Day 35 - Sun 10/14/18 Papeete, Polynesia

We woke up to our first full day in Papeete, Polynesia. While we are still in Paradise, this city represents a much more urban perspective with traffic, narrow streets, generally run down buildings (except for the government ones), and a number of homeless people. It still has a lot of charm with an extremely French emphasis. Given that it was Sunday, most businesses were closed except for the fish market which was open until 10am and the Tourist Information office until noon. In general Tahitians seem to be religious and there are lots of churches of various denominations 

We walked the downtown area to gain familiarity with the layout and purchased $50 pp tour tickets for a round the island tour which started at 1pm.

After a quick lunch in the Lido I obtained an ice cream cone and headed downstairs to get off the ship. I had fortunately allowed for some contingency time as I was stopped at the gangway and couldn't take an ice cream cone off the ship even though the only restriction was for meat and produce. So I scarfed it down and met my wife at the the gangway as she had forgotten her phone in our stateroom.

We found our tour and learned that instead of 20 people on the tour, there would be 30 (4 more were added later at the Le Meridian hotel). There was also a concern that we would only would be getting 3-4 stops instead of the six we purchased our tickets for.  

Off we went and in the end the tour went very well and we stopped at 7 places:

1. Arahurahu Ceremonial site 

2. Grotto de Maroa (fern grotto)

3. Jardins d' eaude Vaipahi

4. Waterfall

5. Blowhole ( very cool )

6. Venus Point (landing location for Captain Cook, Bounty, and the London Missionary Society)

7. Sunset overlook

Back at the port we ran into friends from the ship and ate a dinner under the stars and cooked from one of the many food trucks that set up in the area. The chow mein was so yummy and once the sun went down it was very refreshing to sit there and chat and eat a meal together.

Back onboard, the only evening activity was an excellent high energy Polynesian cultural dance show. It's really interesting to see how the character of the ship has changed. It's totally full at 1250ish passengers and about 180 of us are carryovers from the last cruise which had less than 1,000 passengers. There are many French speaking passengers including a number of Tahitians as well as about 60 children. There's also a Chinese contingent, and the passenger average age probably dropped from 70 to 55. And many more people are staying up late and using the casino. It remains to be seen how many passengers are 4-5 Mariners and how the dynamics of the new passengers will affect tendering. Stay tuned.