Many yachts choose to stop here before officially checking in to French Polynesia. It's an odd situation from my perspective : it is against the law, the authorities, quite rightly so, don't want people to do this. But they know that it happens frequently and their only deterrent is to occasionally send the Customs ship here to set the cat amongst the pigeons. From what I've been told the penalty is only a moderate monetary fine. So perhaps they don't really care ? I've no doubt the locals don't mind as they are happy to trade their surplus fruit, generally asking for rum, which brings me to my other issue with some yachties :- many of the people on yachts don't have an issue swapping their hard liquor for fresh fruit and on a number of websites we have seen people who openly skite about - a) entering the country illegally and b) giving the locals hard liquor. In our books it's extremely irresponsible for anyone at all to to this and demonstrates either their ignorance or disregard for the ill effects of alcohol in indigenous communities. Whatever the opposite of leaving a clean wake is, this is what these thoughtless actions are doing.

On a brighter note, every year during July the French Polynesians conduct a major dance and sports competition and festival. Last time we were in French Polynesia in 2013 we had a taste and wanted to make sure that we were here again in July. Many islands send a group of musicians (generally percussionists) and dancers to Tahiti and they conduct rehearsals most days of the week in their village so it's a fantastic experience for us travellers to be able to see this in action. In the main event they are all dressed up in their traditional clothing, grass skirts and flowers everywhere.