...Tahiti sucks.

It looks good in this picture, but don't let that fool you. Tahiti, more properly known as French Polynesia, has nothing to offer backpackers. It's practically as expensive as Japan, you have to travel cargo-style on long gruelling ship voyages, there's nothing to eat but limp fatty "steak-frites" (french fries soaked in beef fat), and the few good beaches are reserved for the expensive hotels. It rains every day. The people seem sullen and resentful. And you had better speak French. (If you do speak some, though, Tahitians are pretty easy to understand, since they speak with a slow drawl).

We had chosen Tahiti and Fiji as our South Pacific stops because Air New Zealand offers free stopovers there en route from from LA to Auckland, NZ. French Polynesia is still a colony, but there's talk of the French pulling out soon. It's a very large group of islands, but the one group called the Society Islands are the only ones close together enough to be accessible to the traveller.