12th-14th August

17 32.383 S
149 34.232 W

Weather; sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a

Day 2 of having the hire car, time to do some sight- seeing as we had nothing else urgent to attend to. We had looked for places of interest to go and visit but had surprisingly come up short, there really aren't very many places of interest for the average tourist, we had memories of finding the place very pleasant on our last visit here but sadly lacking in anything memorable unless you count the resorts. We decided to do a drive along the water front road (it's the main road and couldn't be avoided anyway) which goes all the way around the island. We started off in an easterly direction, keeping the shore line on our right hand side and the mountainous backdrop to our left. Tahiti is pretty much a circular island with a small polyp at one end. The big circular island is called Tahiti Nui and the polyp is called Tahiti Iti. When we were here last time we stayed at a pension on Tahiti Iti whilst our boat was out of the water in the yard having stuff fixed so we didn't need to revisit the Polyp and continued on around the main road of Tahiti Nui. The further we went the traffic became lighter but the road narrowed down to just one lane in each direction. We stumbled across several lots of roadworks, seemingly in the middle of nowhere but it didn't hold us up for too long. The sides of the roads were very picturesque with every sort of tropical flower, shrub and tree in beautiful coloured bloom. I recognised the majority of them but there were a few that I have no idea what they are called. I would have liked to have taken photos of them but Gerry was on a "Gerry tour" which means that you drive and don't stop unless the car breaks down, those of you who have been treated to a "Gerry tour" will know exactly what I mean! The other thing that I would have liked to have taken some photos of was the churches that we passed. I think Tahiti must have been a favourite place for every denomination to try and convert the locals as there are churches at every turn. It was quite difficult to determine which religion each church represented as they were so much more ornate than the Norman built churches I was brought up with, these had very decorative steeples which reminded me of the type of castle turrets you see in Europe and were painted in all sorts of colours with decorative scroll work around the roof edges. I had thought that being a French administration here that most of the churches would be Catholic but it didn't strike me that that they were typical catholic style churches, guess I will never know as we sailed past each and every one without stopping. The only place that is really promoted for tourists is the Paul Gauguin museum and even that isn't really a well-publicised destination, it is a small building half way around the east coast in the middle of nowhere, again we didn't stop but I have to say that it looked to be closed from the road side view I had as we drove past. Near the museum there are some caves which I think are known as Bat caves, there was no way we were stopping there! So we continued to drive all the way around the coast road eventually finding ourselves coming back into the city centre. Whilst it was a nice drive around the coast it wasn't the sort of sight- seeing trip that we had hoped for, there just wasn't anything to draw the tourist dollars in. So back in the city we went for a very late lunch and then headed back to the boat for the rest of the afternoon. Gerry announced that he had a sore throat late in the afternoon, and we had to search out the cold and flu tablets to dose him up. He had been saying for a couple of days that he was feeling a bit "under par" but this was the first indication that he might be going down with a cold/flu/ Covid. Needless to say he was at death's door within hours, amazing how man flu works! How ironic it would be if this turns out to be Covid after having the vaccination, though to be honest he has always had bad reactions to any sort of vaccination so I wouldn't be at all surprised to know that it is a reaction to the Covid jab that we had a week ago. So we didn't go anywhere for dinner, settling for a home cooked meal and an early night.
Day 3 and it was time to return the car. It had to be back at the car hire place by 9.30am but first Gerry had to do a trip out to the furthest part of the port to collect our anchor roller which was having a groove machined into it for the anchor to sit in. Gerry didn't want company, for which I was grateful, I had stuff to get on with on the boat. He took off and was back on the boat by 9am having picked up the roller and returned the car. Then came the bad news, the roller wasn't comprised of just one piece of metal, it was made up of 3 layers and when the machine shop tried to machine a groove into it they failed epically. We now have a roller which has a groove to one side, and now have to see if we can find a replacement or something to even out the groove. At least the machine shop didn't charge us for doing it! Gerry thought that he might be able to fill the groove with thickened epoxy but after giving that a try he has decided that maybe he needs to rethink the solution (like replacing the roller or adding a rubber covering). Its useable but not ideal and we aren't sure that it will stop the clanging that started this process in the first place. So back on board Gerry gave in to feeling well below par and sniffled, coughed and popped cold and flu tablets like they were smarties for the entire day. I made some ready meals for when we can't be bothered to cook plus a baked cheesecake to use up some cream cheese that we had hanging around. For someone who was feeling like death warmed up I couldn't believe that Gerry was mithering to try the cheesecake before it had even had time to cool down, he's like a kid in a candy store with any sort of sweet treat! It was another early night to try and knock this man flu on the head as quickly as possible, preferably without passing it on to me!
That brings me to today. We had nothing planned for the day, I thought it would be a stay onboard and do as little as possible day to give Gerry time to kick back and rest. Gerry's first words to me today were that he was going to the supermarket and did I want to come. To be honest I didn't really want to go but I wasn't going to let him go by himself as it is quite a walk, the sun was up and hot and I didn't need him to keel over along the way. So just after 9am we set off going via the dock office which wasn't yet open so we gave that a miss, thinking to do it on our return journey. We made it to the supermarket and took our time inside to enjoy the comfort of the air conditioning. I knew that we were only there to pick up more cold and flu tablets and tissues but we were surprised to find that the supermarket didn't stock any sort of general medication for colds and flu. We bought a few extra bits just because we were there and it would save another trip later on we asked the cashier where the nearest pharmacy was and she gave us good directions - it was just at the back of the same block, not too far. Gerry managed to get some cold and flu powders that have to be dissolved in water, I just hope that he has enough and doesn't need them for long! The walk back to the boat was facing the sun, it was hot and blinding so we crossed to the dockside walkway and made our way along through the park that lines the waterside, a very pleasant walk which did give us a bit of shade. We stopped for a coffee and ice cream at an over the water cafŽe before finishing the journey back to the boat. We tried the dockmaster's office again but this time there was a queue of people and quite a wait and as we didn't need to see him urgently it can wait until next week. Back at our boat we found that we have managed to scare off the neighbours on both sides now and have empty slips on both sides of us, that was until late this evening when a boat from 2 slips down moved sideways into the slip next to us. Although I wasn't bothered about going out for dinner Gerry wanted to go to the food vans for a meal so we walked to the vans after our cocktail hour and had a feed there before heading back to the boat for the night. Gerry has just dosed himself up with more man flu stuff and is off to bed. That's our lot for the last 3 days, it hasn't been very exciting but you get that even in exotic places.