Greetings from the island of Mo'orea. It's about a 40 minute boat ride from Pape'ete, on the fast boat. We've been here for a couple of days now; we head back to Tahiti tomorrow, and on to LA and Mexico City tomorrow evening. In fact the flight is very early on Friday morning, and we don't arrive in Mexico until 6am on Saturday morning, so we're going to be quite tired by then. We've booked ourselves accommodation for the first few nights in Mexico City, so that ...

Bonjour! Nous sommes à Tahiti. We have been here for three days, soaking up the French culture and some of the French food as well. Unfortunately our budget doesn't stretch to French wine (especially as we spent all of our money on hiring a car for a day). In spite of what everyone we met said about getting out of the capital, Papeete, as quickly as possible, we have been enjoying it here. It is quite warm, and so we have been avoiding anything too strenuous...

Hello, we are back on Rarotonga after spending 5 days on Aitutaki. Aitutaki was beautifull, an island with a large lagoon with several small islands. We had a great night at an Island night with traditional dancing, and had a wonderful lagoon cruise where we went to two of the small islands in the lagoon, and swam in the crystal clear turquoise water We were enjoying it so much that we missed our boat leaving and were nearly stranded there! There was time for sno...

Hello, we are now in the Cook Islands, staying on the main island of Rarotonga. It is beautiful here: there is a reef around the whole island so there is a calm, shallow lagoon for swimming and snorkeling in. It really is palm fringed white beaches like you would imagine paradise. We kitted ourselves out with masks and snorkels and water shoes to make the most of the snorkeling opportunities - there are loads of fish, and yesterday we saw giant clams and I even s...

It is our last day on Tonga. We have enjoyed the festivities for the king's birthday over the last few days: the Miss Heilala dancing was impressive although with 13 contestants it did go on a while; the military parade was quite small-scale as you would expect for a small kingdom, but the French came along to boost numbers and had some parachutists float down to good effect. The King surveyed his troops from an open-top Land Rover (he arrived in a London taxi, w...