After a long red-eye flight from Los Angeles, we arrived in Papette, Tahiti (PPT) airport just after 5am. Customs wasn't even opened yet so we waited over an hour in line before they started letting people from our flight into the country. We were staying at the Intercontinental Resort Tahiti which was just a short 10-minute taxi ride from the airport. Our room wasn't ready yet, but they had a "transit room" where we could shower after our flight to freshen up before the breakfast buffet and relaxing at the pool. We then had a late lunch at the restaurant overlooking the lagoon before exploring more of the resort. This place is absolutely beautiful. The pool overlooks the island of Moorea and the lagoon where the waves were breaking part-way off the shore from the reef. Dinner on our first night was at the new Huriama restaurant where we had way more meat and fish than we could eat which we grilled ourselves on the built-in tabletop grill. We called it an early night after that so I could go diving the next day.

When I got back from diving, we took the shuttle to downtown Papette to explore and have lunch. We first went to the open-air market which everyone had raved about, but we didn't really find anything exciting for us there, except that I picked up a magnet. We had a nice relaxing lunch and then just a few minutes to walk around more before we had to get back to our shuttle to bring us back to the hotel.

That evening, we met some nice girls who worked on a yacht and they insisted on taking a photo of us looking out at the sunset which turned out to be a beautiful shot -- one of my favorite photos of the trip. After eating too much food already today, we opted just for french fries and ice cream for dinner before calling it another early night since we would both be diving the next day.

Next, we were off to the island of Bora Bora.