March 20 - Shopping at the Carrefour

Today will go down in our travel memories as one of the strangest miscommunications we’re ever had in our travels.

We decided that in the afternoon we would get a taxi and go into Papeete to do some shopping. Marg is looking to buy some cloths and is interested in the Tahitian black pearls, while I’m interested in the local architecture.  The main area for stores in the downtown is called Le Marché.

The taxi driver, who picked us up at 13:30, was the same lady that driven us back to the resort after dinner last night at Casa Biancia. When we told her that we wanted to go to Le Marché, she looked panic stricken. She told us that the stores there would close within the next hour. As an alternative, she said she could take us to a Carrefour store, which she said was a large department store with attached sidewalk cafes for lunch. She compared it to a Walmart. While driving us there she kept talking about how locals go to Le Marché on Sunday to get reduced prices on groceries and fruits and how you can’t get alcohol at the Carrefour on Sundays.

It was only after she dropped us off that we realized that she thought we wanted to go the main farmer’s market in Papeete for groceries, instead of the speciality stores and souvenir shops. The Carrefour can best be described as a huge grocery store, with a few isles of other merchandise. To top it off, the store didn’t have gluten free bakery items, Gatorade or diet Code/Pepsi, which were the only things we could have possibly wanted.  What a waste of our valuable time, as we have only a few days left on our vacation. We will try again later this week.

What a gorgeous sunset we had tonight. The red glow over the mountains of Moorea was fabulous. 

For dinner we ate al fresco, next to the lagoon. Marg had a seafood dish with rice, and I had fish with green curry and coconut milk. I’m not a big curry fan, but this was very mild and not at all spicy.

The resort had a popular local singer performing tonight, but I must admit most of his songs sounded the same and were  just plain boring. I guess you can’t please everyone!