Driving coastal Tahiti

Saturday February 13, with a rented car, were touring the island. Today we will explore the Eastern shore.

In 1769, James Cook was the first to explore the island on foot. Over the next 5 years other explorers had also walked the land. In 1818 building of a shipping port began. This area is the bay where today the city of Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia is. Tahiti was very isolated to maritime shipping routes until after the open of the Panama Canal when regular shipping lines began.

The first stop on our self guided tour was the James Norman Hall Museum. His most famous book was Mutiny on the Bounty, which he co-wrote with Charles Nordhoff, both Americans.

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One of Captain Cooks exploration voyages in the South Pacific island was to observe the passage of Venus in front of the sun. The goal was to calculate the distance of the Earth from the Sun. He settled near a northern peninsula they now called Venus Point at what is now Matavai Bay.

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Further south, the church of Tautira, completed in 1865, is dedicated to Our Lady of Peace. Tautira, for the Catholic mission. This is where the first Spanish Franciscan missionaries settled in 1774.

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Sunday February 14 ❤️, day two of our adventure. Traveling down the Western shore there were many historic places or structures that are no longer there.

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Where the road ends on the southern coast, in Teahupoo at the Havae Pass, has become world known area for championship surfing. The barrier reef lies very shallow and with a slowed distant drop off of the reef, this produces tunnels of waves. The water was quite calm on this day.

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Chocolate day #9, again we missed that last scheduled one! Guess being Valentines Day it was meant to be❤️