Pirates of South Pacific

Budgeting in Tahiti

If you want to spend time in Tahiti at about the same cost as modest living in a major city, here's how to hack it. You find accomodations on http://www.petitesannonces.pf/, or, failing that, from an independent host on AirBnB. Booking an AirBnB for a month or longer will often get you much better rates.

You cook your own food and take care to buy local products as much as you can - everything that is processed is shipped thousands of miles. Get ready to eat a lot of fruit, veggies and fish. Plus baguettes (every supermarket has them fresh every morning at about half a buck) and locally produced milk. It's pretty great. You'll learn to open coconuts in no time. You can get local produce delivered from https://tahiti-localfarms.com/. Every sunday there are street vendors all around the coast selling the best grilled meat you'll ever eat and lical firi firi donuts. Prices vary. In Puna-Auia we've been paying an equivalent of 5 dollars for a grilled piece of chicken with delicious sauce that's enough to feed us both, and 2 bucks for a bag of firi firi donuts, in Papenoo it was 5 for two fried chicken legs and firi firi altogether.

According to the (very innacurate on many occasions Lonely Planet) guide, your options to get bikes are a 15-20 bucks a day rentals and that's pretty much it. What they don't mention is that if you're here for longer, buying a good quality mountain bike from Pacific Cycles in Papeete starts below 200 bucks and you will very likely be able to sell it.

Public transit.The cost of bus travel depends on how far you go and is typically an equivalent of 1.5 to 3.5 dollars paid to the driver as you come in. Buses go in both directions around the island from Papeete, there is a stop for the buses going east to Puna'Auia and beyond is at 59 Av. du Maréchal Foch. For the buses going west in the direction of Papeno'o, go around the corner to the side of the Mairie on Rue du Père Collette.

Travelling between islands

If Covid is over, you don't have to fly from island to island - the cargo ships take on passengers and they do it cheap. You can also send your stuff on these boats - show up to the office in the Papeete harbour with plenty of time to spare, there may be a line. On smaller islands lines are unlikely. We sent out bikes via Taporo VII as we flew to Huahine and it was super easy. This post has additional input about hitchhiking on cargo boats, but I'd take it with a grain of salt - the authors sound kinda bitter and like they had a pretty superficial experience of French Polynesia.

Between Moorea and Tahiti, there are regular ferries (the Aremiti is a solid choice) and if you travel with bikes, you get admitted via the vehicle deck and get to skip the passenger line. ;)

You probably saw it mentioned elsewhere, but Air Tahtiti offers fly passes if you want to see multiple islands and can plan everything out in advance. That's not really our speed - we like to move to the next place when we feel the time is right - but if you're planning in advance, and a pass fits your needs, check if it will save you money.

Skip Bora Bora. Go to Huahine, Raiatea or even Maupiti instead, unless you're into generic-ass overpriced chain resorts. In fact, wherever you go, skip big hotels and resorts. On Rangiroa, we used to eat fantastic grilled fish, straight from the sea, with fries and garlic sauce at a fish shack and it would run us a few bucks. Once we went for lunch to the Kia Ora Resort next door. The tuna on the tuna sandwitch was from a can, and it cost several times more. In Rangiroa, where if you put a fishing stick in the water, you might pull it out with a tuna on it. Also, resorts are literally the least responsible way to travel - almost no money stays with the community, and you rarely get to actually know anybody or anything about the place you are.

Here are a few businessess we've encountered that are outstanding and you will genuinely miss out if you don't reach out to them:

Tahiti Reva Trek - hiking in the Tahiti wilderness is an unbelieveable experience most people miss out on. Whether you want to hike mountains, scale cliffs of swim up lava tubes, Angelina and her man have your back. You'll never forget it. You'll get more out of it if you speak French though.

Aotera Guesthouse in Rangiroa - It's in a majestic, paradise middle of nowhere, but it's ran by a former telecom engineer so it has the best internet connection in South Pacific. No kidding, you can do any kind of remote work from here. It blew our minds, because it truly is as remote as it gets. Pair that with great food (all inclusive) and a fantastic crew you'll become friends with.

The Lonely Planet guide to French Polynesia is hilariously bad, and here are some of the things it gets wrong.

1. Electric outlets. According to LP, they are all type A (North American). All that we've seen so far have been type C (European).
2. Cost of travel. They seem to believe that "budget" travel would be 120 dollars per day per person. I'm sorry, what? That's fucking weak sauce, you can cut that in half, unless you're diving or island hopping every other day. See the budgeting tips above. I was particularly dissaponted with Lonely Planet on this one, because they built their brand on backpacker culture.
3. Buses. The travel guide says it's a flat fare of 2.5 and that it's paid at the end, and neither of these two things are true. Anyone else getting the impression it was written by bougie squares who never left resorts?
4. Indigenous struggle. The guide pays very little attention to local affairs, and has a very white/francophone bias. The most reference to any Land Defender activity is on page 69 ("Inland Thrills"): "(...) at the time of research the road was closed further down the valley due to a barricade built by the area's residents. Legal proceedings were under way to ensure that the road would remain accessible both to visitors and Tahiti's hydroelectric company workers." CRINGE.
5. None of the cultural references are actually Polynesian. The guide has a standard list of Hollywood movies about Polynesia for you to watch, but no reference to writers or creators that are actually Polynesian. Anyway, I'm just starting to read Chantal Spitz right now cause Wikipedia does a better job of this than Lonely Planet. There is also very little cultural insight, and certainly no worthwhile insight at all. Even into things that tourists are typically interested in, like Ori dancing. It blows my mind that in the age where there are online databases of up-to-date information about accomodation and food at your fingertips, someone got paid to write a guide that contains little else than mediocre hotel directories. And as for Hollywood movies, it's pretty on the nose that Moana (not mentioned in the guide, possibly because it came out too late?) also did a much better job of understanding Polynesian culture.
6. IT CLAIMS THERE ARE NO BEACHES IN RANGIROA. What the everlasting fuck. THERE ARE SO MANY BEACHES IN RANGIROA. Here are some of them: