So how to start...? Traveling is my hobby and French Polynesia, or the South Pacific region, has been my goal for a few years now. Actually, I had already planned everything a couple of years back, but unfortunately, Covid came and I had to cancel everything.
I ended up choosing French Polynesia because it is the easiest of the regions in that area in terms of logistics and planning. Which was also important because I only had three weeks for the whole thing.
A big advantage is that you can purchase an Air Tahiti pass - in my case a Bora - Tuamotu pass, which gave me the opportunity to visit a relatively diverse range of islands in Polynesia. Relatively easy and relatively inexpensively (-:
After careful consideration, I picked following islands:
Tahiti (2 days)
Maupiti (4 days), including 1 night on Motu Tiapaa
Huahine (2 days)
Bora Bora (2 days)
Tikehau (3 days)
Fakarava (3 days)
Instead of nights spent, I'm stating the number of days, it seems more accurate.
I also visited Raiatea and Rangiroa as part of my layovers, however, I only spent 2 hours there, so just a walk around the airport and some photos.
Overall, I prefer quiet, authentic and less touristy places. I originally wanted to skip Bora Bora, but it's the most popular island and for that reason it serves as a kind of transportation hub on the way to other islands, so I couldn't cancel - otherwise I wouldn't have made it to Tuamotu. I mean, theoretically I could get to Tuamotus from Raiatea, but I've already used this transfer to get to Huahine from Maupiti. Thing is, one of the rules of using the Air Tahiti Pass is that you can't visit any of the islands twice on a separate flight.
The flight planning was quite interesting and fun, by choosing off the beaten track places in an already fairly off the beaten track area, but it worked out in the end.
Otherwise, I flew from Europe with United Airlines with a connection in San Francisco. There was a 17 hour layover en route to Tahiti, which was nice - I was able to visit San Francisco and it also broke up the long trip from Europe. The layover in SF was one of the reasons I chose this airline - I find it much more interesting than Los Angeles, it's smaller and also much more convenient to walk to, which I enjoy and it suits me. Another reason was the fact that these flights with UA don't tend to be completely full - so I was more likely to be able to grab a whole row of seats to myself on the long segments. Which, fortunately, I eventually managed to do.
The other option is to fly via New Zealand, I’ve been looking at Qatar Airways flights in this context but this involved about a 20h flight between Doha and Auckland which I didn't really like and for that reason I scratched this option. And in retrospect, I did the right thing...
There are other options for getting to Polynesia from Europe, but I didn't really consider those, so I don't even list them here.
So, how do we get started? San Francisco, I guess.
Arriving around 8pm, going through immigration, plus a taxi ride to the hotel at Fisherman's Wharf... There wasn't much left of that day, so I left everything for the morning. During the flight, I was still going over my notes about San Francisco, but in the end I decided not to rush and to take it easy. So I visited the Golden Gate and walked back to Fisherman's Wharf via Crissy Field, past the marina and across Lombard Street. I also wanted to have pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast at some typical diner where the waitress is obnoxious, like I know from the movies (-: This was only partially successful, they didn't have pancakes and the service was nice (in the American way). Insider tip: if you want to experience obnoxious service, you have to go to Boston (-:
I originally wanted to walk out of the hotel around 4:30am but, my relatives in the US discouraged me from doing so - for security reasons. I also asked a couple of Americans on the flight, one of whom lived right in SF - none of them dared to say this plan was OK, so I ended up taking a taxi and walking all the way back at daylight. In retrospect I think maybe nothing would have happened, but who knows... In the end, better be safe than sorry. That's my mantra when traveling, especially when I'm alone.
Here are some pictures. I was lucky with the weather, from what I hear the bridge is often shrouded in fog.
This was a quite popular topic among tourists.
