Hello from Tahiti

We are anchored just south of the airport and about 5 miles south of Papeete. We leave the dinghy in the nearbye marina, and exit onto a busy 4-lane highway with a MacDonalds just down the road, rather a culture shock! However 10 mins down the road is a very large Carrefour with all the French cheese, pate, etc you could dream of - for a price. It feels much more like a bit of France here than any of the islands did - for a start there are a lot more people of French rather than Polynesian extraction (as well as a lot of Chinese who originally came to work on the vanilla plantations). The cars have French registration, and les toilettes in Carrefour have that special smell...

Yesterday we took Le Truck, (there are also proper buses but on longer routes) into the city. Were quite impressed, the water front area is lovely, the tourist office extremely helpful, and our cup of coffee was in a large china cup, and good, not Starbucks rubbish. This month, leading up to 14th July celebrations, is a festival of song, dance and sport called the Haeva. We have booked to watch some of the dancing and singing (all part of a competition) tomorrow evening which should be fun. The sports are free to watch and include things like stone lifting, coconut palm climbing, coconut husking, and carrying fruits. Also lots of canoe races including a marathon. The canoes all have outriggers (as do the traditional sailing boats), now made of fibreglass though there are plenty of old wooden and bamboo ones in the small islands. Imagine all those fit young men with fantastic tattoos ........