Day 94 – Papeete, Tahiti

Day 94 – Papeete, Tahiti – Friday 17/8/12

Weather – Fine, and Sunny. 24C – 27C

Sunrise – 6.16am

Sunset – 5.55pm

Time difference - minus 20 hours ex Sydney

At 7am the Sun Princess embarked her pilot, 2 miles north-west of the breakwater. We then followed leads into the harbour, and then turned to port, then stopped, chucked a 180 and reversed in to our berth at Finger Pier South.

We were ambled off the ship about 9am this morning for a bit of a look see, with no real plan in mind. There was a lovely welcoming by a couple of different sets of traditional musicians and singers, which was really nice. En route to the Tourist office that was right at the port, there were a number of stalls selling local arts and crafts, and local tour operators.

One tour that caught our eye was a full lap of the island, with stops at the points of note, taking 4 hours which seemed appealing. We had a quick look across the road and saw what looked a bit like Noumea which did not really enthuse us, so we elected to go back and join that tour that we had spotted.

We had a lovely day seeing all the highlights of the island. The 4 hours must have been 'Tahitian time' as the tour actually took 5 hours 15 mins, not that we were complaining, as it worked for us :) Dont why I was expecting to see long white sandy beaches, but clearly I was mistaken, they were black sandy beaches !!

By the time we got back to port it was already time to get back on board, where we watched a little the Tahitian Folkloric Show, performed by a local group. What we saw, they were pretty darn good.

At the sailaway today they had a drink card draw. As bar revenue is well below target across the ship on this cruise, they have introduced a little incentive, whereby you get a click or two on a card for every drink you buy during the week. At the end of the week one card is drawn from the box, and the winner gets their bar bill of the week paid for.

Things are grim Gungadin, when bar revenue is so low they need to pull these sort of incentives. It does make sense though, 104 nights is a long time on board, and I would expect most people would be pacing themselves in terms of money spent. It is not like a 7 night cruise, which becomes a 7 night party, no-one could sustain that for 104 nights I am sure. They have also had half price cocktails from 9am until noon, in an effort to ignite the spending :)

Anyway – we did not win :)

At 5pm we retraced our path out of the harbour, and once clear, we set a west-north-westerly course across the Chanel-de-Moorea. We passed about 1.5 miles north of the reefs on the north coast of Moorea, and at 6.45pm we left the island of Moorea astern.