Friday April 18, 2014 Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia

We were up at sunrise and met Rick and Rosie, R&R Cruisers, at the International Café.  We then went ashore.  Rick had reserved a rental car through Europcar and there was supposed to be a shuttle to the office at the pier.  We never found the shuttle so we went across the street and got a taxi to take us to the airport.  The fare was $22 US.  When we left the airport the closest cache was back toward town, we went the other way.  The car cost 105.00 USD until 5 PM.  Our plan for the day was to drive around the island seeing the sights and trying to find any geocaches along the way.

Our first cache was at the Tahiti Museum.  Rosie found it by sticking her hand in a hole.  Another lady from the ship saw us looking very closely at the tree and walking around it several times.  We explained geocaching to her.  Two years ago the closest cache to the harbor was a virtual at this museum.  I found it then.  Rick and Rosie don’t normally do virtual caches but I convinced them to do this one since they were here anyway.

We continued along the coast.  We stopped at a swimming beach and took pictures.  This being Good Friday school was out and businesses closed.  There were a lot of families at the beach.  We had our first DNF at a beautiful Grotto.  The problem was when we got close to GZ the signal jumped around too much for accuracy.  We gave up.  The next cache was in a botanical garden and was an easy find.  The next cache was on a part of the island that is connected to the larger part of the island by an isthmus.  This cache was past a viewpoint at an elevation of about 1600 feet above sea level.   We had to walk up a path to a large tree that hid the cache.  I downloaded this cache in late March and no one had logged it at that time, so we thought it was possible that we might get a first to find.  No such luck.  Three cachers had been there before us.  The road to this cache was paved but in poor shape in spots.  At time there was doubt as to whether the car had the power to pull out of some of the potholes where we nearly stopped to negotiate.  There was also doubt at some points whether the car would pull  off the steep portions of the road with everyone inside.  This was the last cache of any note.  There was one at a busy beach where there were a bunch of girls sitting at what appeared to be ground zero, so we didn’t find that one.  We found a total of seven, 8 for Rick and Rosie.  There were three that had several DNF before us, so we didn’t look for them.  The last three were near the ship.

After the cache on the mountain we had lunch at a local fast food restaurant, Mc Donald’s.

We returned the rental car after filling it with gasoline, another $42 US.  We were provided a shuttle back to the ship.  We got cleaned up and went to our usual dinner.  After dinner we went to the Princess Theater and saw a performance by a local group of dancers.  It was one of the best “Folkloric” type show that we had seen for a long time.  A little reading and we called it a night.