I landed in Tahiti around 1am in the morning, approx half an hour later than expected and after around an hour of standing in line to get through customs I had finally arrived. One of the worst things about getting a seat at the back of the plane, getting off the plane last.
After not exchanging my NZD for Francs at Auckland airport (foolishly) I thought it would be a good idea to attempt to get some cash out of an ATM machine just in case they wanted me to pay for my accomodation on arrival.
I was picked up from the airport by Fred who runs the B&B I was staying at and asked him if we could stop somewhere to get some cash out. There were also two German girls who had been at the airport visiting one of their parents who joined us on the way back.
The ATM turned into a tad of a debacle, I managed to get the machine into english and even remembered the pin number for my cash passport, although I almost automatically put in my pin number for my other card in my tired state (no sleep on the plane). I finally worked out how much money I wanted, not really knowing how many Francs I was going to need during my stay then the machine decided it was too much work and would not let the transaction go through.
Fumbling around for another card I knew I didn’t have a lot of money on either of my NZ Cards and having no clue what the exchange rate is I withdrew the smallest amount the machine would let me, which I think was about $30NZD. Thinking about it now I may have accidently hit savings instead of credit when trying to withdraw from my cash passport as my other ATM card is a savings account. Fingers crossed I will be a bit more awake when I get to the USA so I can withdraw money without any issues.
My first impressions of Tahiti in my tired dazed state were;
– They drive on the opposite side of the road to at home, so I found out when I automatically went to what was the drivers side.
– Random dogs roaming around the street in the middle of the night
– They have a McDonalds here, and it is 24/7 – I later discovered there is one in Papetee town as well which means they have at least two.
– A lot of graffiti everywhere, some of the street signs you can barely read for this reason, some is street art but mostly graffiti.
– Warm, luckily we had been having a bit of hot weather at home before leaving so the heat was not too much of a shock to the system.
The time difference is pretty easy to remember to NZ, Tahiti is one hour ahead of NZ timewise. Although what is more difficult to remember is that they are a day behind NZ.
More to come…