Hi Michelle - What time of day? Makes a big difference. If you layover is during the day, store your luggage and take a cab into town (there is no airport shuttle), visit the Marché de Papeete (the market). Good place for souvenir shopping! Depending on your timing, you could even book a 4 hour tour of the island. Some hotel will offer a day room so you can lounge around the pool.

If at night, it`s more limited. I would still put my luggage in storage (at the airport for a small fee), go into town and have dinner at the roulottes on the waterfront and watch the world go by...

Also depending on the day, there`s a chance you could go to one of the hotels (Intercontinental or Meridien) for dinner and show.

Cheers!

Hi Andie! It will be Saturday, Nov 24th. We fly from Huahine to PPT arriving at 4:30 PM. So we'll definitely store the luggage, and take a cab. I'll check with those hotels and see if they have dinner/shows, if not we'll go to town for roulottes. Thanks for the tips!

One more quick question, if we go to town via cab, where do we get the cab to return to the airport? I figured it's easy to get one at the airport or a hotel, but I wasn't sure how to get one if you're just walking around town.

Hi Michelle - There are always taxis parked in front of the roulottes so you won`t have any problems getting back. It will be too late for the Marché for shopping :0(

However, if you`re lucky, you might even catch a "show" at the airport! We were lucky enough to be entertained by this group hired by a company to welcome a group of tourist arriving from France. It was about 11pm. It was absolutely great! Musicians and dancers! Would get this anywhere else in the world...Gotta love it! Anyway, it`s a long shot but who knows...!

Have a great trip!

Hi Michelle,

You may want to consider getting in touch with the InterContinental.

There saturday night show was great, but may run a bit over the time you need to get back to the airport for check-in.

Watched it a week ago and it was enjoyable.

Enjoy your trip.

Thank you, Andie!

NearNorth: Our flight doesn't leave until 11:50PM, but we'll check with the Intercontinental like you suggest.

I saw on another thread you can only store luggage until ~10PM or so, we'd definitely be back by then.

How long before the flight back to LAX do we need to be there and check in?

It's a small airport so a couple of hours is fine.

If you want a little more flexibility, you could also rent a car right there at the airport (that's what we did on a recent trip with a layover) - but taking a taxi into town is probably the easiest, given that your free time is mostly at night.

I'd advise being back at the airport by 9:30 pm, so in reality you only have something less than 5 hours to cruise around . . .

Thank you, wahineokewaa!