Our plan was this: arrive in Tahiti at 3:30am, check into a hostel that afternoon, leave for Moorea on the morning ferry the next day—all-in-all, a pretty quick turnaround time.
As I alluded to earlier, that is probably the smart way to play it. I couldn’t really imagine ending a trip to the islands in Tahiti—once you see the rest, Tahiti will really depress you—but it was cool to see the center, and its existence put the rest of the islands into perspective as we went along.
Tahiti is the business hub. It’s where all the middle-school/high-school kids from all the islands are sent to live for a few years to study, its where a lot of the jobs are, and its where all the people from the other islands who want excitement “in the big city” go. The only island that has areas I would ever describe as “seedy.”
Tahiti reminded me of a French city, and, we weren’t sure if it was a classist thing, but the Tahitians in Tahiti don’t speak Tahitian. They all speak French, and some of them act offended/confused if you ask them what something means in Tahitian. There were more homeless people in Tahiti, more Billa Bong and Gap and cell phones, and—relative to other islands—there were more people of European and Tahitian descent.
On Tahiti, money matters. This is not as true of the other islands, and it’s interesting to see the difference that money makes in how people behave.
Tahiti is “big” in that it has people on it—which can’t be said for all of the islands, but make no mistake, Tahiti is small. Don’t go into it thinking it’s a city in the American sense of the word. There are restaurants, a waterfront, a daily open-air market, grocery stores and pearl shops . . . but you are in local territory, and there aren’t a lot of things to do for the tourist. There aren’t really any beaches, unless you rent a car and drive north, and for as little industry as French Polynesia has, you are in the middle of it. So land there, check it out, and then be on your way. People are much friendlier, and the places are much more beautiful on other islands. But for a first impression, Tahiti's not bad.
