for the public bus system in Tahiti, although it seems like the buses are privately owned and licenced more like taxis. The instructions to build one seem to be as follows: Take one flat bed truck (the older the better). Then, look at a picture of a bus, and using the cheapest wood you can find build something that looks similar on the back of your truck. Get licence. But, they are cheap, they run from 5am to midnight, and they’ll pick you up and drop you off anywhere along the route.

Because of our early departure we considered sleeping in the airport. However, the heat and humidity was increasing by the day so we were eventually won over by the thought of being able to use a shower before flying. Our guidebook mentioned two cheap places near the airport which were OK for a quick over night stop. So like good British tourists we set off at the hottest part of the day to try and find them.....

They were described in the book as being directly opposite the airport and just a little way up a hill. We eventually discovered the first place, which turned out to be fully booked. It’s possible that they weren’t full, but just didn’t want our business, as by this point we were not looking our best. The second place in the book was described as being ‘just a little further up the hill’. Follow the road to the end and look for the green and white gates....

Well, it looked more like a prison than a hotel, and there was no obvious way in, but just as we were giving up the owner arrived and let us in. Well, she eventually let us in after looking us up and down and wondering whether we were likely to rob the place! And after all that we struggled to get any sleep whatsoever as it was sooo hot. But the shower felt like the best in the world after a day in the heat!