Papeete

We dinghed to and back from Papeete downtown, which was a wonderful way to begin our exploration of the city. It reminds me of Honolulu but a bit mellower, with French cars driving slowly, even stopping with smiling faces, to let you go across on the crosswalk. While walking the main boulevard, I looked around, glancing up past the buildings to the majestic mountains leading inland, and picked a plumeria flower for my hair as all the women here do. David and I visited the big Nautica Sport shop to see what they could do about our staysail furling system that is fouled. We also visited ACE Hardware on the way back and we spent about $300 in 3 hours.  We ate Chinese Tahitian food in the town square after a brief 30 minutes at the internet cafe we found. It was a great people-watching place and we both were in awe of how many people helped us with such generous attitudes- pretty impressive for a city. On the way home we ran into a reef due to poor navigation assumptions on my part, but luckily the damage was not bad; it was just a rude awakening for us both riding the channel at night. We are home on Sidewinder now listening to some pretty good live music at the restaurant by the dinghy dock, and here we are, in Tahiti. WOW!