Tuesday 31st July

Papeete,
Tahiti

17 32.422 S
149 34.279 W

Gerry was up and itching to get moving early, unfortunately he was outnumbered and we took our time to get ready and underway but even with the hour drive to town we were still there by 09.00hrs. Abigail and I were dropped off in town where we stopped at the bank to empty the account and then made our way to the port authority to pay for our stay. Today we were in luck (?) it was open and we were the only customers there, we quickly sorted out the bill and paid it. The port captain was very nice to us and even agreed to have his photo taken with bear (I told you it was going to be a very silly month) Once we had got the bill paid we walked over to the town center and began window shopping in earnest. Abigail bought a nice dress and tried on 3 others that I liked which didn’t quite fit her and they didn’t have any other sizes so she missed out on those. After wandering up and down a couple of streets we found the central markets and browsed around those – lots of good food stuff, some nice materials, a lot of crappy tourist souvenirs and some half decent ones. By the time we finished walking around the market it was getting close to lunch time and we had arranged to meet Gerry at midday at Macca’s (it being the one place we knew he would be able to find with no problem!), so we walked in that direction, stopping at a couple of shops along the way but buying nothing else. We had to wait for about 15 minutes until Gerry arrived and then we upset him by saying we didn’t want to eat burgers, after finding a parking spot we walked to a nearby restaurant and ordered the “plate de jour” which turned out to be a very nice mild chicken curry with rice and green beans. After lunch we were going to leave Gerry and go to the pearl farm but Abigail was feeling a little nauseated and dizzy so we postponed the trip and went back to the boat with Gerry, where we sat waiting until 15.00hrs, when the yard stopped working and we headed off home. We stopped for a couple of photos at scenic points along the road and also at the supermarket for some bread, cheese, pate and fruit which was going to be our dinner. Once we reached the pension we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the remainder of the afternoon until the sun began to go down and the bitey creatures began to put in an appearance. We then retreated to the inside of the chalet for our evening meal and ended up having an early night.