Daniele Somenzi's Polynesia

Polynesia with Daniele Somenzi posted by iviaggididaniele [21/01/2009 20:04] Having arrived with an Air New Zealand Boeing 767 from Los Angeles, we land in the middle of the night at Papeete in French Polynesia.

The girl at the car rental is forced to stay up late just to keep her job; in fact she's there waiting for us at 3 in the morning to hand over the Ford KA that Nicola and I had booked.

Luckily it's warm and the European autumn isn't felt at all. In the dark I drive towards Papeete a few km away and we immediately withdraw some Pacific francs from an ATM. A little further on we see an open bakery and buy 2 doughnuts, as they say at Cinquale, and head out of town, up a mountain road surrounded by tropical vegetation. And there we put the seats down and sleep until dawn.

I'd already been to Polynesia, but every time it's a novelty. As soon as we wake up we find ourselves in front of a magnificent landscape; from up high you can make out the whole lagoon with the island of Moorea in the distance.

We set off then for the circuit of the island, unfortunately though it starts to drizzle; otherwise how would we have all this greenery?

A French navy helicopter hovers over the sea with a boat below; they're certainly looking for something. The waterfall I saw the other time I showed to Nicola, and then on and on until we see some cows grazing. I threw myself into a swim complete with mask and fins even though it was raining; Nicola preferred to stay in the car, so he filmed me with my camera.

Mango and banana plants are present along the road; we arrive at Papeete and a P&O cruise ship is docked in the harbour. We take out the 2 Graziella bicycles we've brought from Italy and assemble them, then return the Ford KA (ugly).

We board the ferry with our bicycles, which in half an hour takes us to Moorea.

Our luggage tied on the rear rack and a backpack on our back, and off we pedal in search of a cheap place to sleep. It's well known that Polynesia is very expensive.

So we ask a local who was hoeing the earth in front of his house and he points us to a shack a bit further on, some cheap bungalows where we stay 2 nights.

Nicola, as usual, sleeps late while I get up with the crowing of the island's thousand roosters, so I take the bike and pedal around the area; the sea is 30 metres away and I realise we're near a village complete with overwater villas.

So I sit on the little pier and admire for a good while the paradise around me.

Later we go for a ride around the island and I keep filming, too beautiful.

We hole up for a few hours at the Beachcomber hotel and bungalow, and discover there are Italians staying there, at 500 thousand lire a night each, my goodness, with 2 nights I could pay for an entire trip.

This 5-star hotel even has dolphins in a pool, only if you want to swim with them you have to fork out 100 $.

A couple of days later, our ferry takes us back to the main island; we're sorry to leave Polynesia, it's too beautiful here. In Papeete we visit a travel agency, but we quickly realise that plane tickets to the nearby islands cost too much, this for a possible future trip here to Polynesia.

The Air New Zealand plane arrives in the dark and we pedal to the airport, luckily before the downpour started, and wait. The airline takes charge of the 2 bicycles even whole, without even folding them in two; ok, that's fine by us, excellent airline, we like it more and more.