Ellen DeGeneres doesn't have the post-vacation blues.
The daytime talk show host just returned from a trip to Tahiti with wife Portia de Rossi. As she joked on Tuesday's show, "In case you don't know, Tahiti is a Polynesian word meaning 'drunk on the beach.'" Jokes aside, she said, "It's beautiful there. When I told the people on the island I was on spring break, they looked at me like I was crazy. Like, 'What do you mean?' Because, I guess, normally you think of college people on spring break."
"I realized how lucky I am that I have a job that has spring break. Because I was going to be an accountant and this worked out well. Could you imagine that right now for me? That'd be different. I'd be swamped with all the numbers and the W2s and the WD 40s and all the things that you have to do as an accountant."
DeGeneres and her wife "loved" visiting French Polynesia: "The people there were so friendly."
The host shared a video of their arrival, where they were greeted by a local who was wearing traditional Tahitian clothing. "I almost wore that," she joked. As she told the audience, "A few drinks later, I did wear that." DeGeneres also shared a video of de Rossi "drinking "some type of beverage" on the beach. "And this was our view. Look at that," she marveled. "And the water—you can't really tell—it's overcast—but [it's] crystal clear water. Quiet. Nothing. Birds. That's it."
Referring to the private beach where she and de Rossi spent most of their time together, the host joked, "That was where we slept; we should've booked in advance. I realize that now. I didn't realize I should have called ahead. Needless to say, it was very stressful for us there."
"The island is so beautiful. It seems like every photo you take is a postcard. This is a picture that I took at sunset that I posted on Instagram. If you saw that [picture]...that was the sunset or sunrise. Like I said, we slept on the beach; I don't know," DeGeneres joked. "But it's beautiful."
DeGeneres' favorite part of the trip came when sea turtles hatched and "they let us release" them all. "These were baby turtles that were born the day before, and we released all of them."
As she shared cell phone footage with her studio audience, DeGeneres continued, "They know exactly what to do. They know which way to heard, and they know to go to the water, even though they just got out of little eggs. Look at that! Amazing! Now, here's the thing I learned, too, because you think, 'Why don't you just put them in the water and let them swim away?' The reason they have to be—and that's why the eggs are buried in the sand—is they have to feel the sand on their bellies so they remember where to come back to lay eggs. That's amazing. Literally, they hatch, they crawl...[they instinctively] know where to come back to."
Unfortunately, DeGeneres doesn't have the same instincts. "If I'm in Vegas and I'm playing blackjack for five minutes, I can't find my way back to the room. I have no idea," she laughed. "Next time I'm going to rub my stomach on a rug in my room so I can head back to my room.
DeGeneres ended her opening monologue by saying she would have thanked everybody "for taking such good care of us in Tahiti." But, since most of them don't watch television, "I'm not going to waste my time," she joked. Instead, the 59-year-old daytime host TV shared a message for her viewers who are still on spring break: "Let's all shake our Tahitis with a dance, shall we?"