Tahiti - August 2001

8/14/01 We've been in Papeete a little over a week now. Its the big city, at least for 17 deg South, 150 deg West...the crossroads of the South Pacific. The answer to every question among the cruisers for the last few months regarding provisioning, repairs, restuarants, banks, mail, etc...has always been "When we get to Papeete....". Papeete is reminiscent of cities like Nice in the south of France....small twisty streets, lots of motor scooters, lots of nice small shops and...unfortunately a bunch of noise and smog. We've been doing a bunch of boat chores...changing oil, greasing winches, replacing a broken window in the dodger, replacing the broken block in the clew of the mainsail, etc...Also doing serious provisioning since we are anchored right off of the largest supermarket for around 2000 miles. We've also done two scuba dives, one outside of the pass off of the village of Punaauia and the other on a seaplane and shipwrek inside the lagoon, right nice to the airport. Our friends Chris and Marcus are very happy to have their scuba compressor fixed. Its been broken since Fakarava and we've been filling their tanks for them. They took it to the place where all of the pearl farms get work done on their compressors and lo and behold it was fixed the next day. The only tricky part was a 4 mile dingy ride with a 100 lb piece of very non waterproof equipment. Other touristy things that we have done include renting a car and driving all of the way around Tahiti and visiting the botannical gardens and Polynesian history musuem. Quite a good musuem with a bunch of stuff from the era of Captain Cook as well as an exposition of photos from a couple that went cruising for their honeymoon in the South Pacific at the turn of the century with a complete glass negative photo lab aboard...sort of a Matthew Brady of the South Pacific. Attached our some photos of our own. We are anchored at Maeva Beach just west of Papeete. We have a good view of the next island, Moorea. The sunset picture looks like the volcano is erupting even though its been extinct for a long time. -Greg
Polynesian history museum
Botanical gardens
Good view of the next island, Moorea
The dive club pot luck on Bravo Charlie
Don & Ruth at Le Retro on the Quai in downtown Papeete