Voyagers

We are voyagers. I love being voyagers. I am so totally hooked on the feeling of....."Where should we go today?" It is really, really cool to just be able to pick up and go and your home goes with you. I enjoy our stops but we are on a journey and we need to keep moving, to keep looking forward. It is so exciting.

Tahiti has been a cool stop on this journey. It has been our first taste of real civilization since we left Panama City. It was a shock to walk into the huge air conditioned grocery store but it felt sooooo good. Unfortunately the prices are SKY HIGH! Thank goodness I bought enough groceries to get us to New Zealand. I feel so proud each time Graham runs out of something and I can produce another bottle, jar or bag of it and he is so happy with my shop job. You know I love the kudos. The only things we need to stock up on are fruit, veggies, cheese and meat. We spent about $200. I think we are doing pretty good with our budget. We decided that the fruit and veggies were to expensive in the grocery store though and we had heard there was a farmers market at 6am on Sunday mornings where they were much cheaper. This means that for the past 2 Sundays we have woke up at 5am and taken the dinghy in the dark all the way into town (about 3 miles). We carefully find our way via the red and green buoys. One wrong turn and you end up on the jagged reef. We had a couple hairy carry moments of Amelia yelling...."Dad REEF"!! Regardless we saved some money and had an adventure! Gotta love that.

We also managed to squeeze in a Tahiti tour Perry style. We took our dinghy into town and saved the taxi fare. We took the kids to the food vendors in the open market and bought baguette sandwiches for our lunch. ($2 each) We jumped on the number 1 bus to the end of the line. ($4) We hiked from the end of the line up a mountain into the lush Tahiti landscape to a waterfall. Pretty neat to do given the fact that practically no one speaks English.

We did have a few bumps in the plan though. The first one was a HUGE centipede revealing itself to me from under a leaf on the trail as Amelia and I hiked. Scared the crap out of me and I heard these things are extremely poisonous. Second bump was the fact that when we were almost there Alex started feeling sick and weak with his cold. It was decided that we would turn around and Graham and Amelia would continue on and meet us back at the park in Papette. I didn't realize he was feeling that sick. I felt terrible for pushing him that far. Luckily as soon as we turned around and hiked back to the road a truck came along and offered us a drive to the bus stop! The third bump was the fact that I forgot to leave Graham and Amelia with the instructions for getting to the base of the waterfall.....ooops. They hiked up, up, up and finally they looked across and they were above the stunning waterfall. They said it was really gorgeous but they were so looking forward to a swim. Ha. Well we chalk these Perry Style Tours up to character builders and the good news is that the whole day only cost us.....$16.

Tomorrow we are off voyaging again! We are heading to the island of Moorea which is only 20 miles away. The guide book says that it is one of the most photographic islands in the world? Wish I had google to see what it has to say. We met a guy on the bus to the falls who lives on the island and gave us his number. He said we should call once we are there and he will show us around. I am looking forward to meeting his family and hearing his story.

Excited for tomorrow and really grateful for today......