Franc from the Overseas Office

French Polynesia very much appreciated military and wealthy tourists. Military Testing Atomic Bombs. Tourists enjoy the warm sea and exotic beauties of local nature. Oddly enough, nuclear makers and vacationers do not interfere with each other.

However, they do not even face each other. The French nuclear landfill is located on the Murururoa atoll. Outsiders there is no one if not counting activists "Greenpeace", who regularly go to the atoll on the yacht to protest against dangerous games with atomic explosives. French marines also regularly take a yacht on boarding, sometimes slightly dasy the defenders of the environment and expel them beyond the limits of the forbidden zone.

Tourists are planted mainly on Tahiti. They look around local landscapes, looking for a similarity with the canvas of Jean field of Gauguen written here. Then they enjoy the Polynesian songs and dances in the form of a theatrical presentation adapted to European tastes, and Polynesian cuisine masterpieces performed by hotel chefs. Then they plunge into the Pacific Ocean and fly away the ravisa, leaving a lot of money on Tahiti: this resort is not for the poor.

Mururoa separated from Tahiti hundreds of nautical miles. In addition to these two most famous foreigners, French Polynesia includes many other other and even whole archipelagoes: Tuamot, Gambier, tubuan.

How would it be indignant "Greenpisovs", We must admit that modern life came to these islands together with the French military contingent and a nuclear test site, that is, in 1962. Up to that islanders were injured by semi-natural. Military bases gave them work, and the local administration – money for the arrangement of this paradise, but a very underdeveloped corner of Oceania. The development of tourism, which is now in Polynesia, the main source of solid currency, also became possible only when airfields, moorings, roads were built on the money of the Ministry of Defense of France.

That even recently, French Polynesia was infinitely torn off from modern civilization by a place for a matter of a greater currency name.

In fact, France considers the remaining overseas territories under its control by ordinary departments – composite parts of a single state. Orders and laws in them act exactly the same as in the metropolis. In particular, the monetary unit of all these territories is the ordinary French franc. Everyone except Polynesia.

Here has been preserved his own franc. In everyday life called "Polynesian", But his full official name sounds like this: CompToirs Francais du Pacifique Franc (i.e "Frank French Office in the Pacific Ocean"). When he was injected, in Polynesia did not even have full-fledged colonial settlements, but only isolated from each other.

Abbreviated Polynesian Frank is denoted by the CFPF abbreviation or even shorter – CFP.

French francs are not used in this overseas territory and not accepted in payment. They must be changed like any other foreign currency.

Until recently, Polynesian Frank was tied to French in the ratio of 18.18: 1. Now this binding has already been canceled, and the Polynesian currency fluctuate on market waves. At the time of delivery of this number "I" In print, the official course was: 1 Polynesian Franc was 0.0686 French or $ 0.0116 US dollars. In other words, the island monetary unit is a little more American Cent.

Formally, the Polynesian Franc shares another 100 centimes, but with the existing exchange rate, Polynesians have already forgotten how Santimes looked. In the resort zones, foreigners almost never have to keep coins in the hands of a dignity of less than 100 francs. There all prices are rounded to this amount.

If you do not consider military bases, a more or less developed network of banking institutions is available only in the administrative center of French Polynesia – the town of Papeete. He stands on the island of Tahiti, and through it, at least transit, almost any foreigner arriving in Polynesia passing.

Banks in Papeete closes early: they work on weekdays from 9.00 to 14.00. Tourists usually change money at the ticket office of the hotel or spa complex, where they stop (although there, of course, exchange rate "worse", than in the bank).

The relative shortage of banks is compensated by the widespread distribution in the polynesia calculations on credit cards and road checks. They can be paid in the hotel, shop, restaurant. True, checks for a trip to Tahiti better buy not in dollars, as we usually do, but in french francs. Metropolis Currency Local merchants are more familiar.