See all our photos from Tahiti.
Our last day in French Polynesia on the Island of Tahiti. We once again had a car rented for the day and drove the ring road. Tahiti was much, much busier than the previous islands we had visited, including Hawaii, especially on the east side of the island.
Our day started with stops where visited some religious ruins. We stopped at two sites about 5 miles apart. The first was Marae Ta’ata
The second site was Arahurahu Marae
A bit further down the road, we stopped at Mara’a caves, three caves with freshwater pools inside them. It is a quiet, tranquil setting in a beautiful little area of countryside
We continued driving until we reached the Peninsula West Coast, or Tahiti Iti where we drove to the end of the road at Teahupoo point to see the world famous wave. There was also a neat black sand beach here. We didn’t have time to take a taxi boat out to see the wave up close.
After leaving Teahupoo, we drove to the east coast road then 7 KM up a one way road to a the Taravao Belvedere, scenic viewpoint overlooking the peninsula and the main part of Tahiti.
After leaving the viewpoint and returning to sea level, we begin our transit around the east side of the island. It is very different, much less populated and there is very little coral along the shore allowing for large breakers near the beach. Just like all of the islands, feral chickens are everywhere.
We returned to Papeete, fueled and dropped the car off and got a ride back to the port area. We did a bit of shopping, bought a Christmas Ornament and some pearl earrings for some of the ladies in our world. Next up was 3 days at sea as we sailed towards Fiji and across the international date line.