Bonjour, comment allez-vouz? (Hello, how’s it going?)
We have officially been boat owners now for one week and WE LOVE IT! Once we arrived in Tahiti events moved pretty quick. We spent the first couple of days with 2 different air b n b hosts which was a great way to do it as at both places we stayed they with were French nationals who had moved to the island for different reasons, we were however able to chat to them (albeit at times very slowly) in English and gain some local knowledge.
On Monday we made our way to the Taina (blue dot above) which is where our boat is moored and signed all the paperwork with the broker – REAO was now officially ours. We spent that day going over her pulling everything out of cupboards and storage deciding what we would keep and what we would discard (which was most things). That evening we spent our last night on land before moving on board early Tuesday morning. For the rest of the week we quickly fell into a routine of waking up really early in the morning and doing some work (mostly cleaning). Once the sun came up around 7am it become too hot to do much so we would completely slow down. When it would get too hot for either of us it was easy to just step off the back of the boat and go for a quick refreshing dip.
Saturday we decided to take a break and go exploring Tahiti so got up really early and walked 3kms to a car sales yard and rented a vehicle. We definitely felt spoiled driving around in air conditioned bliss – it was awesome, though should be noted that they do drive on the other side of the road. Saturday itself was spent driving down the east coast as far as the road would go, stopped at some tourist sights and where ever the view compelled us too. Sunday we headed the other way and drove through the main town Papeete and down the west coast which at parts really reminded us of the South Islands west coast with its wild beauty. Once we drove as far as we could we turned around and drove across the neck between Tahiti and Little Tahiti to drive back up the East coast again, it was an awesome two days. Outside the main town there are really no footpaths so it is not unusual to see people walking or biking down the road towards you. At one time when we were driving we had an instance where some people were walking on our side of the road, they were being overtaken by some people on bicycles who were being overtaken by scooters who were being overtaken by cars while the same was happening on the other side of the road, I will admit to flinching a couple of times as it seemed to me that vehicles and people got really close to each other, no one seemed worried in the least however and in the two days we were driving around we didn’t see any accidents (although it should be noted that some locals were driving some very battered cars around so they must have hit something at some stage!).
TAHITI – the main population of Tahiti consists of two groups, Tahitians and French Nationalists. In the main 4 malls and Papeete the language is French with a smattering of Tahitian. Around these areas the majority of people can speak a smattering of English. I have downloaded a couple of apps and have been teaching myself some very (VERY) basic French though at this stage we haven’t really had a problem. We have brushed up on our mime skills and have been able to communicate with the majority of people through basic mime and also speaking slowly.
Outside the main city there is a real community feel. The majority of shops close on Sundays as everyone puts on their “Sunday best” and head to church of which there are so many to choose from. Sunday afternoon then sees everyone hanging out in small groups. Sitting in the shade of homemade gazebos, under trees, in the ocean or even in the rivers. Everywhere you go there are groups of families, communities just hanging. Most often just away from the main groups you will see smaller groups of the teenage kids hanging. A lot of them get around via bicycle and it seems one of the most valued skills for teenage boys to have is to be able to bike along the road holding a wheelie. When we drove around it was not uncommon to see coming towards us a group of kids biking with a few of the lads popping wheelies.
Another thing we have noticed about the local Tahitians is their build. As a population (and I apologise if this is wrong) it seems there are two different builds, really muscular (lads) slim (ladies) or very large. It is not unusual to see a very tall, very muscular (shirtless) lad either walking or biking along the road with tribal tattoos somewhere on their bodies. There seems to be no body shaming in the larger lads or lasses which is great to see and they have no problems wearing very little when out and about. Whatever their size the majority of adults have some tribal tattoos somewhere on their bodies – these looks absolutely amazing!
The 4 malls spread out around the island are all called CARREFOUR and consist of approx. 15-20 small shops (clothing, café, pharmacy, electronics etc) and one huge variety shop kind of like a K Mart/Countdown that sells everything from clothing to food to alcohol including spirits, definitely a one stop shop. We are lucky that one of these is just a 10 min walk from our Marina and most days we have wandered down to pick up something new for our boat.
The final thing to note about Tahiti apart from the insane heat is the amount of stray dogs and chickens/roosters there are. Everywhere you go there are stray dogs both in the main town and out in the country. Our favourite sight of a stray dog is when we were going through Papetee where we saw a dog crossing at a zebra crossing after it had stopped and looked both ways. The chickens and roosters again are everywhere and the little buggers do love to crow very early in the morning.
You will see them everywhere from on the beach, to inside a mall by a café pecking up dropped food to our favourite sight of a rooster running top speed down the road towards the airport terminal. We couldn’t figure out if he was late for a flight or was late to meet someone. If he was travelling somewhere then he was packing light, all he had with him was a comb – boom boom LOL
This morning we start our first sailing lesson. We met a guy who is doing up a boat just a few down from ours. He is a skipper (French but can speak some basic English) and has agreed to take us for sailing lessons in the morning then spend the afternoon continuing to work on his boat. He is charging FPX 100 which equals $125 per lesson which we think is fantastic value. We figure we will take the lessons all this week and then will look to set sail next week. In French Polynesia there are 118 islands and atolls and we are excited to head out and explore them ourselves. 
Even though this has been a fantastic start to our journey we really can’t wait to head away from civilisation and get out there on our own!