Cravings

Musings by Shar

Oh, how I’ve missed chips. Especially salt and vinegar chips. Chips are one of my favourite food cravings. We have not bought them for a while because they have been very expensive in French Polynesia. In fact, food in general is quite expensive. Grocery stores have most of their fresh produce, frozen foods and staple goods shipped in from other countries about 2-3 times a month. This delivery system makes the food pricy. Frozen foods and staple goods tend to be plentiful, but it is a mad dash to especially buy the fresh produce before it is all gone. 

Interestingly, you see lots of chickens running around so you would think eggs and chicken meat would be easy to buy. That’s not the case. My theory is that most local people have chickens, so they don’t need to buy chicken products. Thus, a dozen eggs cost about $6-7 US/8-9 CDN and a kilo of chicken breasts cost $27 US/33 CDN.

Some necessity items like flour are subsidized. However, on average, most items are at least twice as expensive as back home. If you really need that feta and parmesan (as I do), then it is about 3 to 4 times more expensive than back home! 

But I digress. Let’s get back to the topic of chips. We finally found some that were not ridiculously expensive in Papeete, Tahiti. Maybe it’s because it is the first port of call for the ships bringing the goods and services into F.P. So, we stocked up. (No Doritos though-Rob’s favorite. Don’t even ask how much they are.) 

It was great to finally eat some chips, but as cravings go, you crave them when you crave them. And I wanted so badly to get up in the middle of the night to eat more. However, you’ll be happy to know I managed to refrain myself. But it was hard!