Thursday morning, October 17, 2019, was here. Interestingly enough, I again woke up at 5 am that morning without setting an alarm to help me. It’s something unusual for me, as I require an alarm and a few snooze button hits to get me up in time back home in The States. Perhaps it was a combination of lingering jet lag and my body getting assimilated to the TAHT (Tahiti Time Standard time). Either way, I actually enjoyed being up before dawn with a full day ahead to enjoy the magnificent paradise I was in the heart of.
6 am came and I was ready for breakfast and coffee upstairs. I felt more at home and began to talk more with other people at the hostel who were able to speak some English. Today was the day too that I would test out my new snorkeling mask, so I was anxiously waiting for the day to move ahead a little more so I could walk over to the beach at Parc Aorai Tini Hau, (and no I was not going back there hoping to see more women take their clothes off in broad daylight again. Get your mind out of the gutter). Finally, it was about 10 am and I changed my clothes, put sunscreen on, packed my mask and walked over to the beach. When I think about the walk to that beach, it was 2.6 kilometers from my hostel which means it was about 1.6 miles walking through Papeete, dodging oncoming traffic on narrow sidewalks sometimes with cars parked on them. But you know, when you’re traveling on a tight budget trying to not spend it all on taxi trips, who cares. Plus as the old saying goes “A little walking never hurts”.
I arrived at the beach, placed my towel down and laid on the towel to work on my tan. I’m usually pretty pasty all year round so I wanted to take full advantage of the sunshine. After maybe a half-hour or so of baking under UV rays, I decided it was time to go in the water for a dip with my snorkeling mask. I put together the mask, placed it on my head and went in the water just to get a feel for it and how it should fit on my face to keep water out. It was so cool to have a full mask on while getting a more clear view of the underwater. I got another idea. Without a GoPro camera with me (again, a tight budget wasn’t letting me get one at the time), I decided to improvise. Along with the mask came this clear plastic pouch that was air-tight sealed so you can place your phone inside of it, making it waterproof. So I turned my video camera on, on my phone, placed it in the pouch, made sure I sealed it and took it in the water with me. Everything in me was hoping I sealed it tightly because it goes without saying what saltwater can do to a cell phone. After getting in the water and submerging it for a period of time, I came out of the water to see what kind of underwater footage I got. You can see the raw video below.
I went back to my beach towel, put away my camera and snorkeling mask and baked in the sun a little more. After about another hour or so, I picked up my towel, my mask, and other belongings and walked back to my hostel. When I put on my shirt, I began to look at my arms, felt itchiness on my shoulder/neck area and realized that I cooked myself a little too long. Yes, I was wearing sunscreen, but looking back I don’t believe the SPF (30) was strong enough for the sun in Tahiti. It clearly wasn’t as I looked a little like a lobster. I can’t say it bothered me much, because I was in Tahiti and how many people can say they were getting sunburnt in the middle of October? The fact I was in a location where I actually could get sunburnt made me happy. I arrived at the hostel and just took it easy into the afternoon in my bunk.
I had my headphones and then I noticed to my right all the way across the room was a random girl sleeping. And this was another aspect of my trip that I wasn’t expecting: Co-ed hostel rooms. My naive, innocence about the situation came out as I had never been in a hostel before so I was not used to the co-ed factor. She then woke up briefly, looked over and smiled at me and I just gingerly smiled at her because I still wasn’t sure to make of it at that moment. I just kind of laid in my bunk minding my own business, until about late afternoon when I decided to get out and hang out at the park by the bay to catch the gorgeous sunset again. I went to the park, walked around to pick a good spot just to sit down and observe. I sat around for almost an hour just thanking the Lord that I was here. I like to people watch and sometimes it gets me in trouble as every once in a while someone catches me looking at them and it comes across like I’m staring at them. I noticed most people who look like they grew up in Tahiti or any Pacific island, the darker-skinned, dark-haired authentically, beautiful people. And then I noticed people who looked like they were from France, light-skinned, French-speaking and equally as beautiful. I wondered how people even got to a place as remote as Tahiti or any of the islands in the Pacific Ocean thousands of years ago, considering the ocean is about 62.46 million square miles! That to me is truly a miracle. Oh, and I saw different kinds of birds in Tahiti too. See below.
Around 6 pm the sunset came in and it started to get darker. So I went over to a convenient store nearby got some off-brand Pringle chips in a can and walked back to my hostel to eat my dinner. I had leftover chicken and rice from the night before so I figured this would be a good meal for tonight. I began to eat and then I talked to the Colombian man who told me that he had gotten his certification for scuba diving. I congratulated him and as a small celebration, we shared a canned beer with me and a few other people present. It wasn’t just any beer. It was Tahitian beer as pictured below. It was a light beer and it was really good. Not too hoppy, not alcohol-ish, just right. I hardly drink at all, to begin with, but I appreciated the gesture from him. In turn, I shared my Pringles with everyone who was in the dining room at the hostel at that moment. There I met a woman from Croatia, who spoke very fluent English and another girl who lived in Bora Bora who spoke some English. Now I found the both of them have an interesting life story in their own way. The Croatian lady claimed that she had traveled to over 150+ countries around the world including Antarctica. And the girl from Bora Bora was born to parents from 2 very different places around the world, one from Uzbekistan and the other from South Africa.
After eating dinner, I was sitting on the couch in the hangout area outside the dining room and then the girl who was sleeping across the room from my bunk earlier came over and sat down in the chair next to me. We formally introduced ourselves. Her name was Lena and she was originally from France. She was very pretty and had a great smile so of course, I didn’t mind talking with her. She asked me where I was from, I told her Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She had never heard of it. I told her how long my plane trip to Tahiti was and then she told me how long her trip from France to Tahiti was: 28 hours! I’m just like “Well, you have me beat on travel time!”. Soon the Colombian man, Helmerto, joined us to talk as well. After some time of chatting with both of them, they soon pointed out that they felt that I was talking too fast and needed to slow down. What struck me is that when I heard people talking in their different languages, I felt they were talking too fast too. It must have something to do with the way our brains process hearing different languages.
So after a while, they decided they wanted to go out and drink, it was around 7:30-8:00 at night. I declined respectfully as I’m not much of a drinker to begin and surprisingly, I felt really tired. I typically don’t fall asleep until around midnight but here I was sleepy early. I feel that was my body still wiped out from the jet-lag of travel. They ended up going out and I stayed behind in my bedroom. I tried reading a book but I felt myself getting sleepier so I decided to just go to bed. Yep 9 pm, getting my old man status on, I was in bed. Day 3 in Tahiti was complete. And it was the first night I started feeling completely comfortable in my new surroundings. I was loving Tahiti.