Tahiti

Tahiti: 21 July - 29 July 2014

What a wonderful spot to rest for a little while after 3 months of travel before heading into South America. We stayed at a self-catering bungalow on the east side of the island on a long stretch of deserted black sand beach. It is as far as we can make out the only ‘tourist’ accommodation on this side of the island. Most of the usual tourist spots you would expect appear to be on the west side of the island where there is white sand due to the reef and which benefits from the afternoon/evening sun. We are quite happy with our morning sun-drenched deserted beach location J. Although we intended Tahiti as a chilling spot we actually saw a lot of this remarkable island. Our host took us to the ‘Plateau the Taravo’ on Tahiti Iti, a scenic spot on the smaller island from where one can see the 1.5km land bridge between Tahiti Iti and Tahiti Nui. He also took us to ‘The Maroto’, the hotel in the island’s interior by the volcano that created Tahiti. The volcano is long extinct, but the sheer vertical overgrown cliff faces are still incredibly dramatic. We felt like we were in the setting of ‘Lost’ expecting smoke from the others to appear at any moment, or a dinosaur out of ‘Jurassic Park’. One day we did a 30km cycle ride to another beach and for the most part we just jumped into the sea and chilled on our bungalow. Very relaxing!