"Paradise Found in Beautiful Tahiti" - Time Out #201

It's just about the most incredibly beautiful place I have ever laid my eyes on in my entire lifetime of worldwide travels.

Tahiti, also know as French Polynesia.

This is definitely a travel destination I would return. We visited this Windward group of the Society Islands sever #201al years ago, and absolutely loved it!

There are several ways to get there, but because of its remote location, almost in the middle of the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, we did what most tourists do, we flew there. We used their national air carrier, Air Tahiti, to fly about 8 hours non-stop to their capital city, Papeete, located on the northwest side of the main island, separately named Tahiti. Their aircraft flight attendants were dressed in their colorful island uniforms, and provided excellent in-cabin service for the flight, which is about 3 hours longer from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) than a flight from LAX to Honolulu, Hawaii. Geographically, Tahiti is southeast of the Hawaiian Island chain. Politically, the island group is an overseas collectivity of the French Republic, and is France's only overseas country. The official language of Tahiti is French, but like most places on Planet Earth, many of its people also speak English. The population of the entire island group is less than 300,000. with about 70% of those people living on the largest land-size island of Tahiti. Two-thirds of the native population are Polynesians, with Europeans, the majority from France, comprising most of the other island population. The island currency is the CFP Franc, which has a fixed exchange rate with the Euro.

Enough of that house-keeping information about this exotic destination. Let's move forward with actually visiting this paradise!

Travelers can experience these incredible islands by island hopping like is commonly done when touring our Hawaiian Islands. Both airplanes and boats make frequent commuter trips to the major tourist-visited islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora, Raiatea and Tahaa. If you chose to travel independently, you could stay in any one of the country's incredible hotels, many offering those unique over-water bungalow accommodations. However, be prepared to bring and spend LOTS of money, as this paradise is one of the most expensive places my bride, Debbie, and I have ever visited. For the ease of travel comfort and because most expenses are pre-paid, we chose a Princess cruise ship that merely cruised us from island-to-island. Our mid-size, elegant ocean vessel would travel from island to island at night, so we could enjoy each destination during their long daylight hours. While on this memorable cruise, we even traveled outside the Tahitian group to anchor for one stop in the nearby Cook Islands at Rarotonga. Here, we were introduced to an island tour featuring their native people producing noni juice, a bizarre, bitter-tasting liquid, that locals claimed was a miracle-type product. Needless to say, my bride and I did not purchase any of this "magic" substance.

Each of our Society Island stops was so special. Their people were always friendly, and I compared the Tahitian social atmosphere to Hawaii of the 1950's, before the masses of mainland American and Japanese tourists began visiting our 50th state. We toured a vanilla plantation where the plant was carefully grown and harvested, along with visiting a small, fruit-growing facility. Like Hawaii, life in Tahiti revolves around the outdoors, and day-to-day activities are very slow-paced and casual. We learned so much about their famous and beautiful black pearls, seeing a commercial pearl farming operation, and, yes, we even purchased some of those jewels to bring back to Our Town.

As stated earlier, I have strongly considered returning to this Society Islands paradise, mostly because it is such a beautiful place. Its spectacular, natural beauty, laid-back way of island life, and friendly native people, make it very tempting to fly back there to experience it once again. If this return trip does happen, it would probably again be as cruise ship passengers, traveling from island to island to enjoy each place.

That's my story, and I am sticking to it.............