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Picture df36Tahiti & MooreaBridge top
 Picture df37 As we neared Tahiti, we all wondered, I am sure, just how much of it would be fact and how much fiction from what we had heard of the island. As we moored at the pier the feeling of modernisation was in the air and we surely began to wonder about the stories we had heard of the fabulous Tahiti and its even more fabulous women.The women were plentiful, but the beauty of the true Tahitian girl was not to be found in the main town of Papeete, for it was not a very picturesque town in its self to begin with. So off we went on motor scooters we were able to rent there, to make a tour of the island of our dreams, that as yet had not really shown us very much.The true beauty of the islands began to show during the journey to Morrea (an island across from Tahiti) and the trip around Tahiti itself, some 130 miles being covered. Landscapes and waterfalls untouched by man's ugly modernisation and careless waste unfolded before our eyes, emerald clear waters in snug little lagoons with grass huts and palm-thatched roofs, outrigger canoes sitting on the black coral sand under thickly grown swaying palm trees. And there were girls also, speaking the broken French of the islands, wearing the clothes of their ancestors, bright and gaily coloured lava lavas. We came across a pool by a waterfall where there were quite a few girls bathing wearing nothing but the tradition of their forefathers! But, alas, we still have a long way to travel so we say farewell to the part of Tahiti that men such as James Nordhoff and Charles Hall wrote so much about and we head for town once more, for the evening is near and the night air fills with the heartbeat of gaiety.The attractions at Quinns and Lafayette's and the native music drowns all sorrows and the girls there heal our wounds of loneliness of all the days we spent at sea and with the dawn, another day of exploring this fabulous place.We vow to one day return to this Paradise that has captured so many adventurers hearts, for only those who gaze upon its beauty, not in pictures but in real life, really know the magic of a paradise still existing in this modern world of chaos and confusion.Bridge top
Picture df38 Les Nouvelles -- Le premier Quatidien deTahitiBridge top
 Picture df39 Follow MeBridge top
 Picture df40 Ship? What Ship??!Bridge top
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