Post #734902 by Club Nouméa on Sat, Jan 10, 2015 8:40 PM

Thanks guys! Coincidentally, BigBro that excerpt is also the blurb on the back of the copy of "My Island Home" that I was presented with. It's a glimpse into a scene that no longer exists.

Sadly, Quinn's bar in Papeete is no longer there:

Neither is the Lafayette Bar in Arue:

The Lafayette apparently kept even later hours than Quinn's and must have been an experience - that photo says it all :)

(Both photos dated December 1958, by Jack Garafalo, who worked as a photographer for Paris Match.)

Papeete has changed a lot even in more recent times. Here is a street scene on the outskirts of Papeete (a photo I took in September 2014):

And here is the same scene as I saw it when I took this photo in September 1993:

Greater Papeete now has a population of 122,000 and is a bustling, lively place, but it is not typical of French Polynesia, which is why I went to a couple of other islands during my stay - next stop: Moorea.

Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-01-11 01:21 ]