Tahiti is the largest island in French Polynesia, and has a population of 245,000.  Shaped like an upside down Maui, each side formed by separate volcanoes.  Beaches are black.  The philosophy is  not to worry .  Pape'ete is the capital, with an urban population of 136,771, or 27,000, depending on which portion.  Called a sleepy town.  I can one up that by saying town at sleep, for I made a walking tour, and virtually everything was closed at 2:30PM on a Saturday.    Close by is Faa'a International Airport. Le Marche is the town marketplace.  Of course it was closed when I walked by.  But that is because it opened from 5:30AM to 1PM.  A worthy stop would be the Botanical Garden/Gauguin Museum. Britisher Samuel Wallis discovered Tahiti in 1767.  Of course Captain Cook also landed, two years later. Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin, a French Post-Impressionist artist, spent the final decade of his life in French Polynesia, leaving behind his wife ( photo with wife Mette in Copenhagen ) a

  French Polynesia  is an overseas collectivity of France comprising of 121 islands and atolls stretching across more than 1200 miles, occupying 3.8 million EEZ square miles.  Thus FP has 84% of the French EEZ.  The USA has around 4 million square miles of EEZ.   France  has 4.5 million square miles, where, with 0.45% of the world's land surface, their EEZ covers 9% of all the world EEZ area.   FP has a total population of 278,786, and their land area is divided into five groups of islands:  Society Islands, Tuamotu Archipelago, Gambier Islands, Marquesas Islands and Austral Islands.  75 of their islands and atolls are inhabitated.  The Society Islands group has 69% of the population.  The capital is Tahiti.  France took over those islands in 1842, but has called this area French Polynesia only since 1957. About some earlier history. The Great Polynesian Migration commenced around 1500 BC. The Marquesas were settled around 200 BC. The Society Islands around AD 300. European encount