I'm on Tahiti now and have been since Thursday. Tahiti is a far far bigger island than Moorea, but is still smaller than any of the large Hawaiian islands, I think. We spent the past two days driving across the island, along 40 km or so of extremely treacherous road, either dirt or paved with cement. There was one hairpin turn yesterday where we had to put the car in reverse twice and I really feared we were going to go off a cliff. But we didn't.

The center of Tahiti is really spectacular, with extremely steep mountains formed as the volcano caldeira collapsed over the past million years. It looks a lot like mountainous Japan, just the roads are in worse shape and the mountains are taller. Huge areas have been completely taken over by Miconia, an invasive tree from Central America with huge purple and green leaves. Fortunately for me, Glochidion is one of the few native plants that is found in this non-native forest--although whether it is surviving, or about to die off completely, is hard to say.