My Birding Blogs

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Tahiti Trip 2007 - Day 7 - Wed 07 Aug 2007 Papeete

Caught a public bus from Resort to Town Centre. Mostly shopping for souvenir and walking around the city. Picked up our rented car from Europcar from its city office. Drove out of town to survey on places away from town centre. Visited Inter-Continental Hotel, Sheraton Hotel as well as passing by the air port. Traffic congestion in Papeete during peak hour is comparable to any large cities in the world.

We tried to save our pockets by shopping at the Carrefour Supermarket in the eastern suburb of Papeete. Here the Carrefour is nothing different from the Carrefour supermarkets that I have been familiar with in Malaysia/Singapore, except that the price of everything in Tahiti is very expensive. On our way out at the cashier counter, I had noticed that some shoppers were carrying environment friendly shopping bags bearing a very attractive red parrot on it. Wow that was Rimatara Lorikeet and I quickly bought 2 bags where one will be used as a ‘souvenir’. What a good 'bird' encounter at the local shopping mall and what a good idea to promote conservation to the public of this beautiful and endangered lorikeet of French Polynesia.


As usual, we could not get enough of nice dinner variety at the caravan park in the town centre. After the dinner, we had a night rehearsal drive to find the route to Papenoo where I intend to visit next morning.