Tahiti was another of the islands that we had visited on our cruise over to Australia and neither of us were hugely enamoured on that day – the artwork of Paul Gauguin notwithstanding.  On this cruise we did a tour that took us inland; from sea level to 4800′ and back again and had a really good day, so we came away with a more favourable opinion of Tahiti; which is the largest of the Polynesian islands. This beautiful yacht was berthed right beside the Rhapsody.

We were picked up by our driver, Allan, and taken through Papeeté to the end of a steep valley in the middle of an ancient caldera.  We crossed a river a couple of times, and saw many waterfalls; some had a sheer drop of over 1300 m.  Allan would stop the truck along the way and tell us about the plants or climate or other interesting things.  He was also very good about giving us photostops. It was still the ‘wet’ season but we were blessed with a rain-free day.  There were two other couples in our truck; a couple from Germany and one from Australia.  The ride was too rough for the German lady and she got car sick as soon as we went off-road.  It must have been a very long afternoon for her.  We, fortunately, were fine.   We almost got John positioned right to catch the waterfall in his hat. We arrived back at the ship at five and enjoyed a Tahitian Folkloric show in the theater after dinner.