Thursday 20th December - back to Tahiti

Since the weather forecast was so bad, severe storms with thunder and lightning, we decided to catch the 12:00 plane back to Tahiti rather that wait for the 19:00 that we were originally booked on. We were both concerned that i=f the forecast weather arrived then there may be no more flights from Bora Bora and we would miss our connection to Auckland, New Zealand. The flight was much better on this occasion with some turbulence but nothing to that experienced in the previous 2 flights. Arrived on time at Papeete airport, left our luggage in storage and headed of to explore the town. Papeete would not win any city beauty contests but it is bustling, colourful and has an strangely mixed character of South Seas and French. Most people speak french and certainly menus etc are all in french. We visited the market which was full of exotic fruit and very unusual looking fish.

One thing which was decidedly unfrench was that traffic stopped unfailingly at pedestrian crossings! You certainly don't experience that in France. Eventually we headed for the airport and stopped to see the ladies assembling the garlands for new arrivals - all very colourful. The Air New Zealand plane left pretty much on time at 02:00 and we had a fairly relaxed and almost turbulence free 5 1/2 hour flight to Auckland