“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
We had arrived in the dark and hadn’t seen where we were. In the morning, we woke up to this incredible view from our balcony—a quintessential paradise. We were right on the ocean, with palm trees and tropical gardens in the foreground and volcanic mountains in the distance.
Before this trip, Alice and I watched several videos about Tahiti. This view epitomized paradise. Exactly how I imagined a tropical South Pacific island should appear.
Lobby
We stayed at InterContinental Tahiti Resort, one of the top-rated hotels in Tahiti. It’s in the town of Faaa on the island of Tahiti, the largest island in French Polynesia, which is an overseas collectivity of France. The official language of Tahiti is French, but almost everyone can speak at least a little English.
The lobby, pictured above, looks like the lobby at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. This entire resort could have been a model for the architects of Disney’s resort. The difference here is that it’s not a single isolated imitation. This is the real thing!
Meals
The resort is on the beach, far from stores or other resorts. We had no choice but to spend almost all of our time there.
There are only two full-service restaurants at the resort. The main restaurant, Te Tiare, is open almost all day. Every morning, they served a huge breakfast buffet with everything you might want, including tropical fruits, juices, and freshly cooked croissants. We always ordered something from the omelet station, although not always an omelet. Sometimes, we ordered French toast or fried eggs.
The other restaurant is Le Lotus, an expensive gourmet restaurant. It’s the kind where the menu doesn’t list individual prices. The minimum price for dinner and dessert is 11,300 CFP (Collectivités françaises du Pacifique) or about $100 per person.
We decided to save our money for other vacation activities. Instead, we took a taxi to the nearest grocery store (Carrefour). This enabled us to prepare one meal daily in our hotel room and eat it on our balcony with that incredible view.
We had the rest of our meals at Te Tiare or at their 24-bar Terrace bar.
Pools
The resort had three swimming pools. Unfortunately, the main pool was closed for repairs. (We went during the off-season, when renovation projects are common.)
The second pool, which we visited several times, had a sandy bottom with a sandy beach. There was a swim-up bar, but we never ordered anything there. It’s an infinity pool that appears to open onto the ocean. You had to swim to the edge to realize there was a gap before the sea.
The third pool was the “Lagoonarium,” a protected area home to over 200 species of sea creatures. I went snorkeling there a couple of times. Alice enjoyed watching the fish from shore, but wasn’t excited about swimming with them. One section of the Lagoonarium was home to rescued sea turtles and was off-limits to guests.
Shows
During our stay, we enjoyed many live music performances and several shows. However, we missed their big Polynesian dance performance because, during the off-season, it was only held on Fridays, and we were never there on a Friday evening.
Scuba
I had started to get my scuba training in New Hampshire. The internationally recognized Scuba standard is the PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Open Water Certification. But I dropped out because it was difficult and dismal. The local water in New Hampshire is cloudy and cold, and there are few local diving opportunities. At my age, if it isn’t fun, what’s the point of doing it?
Tahiti presents completely different opportunities for scuba diving. The ocean water is crystal clear and bathtub warm. There’s an incredibly diverse range of marine life. I arranged to transfer my partial certification to the dive shop at the resort where we were staying.
The dives far surpassed my expectations. Think of an exceptional aquarium, like the New England Aquarium in Boston. Then, imagine exploring an area 100 times that size with miles of coral reef and thousands of fish. Incredible!
We dove to depths of up to 60 feet. I saw lots of green turtles, four sharks, a small octopus, and a moray eel. I don’t know the names of the types of fish, but there were far more than I’d ever seen before, including: clownfish, pufferfish, and flute fish. It was a fantastic collection of vibrant colors: yellow, blue, orange, etc.
Nearly everyone wore wetsuits. The water was so warm that I would have quickly become overheated, so I wore just a bathing suit and a “rash shirt,” which is a thin cloth to protect against UV exposure. In small groups (3 to 6 divers), we took a small boat into the lagoon. we just rolled backwards off the ship’s edge to enter the water. After the dive, we climbed the ladder to the swim platform at the stern of the boat.
One time, as we rode our boat out to the dive site, we encountered a pod of dolphins. Dolphins swim in front of boats primarily to ride the bow wave, which is a fun and energy-efficient way to travel. It was great fun watching them surf.
Once on the way back from a dive site, we picked up a hitchhiker! He was slowly swimming back from surfing, where the waves break over the reef. He climbed up our swim platform with his surfboard. When our board turned left to return to our resort, he jumped back in the water to continue swimming to shore. Different world here!
I used Nitrox for all of the dives. Normal air is 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen, and 1% other gases. Nitrox has more oxygen (and hence less nitrogen). Many divers told me it’s better for older divers, as you get less tired. I’m not sure if that’s true. I was exhausted after each dive!
I was thrilled to enjoy six dives—some on the reef, some around sunken ships and planes. By the end, I had earned my Open Water certification.
It was truly my most enjoyable adventure of our entire trip.