Manuel Sam
Contributor
CWK: I've stayed at The Hotel Tiare Tahiti in Papeete. Nothing fancy, but reasonably priced and in town on the main drag (Pomare Blvd) opposite the waterfront. I second the recommendation to eat at Les Roulottes. Among other things, they serve inexpensive Chinese food served piping hot off the wok, and there is a good variety of other foodstuff as well. Steak Frites - steak with French fries - and poisson cru (raw fish) are other popular choices. As long as you don't mind it being basically street food provided by food trucks. It starts at around 6:00pm.
If this is your first trip to French Polynesia, and you are just spending a night or two in Papeete, here are a few practicalities that could be useful to you:
If you need local currency (XPFs), there is at least one ATM and a change machine (doesn't always work) at the airport or you can exchange in town. There is even a bank at the airport but I have never seen it open during the hours I have been there. Usually I exchange at a bank in town but on my last trip in 2017, I found that banks now limit how much you can exchange at a time (supposedly to reduce money laundering), and their rates were slightly worse than those offered by a small store I found on a side street running east of the public market - sorry, never noted the name of the store.
There is also a luggage storage facility at the airport, in case you don't want to drag all your luggage into town. Don't recall their hours - prices vary according to size of luggage and of course, number of days. This is a consideration especially if you wish to avoid taking a cab into town, which will run close to $30 US each way. In other words, if you can free yourself of big and heavy luggage, then the cheapest option into town is to exit the airport, cross the road and look for the bus stop to go east towards Papeete, These are not fancy buses and they do not have AC, but for less than $3 US, they will get you into town. I am not sure that they will take foreign currency tho. The other caveat is that they stop running early in the evening - if you decide to use these buses, please do check. There is obviously a trade-off here, saving the cab fare vs paying the storage fee.
I earlier mentioned the Papeete Public Market - it opens really early and I am not sure how late they operate, but there are a lot of prepared food stands in there in addition to the normal grocery and produce stands. This is not fancy food, mind you, but it is relatively inexpensive and satisfying (to me at least). A foot-long Casse-Croute is a French Baguette sandwich, for less than $3 US. They don't put much meat in it, but the baguette itself is outstanding. Gotta give it to the French for passing on their bakery know-how to the Tahitians.
BTW, your comment regarding the additional baggage allowance for divers on interisland flights on Air Tahiti is correct. All I had to do was to show my C-card to the counter agent doing the check-in.
If this is your first trip to French Polynesia, and you are just spending a night or two in Papeete, here are a few practicalities that could be useful to you:
If you need local currency (XPFs), there is at least one ATM and a change machine (doesn't always work) at the airport or you can exchange in town. There is even a bank at the airport but I have never seen it open during the hours I have been there. Usually I exchange at a bank in town but on my last trip in 2017, I found that banks now limit how much you can exchange at a time (supposedly to reduce money laundering), and their rates were slightly worse than those offered by a small store I found on a side street running east of the public market - sorry, never noted the name of the store.
There is also a luggage storage facility at the airport, in case you don't want to drag all your luggage into town. Don't recall their hours - prices vary according to size of luggage and of course, number of days. This is a consideration especially if you wish to avoid taking a cab into town, which will run close to $30 US each way. In other words, if you can free yourself of big and heavy luggage, then the cheapest option into town is to exit the airport, cross the road and look for the bus stop to go east towards Papeete, These are not fancy buses and they do not have AC, but for less than $3 US, they will get you into town. I am not sure that they will take foreign currency tho. The other caveat is that they stop running early in the evening - if you decide to use these buses, please do check. There is obviously a trade-off here, saving the cab fare vs paying the storage fee.
I earlier mentioned the Papeete Public Market - it opens really early and I am not sure how late they operate, but there are a lot of prepared food stands in there in addition to the normal grocery and produce stands. This is not fancy food, mind you, but it is relatively inexpensive and satisfying (to me at least). A foot-long Casse-Croute is a French Baguette sandwich, for less than $3 US. They don't put much meat in it, but the baguette itself is outstanding. Gotta give it to the French for passing on their bakery know-how to the Tahitians.
BTW, your comment regarding the additional baggage allowance for divers on interisland flights on Air Tahiti is correct. All I had to do was to show my C-card to the counter agent doing the check-in.
