Faraway Places

Even though the American black-golden touch of development and hectic use has not hit this archipelago (as in Hawaii), the cyber touch has. The little restaurants, the pearl shops, the bungalow rentals, the equipment rentals, all have their web addresses painted right onto their signage. Wi-Fi is not hard to find which means that I can do e-mail or news checking as quickly as if in Port Townsend or Santa Barbara (although not having my own computer limits the range of those activities). Like in South America, the most isolated little place can feel closer to communication.

This ease of communication only seems to whet the appetites of all concerned, it doesn’t make it any cheaper. Anything but the most basic life here is outrageously expensive, other than my daily visit to the wi-fi place down the road our lives here remain most basic. Tomorrow Claude and Barbara will go to the mountain spring to refill the water bottles. Most of the cars around here are very small, not the types seen in the USA, lots of scooters too, no three wheelers though as in South America. Yet, the big status SUV is creeping in, they roll down the narrow little road squeezing everyone out of their way, very scary for the bicycle rider. Many of the SUVs are owned by Tahitians.


Approaching Moorea on the Ferry from Papeete, Tahiti

(I finally figured a way to move photos from iPhoto to this document, there will be a couple more, but that’s it until I have a PC, Macs are overrated.