The flight from Hawaii to Papeete is quite long and we are happy that we get some food at least, not like with the flight to Hawaii. It is not good food but it tides us over until we arrive in Papeete late at night. We disembark on the runway and then walk to the main terminal, it is time to enter French Polynesia proper.
We are welcomed with live music and dancing and a long line to customs and immigration. It takes almost an hour to process everyone and we barely make it to the counter to exchange money and then it is time to get our car from Hertz. Which is an ordeal as each person takes about a quarter of an hour so we wait about one hour to get to the counter. Then they say we are too late to pick up and they already released the car but finally they find another one which looks really beaten down. But at this point it does not matter we just want a car so we can drive to our accomodation.
We arrive at our accomodation at around 1:30AM and we take in the really small studio and then it is time to go to sleep at around 2AM, quite late especially given that tomorrow we have a relatively busy day planned.
The AirBnB studio is in an apartment complex with a lot of other apartments, it looks quite new from the outside. The bonus for us and why we have chosen it is that it has a reserved underground parking spot which is empty the whole time we are there and we really like. In addition the AirBnB is close to downtown Papeete, walking distance really.
But the first thing we do the first day is to get some food from the supermarket as everything is closing at around noon on Sunday. We enjoy the first daytime views of the island afterwards both from the common areas of the building and our own private balcony.
The balcony is quite neat really, it is in fact the dining area with some nice views over the ocean and towards the airport. And we use it every day to eat except when there are too many mosquitoes around and we retreat back inside.
Closer nearby are some houses and of course the very busy small road which wakes us up almost every day due to the hubbub from the many cars.
But even more noise is coming from the wild roosters that frequent the house nearby. They climb on the roof and give multiple wake up calls early in the morning, quite fun but it also can be quite annoying at times.
There are also other birds of course, doves and bulbuls and even terns flying above us. And we see them all as we eat breakfast and dinner at the studio before and after our days out exploring the beautiful islands. Overall it is a great location in the city but a bit noisy and quite small even for two people.
