Noordam in Tahiti
Following our missed port in Kiritimati, we arrived in Papeete, Tahiti at noon, a couple hours ahead of Holland America Noordam’s scheduled 2pm arrival. We had nothing planned for that day, but found people with signs for bus or taxi tours just outside of the port gate. We signed up for a taxi tour which took 8 people and was to start about 15-20 minutes later. The taxi in this instance is a van.
van and driver
When the van arrived people piled out from a previous tour, passengers from Ovation of the Seas, which was already at the dock when we arrived. The driver was a little old lady who appeared to have thought she was done for the day – and did not seem pleased to get sent out on another tour. The last time we were in Papeete we took a bus tour. The driver then was also a little old lady. That one spoke clear English and was a wealth of information and fascinating stories. This one spoke enough English to get by, but not enough to keep up a narrative even if she’d wanted to, which she did not seem to want to do anyway. It probably didn’t help that some of the passengers were Germans who spoke very little English themselves. Being a part of French Polynesia, Tahitians speak French.
flower at one of the tour stops
The first thing the little old lady did was point to me and a German lady as the two smallest people and said we had to sit up front as the seats there were smaller. The one by the window was a normal sized seat, but the one in the center was barely wide enough for a very skinny 5-year-old. She pointed me to that one so I felt like an airplane passenger who is far too large for the seat that they purchased for the entire 4-hour tour. I had to scoot off the end toward the driver’s side for the other lady to fasten her seatbelt, and then scoot over the other way or lean sideways on one butt cheek to fasten mine – which then dug into me the whole way where my rear hung over the edge of the seat onto the apparatus that holds the seatbelt between that seat and the driver’s as there was not enough room in that tiny seat for me and the German lady didn’t share any space out of hers. Mostly she kept a hand in the small bit that could have made enough room for me to nearly fit in the seat. She had plenty of room in her seat and could have put that hand on her lap, but she never did. Probably on purpose. Not to mention her rear was probably actually a bit smaller than mine. The leg room for my seat was about 4 inches wide so my legs did have to hang over into her area. That seat was probably intended for either a dog or a very small child whose feet don’t hang out beyond the end of the seat. Definitely not for an adult.
flower at the grotto
Normally all the seats in a tour van are big enough for an adult. This tour should have been limited to 7 people rather than 8. All the other last minute taxi or van tours we’ve been on also had a careful driver that we felt safe riding with. I’m not sure if this lady always drives like a maniac or if she just wanted to get a tour she obviously didn’t want to do over as quickly as possible. She would pass on blind corners or when there were oncoming cars not all that far away. She was quite fond of using her horn. There were a few bicyclists and scooter riders that we flew past with no room to spare. Every time we saw a dog on the side of the road I’d hope it moved out of the way quickly because she wasn’t slowing down for any of them. Luckily she did not hit any, though when some birds waited until the last minute to fly away she said something along the lines of if they were in the way it was their problem if they got ran over. She appeared to feel the same way about dogs, bicyclists, pedestrians, and scooter riders as well. John was happily chatting away with other passengers in a nice comfortable full-sized seat farther back blissfully unaware of any of that. He liked that tour a whole lot more than I did.
map of Tahiti
The driver said at the outset how much time we would get at each stop, repeating it at each place before letting anyone out of the van. She was quite cranky when the German seat hog lady came back a bit late at the first stop, but snapping at the German lady didn’t do her any good. The German lady came back late at every stop so she either didn’t care about the time allowed or wanted to make sure she was back last so she wouldn’t have to get into the van before me and be stuck in the teeny tiny seat.
Grotte De Maraa
The tour made a complete circle around the main island, Tahiti Nui, but not on the smaller bit, Tahiti Iti. There’s just one main road around the island so traffic was pretty busy in town, but not so much farther out.
it looks much bigger with a person in it
Our first stop was at Grotte De Maraa, a place the tour guides all refer to as the grotto. What appears to be a small water-filled cave at the bottom of a tall greenery-shrouded cliff is actually significantly bigger than it looks. Although it wasn’t raining, water dripped off the plants and into the grotto. The site had some honeybuckets near the entrance and a small souvenir shop. There are more trails there besides the short one leading to the grotto, but we didn’t have time to explore. We’ve also only ever seen just that one cave there, but if a person had more time to explore the site has three. The cave doesn’t look nearly as big as it actually is unless there is a person in the water. That person then appears tiny in relation to the grotto.
waterfall at Vaipahi Water Garden
Next we saw the a brief glimpse of the Vaipahi Gardens, also called the Water Gardens of Vaipahi. A short path led to a small waterfall. There are several paths through the garden, but we only had time to see the waterfall. The garden has about 2.5 acres of trails with over 75 species of plants as well as ponds, bridges, and archeological relics.
pathway leading to the waterfall and Viamahuta Falls
Later we went to another waterfall located in Fa’aurna’I Valley. The second waterfall we saw was significantly larger than the one at Vaipahi Gardens. The one we saw there was called Vaimahuta, located at the end of a short trail beyond a bridge leading away from the parking lot.
bridge from the parking area to the trail at Viamahuta Falls
A side trail had a sign to two more waterfalls, but since we had just 15 minutes at that stop and the sign said it took 20 minutes to get there we did not get to see those.
lighthouse at Point Venus
Our 4th stop was Point Venus, which has a tall lighthouse from the 1800’s and monuments to Captain Cook, missionaries to Tahiti, and people from the Bounty. It also had a beach where locals were surfing. There were a bunch of outrigger type canoes parked on a different section of the beach and people paddling more of them into shore. A big building at that beach looked like it may have been a restaurant or something.
outrigger canoe
It seemed like pretty much everywhere in the south Pacific has a monument to Captain Cook. Point Venus got its name because of an observatory he had there in 1770 to study Venus’ trajectory. The lighthouse there was originally built in 1867. The top story was added in 1953 and it got electricity in 1973. It is still in use today and now aids planes as well as ships having had lenses for aerial navigation added.
gift shop at the blowhole
The last stop was Arahoho Blowhole. When we went there on our last visit to Tahiti, the blowhole was next to an old washed-out road that had been replaced by the tunnel the road now passes through. This time much work had been done there with a walking path and edge walls where the old road had been, and a gift shop at the entrance to a parking area that had some picnic tables.
Arahoho Blowhole
Besides the blow hole at the edge of the sea, there’s a smaller inland one a short distance from the shore, which had also had stuff coming out of it on the last visit, but just made noise this time. It was quite damp around that area though so maybe it still blows when there are bigger waves or higher tides.
cove by the blowhole
After the tour we were dropped off inside of the outer security gate to the small parking area at the port, but outside of the one you walk through to get back to the ship. I was happy to make it back in one piece without the van having crashed or ran over anything, and to get out of that immensely uncomfortable seat.
Cruise Stories 