We were up at 5 a.m. and dressed, repacked and checked out of the hotel. The hotel had kindly prepared us a small breakfast of coffee, pasties and juice to send us on our way.
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| In the hotel lobby Liverpool (in red) v Manchester City (in blue)!! |
Our driver arrived on time and we soon experienced the heavy traffic of a Tahitian rush hour. The traffic was really heavy for a while and we passed slowly through some small towns and then Papeete before arriving at Faa’a Airport. On the way we passed City Hall, formerly a private house, the house of James Norman Hall who wrote the book ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’, a very colorful cemetery which was strewn with flowers of every color. As we progressed the traffic eased a bit. However, this was a day when many of the civil servants were on strike in sympathy with their fellow workers in France so the airport was quite crowded and slow moving and many flights were delayed because the weather forecasters were on strike!! Paradise is like everywhere else, sometimes!! We checked in and waited in quite a long line for security before reaching our gate. We were amused to see a McDonalds in the terminal with a Tahitian lady beckoning to ‘Come as you are’ and have a Big Mac!!
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| You can't escape it!!! |
Boarding was with unassigned seats which made it a bit of a free for all but we secured seats on the favored left hand side of the ATR 42 propeller driven aircraft of Air Tahiti.
We took off on the 3 hour flight to (we thought) Nuku Hiva. But the flight landed at Hiva Oa first and we disembarked for a short while as the plane refueled and then reboarded in typical ‘devil take the hindmost’ fashion!!
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| View of one of the atolls in the Tuamotu archipelago |
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| Our Air Tahiti plane from Tahiti to the Marquesas |
The terminal at Hiva Oa is basic island style and the baggage ‘carousel’ a rudimentary rack. But it works. Our flight on to Nuku Hiva took 40 minutes and we landed safely and retrieved our baggage in stand fashion from the wooden rack which was filled from the trolleys from the plane by brawny islanders. Two of our fellow passengers on the flight were interesting a large ails and lady with a beautiful flower wreath on her head and her ‘husband’? She talked and laughed incessantly and they ate prodigiously with a huge baguette sandwich and a chicken leg and thigh after which the lady passed out!
We were me by a lady driver from our Pearl Kakahanui Resort hotel. We loaded the car and were joined by another French lady who was also going the same way. She seemed to be well ac quainter with the driver and they kept up a steady conversation. In French the whole way, completely ignoring us in the back seats!! We stopped twice where the driver rather perfunctorily told us to ‘take pictures’ not identifying what we were actually looking at!! At the hotel, she maneuvered the car so that the rear was as close to the hotel as possible and then just told us to go!! Unfortunately, we did not have time or the opportunity to tip her! It was a little stark welcome to French Polynesia!!
However Jerome, the hotel manager was the opposite and very pleasant and welcoming. We had an arrival drink and completed our formalities. He informed us that a local wedding will take place at the hotel tomorrow and this may disturb normal services but they will serve us dinner at a slightly different location and make sure that we are disturbed as little as possible. Then we climbed up the long path to our room, number 18! This is a small bungalow with a great view of the bay and the mountain on the other side of the bay. We sat on the terrace and took in the view and the atmosphere before having a nap before dinner.
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| Some views of the island of Nuku Hiva |
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| MAC with her welcome garland, they are so fragrant!! |
At about 6.30 p.m. we went down to the bar and had cocktails before dinner. Then we had dinner which consisted of a couple of raw fish dishes which were delicious and then I had wahoo fish and MAC had tuna, both of which were excellent. Dessert was Mille feuille which was also great. A local beer and a glass of red wine completed the meal. Then it was the long climb back to our bungalow and bed.
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