What we learned about French Polynesia

French Polynesia is made up of 5  archipelagos (Society Islands, Tuamotus, Gambiers, Australas and Marquesas) sprawling the size of Europe and giving France a huge influence in the Pacific. Of the 108 Islands, Tahiti is the biggest. More correctly we should say we visited Tahiti and Moorea (the second biggest). Some of the Islands are tall and volcanic and others are small coral atolls.

Volcanic forms in Moorea

 The land area is about 1% of the area that France controls so you can see that it has a huge sphere of influence, and we saw Naval vessels, a military base and Airforce planes on Tahiti.

Our driver at the monument commemorating the observation of the transit of Venus which allowed Captain Cook to get some estimate of the distance to the sun. Jean Baptiste has obviously been in the "good paddock".

There are two schools of thought on French rule here. Jean Baptiste says that since Mururoa and the Nuclear Testing France has built hospitals, schools and infrastructure and provides US$1.6Billion a year to maintain these, as well as providing generous pensions. Jean Baptiste thinks they may as well take this money.
Our driver to the ferry had the opposite point of view, saying for all that money the french locals and the Chinese (bought to Tahiti  as plantation workers and then became businessmen) seemed to be getting richer while the Polynesians were still struggling. He suspected corruption. He favoured Independence.  They vote in the French presidential elections but now also have "Internal Autonomy" with local government and a local president as well.
French is the main language (and most of the tourists are French) - thank goodness for our schoolboy/girl french, but most tourist places have a smattering of English.
The local languages especially those from the Marquesas are very like Maori. Fare (whare), Fenua (whenua) and everywhere, Iorana (hello) like Orana in  Rarotonga, or we just used Kiaora.