Hello! You have reached the second-half of my Day 6 in Tahiti. As I stated previously, due to passion and details in expressing what I did that day, I had to split this up into 2 parts.
Continuing with me leaving church and hopping into my car to drive around the island, the one little mistake I made before this goes back to my hotel. I was so focused on trying to make sure I went to the right church, that I forgot to look on the maps on my phone where to find the waterfalls of Tahiti. I wrote them down in a list on my phone but I didn’t look up how to get to them. And because I had turned the data off on my phone, I was not going to be using GPS while I was driving. Never the less, I was on the main highway that goes around Tahiti, headed for more wide open, tropical-country side terrain. While I was hoping to find the waterfall, I was actually happy about driving aimlessly around the island, seeing parts of it I hadn’t witnessed yet, due to me being in the city for the most part. I saw other beaches that had higher tide than the one I walked to back in Papeete. The beaches also had rock formations, which again, was different than what I had witnessed. I hadn’t even seen many rocks on Moorea. But I will say that the more, wide open, houses further apart and farms on Tahiti reminded me of Moorea. It turns out all I had to do was drive a few miles down the coast away from Papeete.
In the meantime, I had driven a good distance of the island (about a third of the circumference), and I had yet to find a waterfall or even obvious direction to it. Then I felt like I might have passed a road that led to it. Then I turned around to try to find a way to get to it. I sure hoped I was right as I would’ve been very disappointed to not find it as it was a big reason why I even got the rental car for the day. I kept my eyes open for direction while not being distracted. Driving around Tahiti was not difficult at all. You drive on the right side of the road and most drive moderately, not too fast and not too slow.
When I was a little more than halfway back to Papeete, I noticed a couple of cars coming in the opposite direction of me make a turn onto a small side road off the main road we were on. It was my left turn to make so I felt I like I should make that turn to see where the road led to. So after a brief distance up that road, there was a small parking lot. I felt like I was on the right track to something good. I parked my car, changed out of my dress clothes from church, and changed into my shorts, swimming trunks, plain white t-shirt, flip flops, got my phone and personal items, got out of the car and proceeded to walk up the hill of the lot. There was a short bridge that went over a shallow stream that I walked across to a narrow pathway that went up a hill. Walking up that hill, I reached the top and turned a short corner only to stumble upon the spectacular. Lo and behold, I discovered the most beautiful waterfall I had ever witnessed! Move over Niagara Falls, I’ll take a 300-400ft tropical island waterfall any day! See the videos below. The first one was my reaction when I found it. The second one was pure bliss sounding of water crashing into the pool and the close-up view of course.
I was so amazed by what I was getting so experience in person. It was as if I had a deep spiritually profound encounter with the natural world. It made me appreciate this world and it’s magnificence even more so than I already had. “We truly don’t deserve the beauty of this world, God!”, I kept repeating to myself. Call me weird and crazy, I don’t care. I’m not one for signing especially when there are other people around but I quietly sang a couple of praise songs. I can specifically remember looking at the time on my phone, knowing I had to start heading back to town and the airport to return my rental car but it was as if I physically couldn’t leave easily. I just didn’t want to leave the waterfall. But after some debate with self, I got up and walked back towards my car down the hill. Before I got to my car, I came across the info display sign for the falls and discovered its official name, “Faarumai Waterfall”.
For me, if the Faarumai Waterfall was the only reason I came all the way out to the middle of the South Pacific, it was well worth it. The day just kept getting better and it was like a dream I didn’t want to wake up from. But then it was back to reality as I was driving back to the Papeete and realized that I needed to stop and put gas in the car before returning it to the airport. I found a gas station to stop in the city and a worker pumped the gas for me. Again, it was another culture shock as I can’t even remember the last time I went to a gas station in America where the workers pumped it for you. I hadn’t needed my car filled up that much as the Citron was a very fuel-efficient vehicle. The worker finished pumping the gas, I went inside to pay, got back in my car and was back on my way to the airport. I had reached the airport, returned the car, got a taxi to take me back to the Mahana Hostel so I could again rehash the highlight(s) of my trip on this beautiful Sunday.
That evening I got out the remainder of my leftover chicken and rice with Lemon sauce out of the fridge in the hostel dining room to put it in the microwave to eat. I sat down to eat and ended up engaging in a long conversation with a man from France named Guillaume. It was another interesting ordeal chatting with him, as he was very fluent in English and we covered an array of topics like traveling (he traveled to numerous countries around the world on 2-3 hour quick trips), his views on America (particularly its cultural treatment of guns), church, languages. We did disagree on some things but it was the beauty of the dialogue. We managed to respectfully disagree without losing our cools. We chatted for almost 3 hours until finally other people arrived in the dining room and talked with us. For me, it changed even more because I met two different Americans. That was the first time I met more than one American at a time during my stay in Tahiti. They were a guy named Rick, from Hawaii and a girl named Evalina from Washington DC.
The whole dining from was like a mixed melting pot because a couple more people joined us and before I knew it, we had 3 Americans, a couple of French people, a Colombian, an Easter Islander and a native Tahitian (my friend, Laihanna). Altogether, there were 3 different languages being spoken. Everyone had an interesting story to share. What all that meant to me was how we as humans come from all different backgrounds, countries, cities, cultures, lifestyles and more. Yet, our humanity is what we have in common, and we should look to build our connections from what we have in common while learning as much as we can from our differences.
There concludes my Day 6 in Tahiti. It was memorable for many reasons. I would call it the highpoint of my trip, out of all the different moments and experiences I partook in while soaking in the remote, South Pacific islands. On to Day 7 in the next post.