Do what the tourists do

It poured during the short stay at Papeete. Tropical rain comes and goes in squirt. Sometimes heavy and other times one could hardly feel it. Squinting through the rain, we proceed with our first tourist sight-seeing tour with William, our tour guide, who is locally born true Tahitian. He runs day tour via his own 8-seater mini van. It is certainly interesting to see how he operates his own entrepreneurial local sightseeing tours. He spends a quarter of his time picking up passengers from various hotels, and while chauffeuring the group of us to various places of interest, he is also logging the time and place for other interested callers via his cellular phone.

His sketchy information about the places of interests and lack of really good historical stories didn't help me at all in understanding the Polynesian cultures. My only option is only by looking at atolls with passes into the lagoons whilst he's driving. Seeing the passing speedboat planing over the surf, pounding along with three brown-skinned natives bouncing up and down in a synchronized dance that's instantly familiar to anyone who has witnessed insane driving on tropical islands. Some other surfers learning to ride the waves out in the black sand beach. To be honest, it didn't look that much more encouraging despite of the amount of activities going around. The waterfall was all right at a glance.