Day 27: Tahiti: Relaxing in Paradise
Last night was a sleep record for nearly everyone. Rob slept 10, I slept 11, Nicholas slept 12 and Cooper slept 13 hours. Apparently we all really needed to recover from the longest day. Unfortunately, Rob received an email that morning that our Saturday flight home on Air France was cancelled and we were rebooked on a Tuesday night redeye. More time in Tahiti sounds great, but the kids needed to be back in school on Monday to avoid missing more than the two weeks they’d missed already. Rob was quick to get on the phone to try to get us rebooked before others. Rob convinced Air France to put us on the Friday flight (even though only premium economy seats were left), but that would have meant missing one of our only two full days in Tahiti. Fortunately, while Rob was doing this, I found flights on an airline we’d never heard of: Frenchbee. We decided to risk it and booked. It’s definitely a discount airline (a la Spirit in the US). Rob tried forever to try to get their site to accept one of our credit cards, then found out that they only accept French credit cards, then eventually thought to book it through Expedia (which worked great). All this resulted in a three-hour delay to the start of our day, but hey–we were in Tahiti for 48 hours and wanted to make the most of it.
Our house is on a lagoon and equipped with kayaks, so we opted to take them out to the coral reef. It was breathtaking and such a cool experience to swim among so many varieties of coral and fish. Everyone loved it.
It was soon time for lunch so we headed back in and enjoyed our French cheese, meat and baguette lunch.
In the afternoon we opted for Plage Vaiava, another beach slightly north of the one from yesterday, because it appeared to have more sand. We are all wearing shirts today with our swimsuits to help keep the sunburns covered and prevent more. A highlight of the beach for me was seeing a ray on the ocean floor, but it was too fast for the others to see it. Most of us did see a bottom fish that blended in with the sand perfectly. The boys wrapped up our beach trip with some sand digging.
Chicken nuggets were a hit for dinner, and we loved eating all of our meals in the open air space. We are definitely in the locals’ part of town and have been loving the non touristy experience and quiet there. Monopoly Deal and Harry Potter have been the preferred way to end our evenings lately.
