Friday 27th July

Papeete,
Tahiti

17 32.422 S
149 34.279 W

Despite not getting to bed until midnight we were both awake and ready to get up at 07.00hrs. Gerry spoke to the Guys on the radio schedule and let them know we had arrived safely. Wandering outside along the dock Gerry discovered that there is a security guard on duty along the quay 24 hrs of the day, he asked a few pertinent questions about where the trash is, where the customs and Immigration offices are and was made to feel quite welcome. We cooked breakfast and planned our day. As soon as possible we walked to the tourist information office which was a short distance away and then on to the customs and immigration office to report our arrival. The form filling was, like everywhere else, time consuming and tedious but we finally got it all sorted out. Next it was a short distance further to a hire car place where we took control of a small car for the next week. Gerry was in his element again – driving around at break neck speed trying to avoid all the cars that seemed to want our bit of the road. We drove around to acclimatize ourselves to the area and made our way around to the haul out yard to arrange our timetable for having the work done to our rudder, the boat will be coming out of the water on Monday morning at 07.15hrs (how disgustingly early is that!) Once we had organized that it was time for lunch and we parked in a multi story and made our way to the café center where we had a typical French style lunch sitting under umbrellas on the pavement listening to 3 guys playing ukuleles and singing – it was all very pleasant. Following lunch we both flagged badly and had to return to the boat to have a sleep – it was catch up time! We revived at around 17.00hrs – time for a pre dinner drink. We set off to find somewhere to eat, settling on a Vietnamese place however it wasn’t open yet so we found a street café where happy hour was in progress and settled in for a couple of drinks whilst watching a huge cruise liner pull into the quay and dock. Once we had finished our 2 for 1 drinks we made our way back to the restaurant; the doors were now open but they didn’t begin dinner until 19.30 hrs, with half an hour still to go we were the first customers of the night but by no means the last. The food was pretty good and we made pigs of ourselves, once we had eaten our fill we returned to the boat for a relatively early night. With the urgent stuff now under control we could spend tomorrow exploring a bit more.