Vacation - Easter Island and Tahiti - Day 4

The map below will show you where Tahiti, French Polynesia, is relative to the Americas. The group of islands to the north is Hawaii. Click inside to remove the Google dialogue box. Tahiti is broken in to two sections, Tahiti Nui (big Tahiti) and Tahiti Iti (little Tahiti).


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These were some ceremonial ruins that we went to visit. Unfortunately, that is about all I can tell you, as there were no other descriptions at the site. The planks with the faces in them were interesting, so I took a picture of them. This area was up a small residential side road, and was our first taste of local roads and signage.



Thi picture was taken by the side of road, literally. We had stopped to view some caves, nothing much, and saw fish in the crystal clear water when we went back to the car.


This image is very typical of Tahiti, with the soaring pointed peaks and lush green mountain sides.


Well this picture should have never been, but we got lost, big time, and ended up at the end of the road on Tahiti Iti (little Tahiti). There were a dozen or so of these boats pulled up on the black shore. If we had thought to bring a lunch, we could have eaten it here as this appeared to be a popular picnic spot. As it was we went back the way we came and eventually found our way to the lookout.


Ah, the lookout on Tahiti Iti. Took us about 2 hours to find this spot. It was worth it though. The drive up to this point takes you through a more temperate area that is very much like Ontario, with grass covered fields and stands of deciduous trees. It even has cows grazing.


This is the drive down from the lookout. Not at all like a tropical island.


As we contiued around the island, I kept getting these glimpses behind us of Tahiti Iti with the sun shining on the flat plain that we had just driven down.

This was one of the nice surprises on the island. First, it was relatively easy to find and there were signs at the site explaining the story of these waterfalls. To make a long story short, two other waterfalls that are close to one another and a 20-30 minute hike from this one represent the two forbidden lovers who finally found each other, against the wishes of the tribal chief. This single waterfall is the spirit of the guard who was unable to keep the chiefs daughter safe.


After a walk through downtown Papeete, we had to return the rental car early, so we ended up sitting in the airport for about 5 hours. Our flight left at 12:30AM, the next morning. This time we tried to sleep as much as possible, as we would be arriving in Easter Island around 10 AM, after a 5-6 hour flight.

OPINION: I am sorry to say that I found Tahiti disappointing. We tried to visit the recommended points of interest but it was very difficult to find them in many cases. When we did find them, some of them were not that interesting (the caves), not accessible due to private property or impassable roads, or not operable when we were there (the blowhole, due to tide conditions). There is also not a lot of useful road signs.

Also, it was very difficult to take a good picture of the island due to the constant haze that seems to cover most of it. Perhaps this was a bad weather day, or perhaps it has something to do with the widespread burning of yard waste that seems to occur. In some areas the slow drifting smoke made it look like the island was burning. The smell was also a turn off.

We visited Papeete, the main city as well. Now we are not city people, we would much rather be out in the countryside hiking and looking the scenery, but neither of us were impressed. There is some waterfront development going on that looked promissing and we had to leave just before all the food vendors came out for the night. Maybe it's a night city.

The topograpy is stunning, but unfortunately it was hard to see it some times. I would recommend moving on to some of the other islands with fewer air problems and more resorts and beachs, such as Moorea and Bora Bora. Perhaps some guided tours would show off the island better.

Vacation - Easter Island and Tahiti - Day 1-3

View from our room at the Manava.


So our trip started with a flight to Los Angeles, where most connections to French Polynesia fly from. We scheduled our flights to allow a few days to visit my wife's family in the LA area. While we were there, as usual, we did a little geocaching, which is a hobby you do with your GPS. In this case we were carrying what are called travel bugs. These items are left in geocaches for people to find and carry to other geocaches around the world. The owner sets the goal for each travel bug. When we travel, we always try to pick up an appropriate travel bug (destination and or activity) and take it with us.

Mikey the travel bug wants to inspect bridges.
Buzz wants to travel around and see space related things. This is Buzz at about 35,000 feet, a little closer to space and part way to Tahiti.


This was our Air Tahiti Nui plane, with some travel bugs posing in front of it.


On day 3 we flew from Los Angeles to the city of Papeete on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia. They actually boarded early and closed the doors prior to departure time and pushed back exactly on time. We left LA at 1PM and arrived in Papeete at 6:20 PM. With the 3 hour time difference, this works out to an 8-1/2 hour flight. We started off in EDT, then to Pacific Daylight time (-3 hrs) for a couple of days and on to Tahiti (another -3 hours) for only 36 hours.

We tried to stay awake on the flight, which is aided by the individual seat video systems that Air Tahiti Nui has on their planes. This appears pretty standard now, as all Air Canada planes and the later Chilean LAN planes all had this. What is not common on North American carriers are the free pillow, blanket, and personal goody bag you are given. The goody bag contains ear phones, socks for your feet, post it notes to signify if you want to sleep or be awaken for meals, and a few other things I can't remember. All in all, a nice change from the penny pinching NA airlines we normally fly on. Of course the flight is not cheap. A couple of movies later, along with a meal and snack, we arrived at the Faa'a International Airport.



We decided to rent a car for the 36 hours we were in Tahiti. Our Rental vehicle came with a manual transmission which is the norm here, as automatics cost a LOT more. Even with me navigating, we found our hotel for the night, the Manava, without much trouble.

We were upgraded to a beach front suite which was very nice. The view from the patio was beautiful. The flat surface you see in front of the ocean is the infinity pool. In the background is Moorea, where we will travel to at the end of our trip.



We were able to get a start on fish watching early the next morning by just looking over the jetty in front of the hotel. Still adjusting to the time, we were up early and started on our all day island tour of Tahiti, which will be the topic of my next installment. Don't worry, there will be more pictures and less text in the following entries.

Vacation - Easter Island and Tahiti - Intro

Well we have just returned from our 17 day vacation to Easter Island, with a side trip to Tahiti. As we are only now starting our adjustment to EDT (6 hours ahead of Tahiti), not to mention a huge pile of laundry, this will be a short post with only a couple of pictures (from several hundred.)

My wife has wanted to visit Easter Island for 30 years. Our joint financial and work schedules made this the time to go. We had a wonderful time and created a lot of memories. Just wanted to make a quick post with a couple of photos of things to come.

I think I will proceed on a day by day basis so the whole trip will take a few weeks to unfold. Here are the first couple of photos to whet your appetite.

This is the typical Easter Island photo showing the moai. The moai shown in this picture are incomplete ones left at the quarry where all the Easter Island moai were created. One of my highlights of the trip was a 17 km hike we made along the north shore of the island. Pictures of that will show up in a week or two.







This is a picture of the resort we stayed at, the Hilton Moorea Lagoon and Spa, while in Moorea, which is one of the many islands of French Polynesia. Tahiti is actually the main island of French Polynesia that you fly to in order to get to islands such Moorea and Bora Bora.

We stayed in the over water bungalows shown in this picture. It was beautiful, just as the snorkeling was.

Canoeing - The Massassauga Provincial Park

This was our first canoe trip of the year, postponed from two weeks ago during the weekend of rain. The Massassauga is one of our favourite parks, especially for an easy first trip of the year. Access to dozens of on water sites is possible by going over just one portage of 370 m. It's an average portage, so if you have forgotten how to do it since last year (or two years ago), it's not a big deal. The Massassauga, on the shores of Georgian Bay, is a 2-3 hour drive for us, so it is relatively easy to get to.

This is also my first posting to my new blog. If you have been invited here and do not wish to receive anymore invitations, please let me know and I will remove your name.


We tried a new campsite this weekend, number 16 on the north shore of Spider lake. This was the view Saturday afternoon. What cannot be seen in this picture are the black flies and mosquitos. They were terrible this weekend. Even on the water, they never left us. Needless to say, we spent little time in the open, instead reading and napping in the tent.

Supper was early too, and we were in our sleeping bags by 8. The night was cool, but we stayed warm in our sleeping bags. This was the sun rise Sunday morning, around 6 AM. We had plenty of sleep, so we had an early breakfast a were on the water by 8.











For those of you not familiar with wilderness/back-country canoe camping, this is how you carry your canoe. The pack on my back contains all the food, what little there was for overnight.












This is me putting the canoe back in the water.











My wife carries everything else that we need. Really, she likes it that way. We have tried various permutations and this has turned out to be the best, easiest and quickest way to portage. She loves her canoe pack, just like I love my canoe.





That's it for my first post. I will try to keep this update regularly. Mostly, I wanted to have an easy place to throw up some of the many pictures we take.