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Bora Bora, French Polynesia
Hi, Everybody. It's me, Ashley.
I don't write too often, because Pat just loooves his laptop.
This morning we got up at 3:00
a.m. and left the hotel at 4:30 AM, arrived at the airport
at 5:00 AM, went through customs with three large trolleys
of luggage and had wheels up at 6:00 AM…on time! Our first
fuel stop was the Kingdom of Tonga. Yep, they really have
a king…the only one in the Pacific. He's 84 years old. I think
his daughter (50) really does most of the work now, and her
airplane was out on the runway, ready to take her to a couple
of the islands in her kingdom. There are 170 of them, but
most are not populated.
After fueling in Tonga, we flew
to Rarotonga (a protectorate of New Zealand) in the Cook Islands,
and now we're on our way to Tahiti to clear into French Polynesia.
Between Tonga and the Cook Islands, we passed through the
International Dateline. That means that when we left Fiji
this morning at 6:00 AM, it was Tuesday the 18th….now it's
Monday the 17th….so, Pat says we're making really good time,
and I think we all just got a day younger…whoa!
We hope to make it to Bora Bora
tonight, but their airport closes at 7:30 PM and we have a
headwind, so it's looking dicey. It's getting a little bumumumpy
now. Pam's in the left seat, and Tom's working on the High
Frequency radio. He seems to do that a lot. Since it's difficult
to build towers in the middle of the ocean, we can only communicate
using the HF radio or by trying to reach other airplanes on
the VHF radio. Otherwise, nobody will know where we are…kinda
scary, but that's the way they do it.
Well, now Pam's out of the left
seat and is working on the HF radio. Tom's at the wheel in
the right seat. This HF radio is sort of a "hit and miss"
process. With all the avionics on this plane you'd think they'd
come up with something more efficient. This is how it's been
done since the 40's.
I'm gonna sign off for right
now. Next, I'll let you know where we spent the night…remember
those headwinds.
We made it to Tahiti but it's
6:00 PM and we have to clear through customs and then fly
for another hour to get to Bora Bora. We have been up since
3:00 AM and now it looks as if we aren't going to make it
before the Bora Bora airport closes. Based on past experience,
a thirty-minute turnaround is not likely.
We are airborne again and guess
what. We flew through customs in, yes, thirty minutes and
it looks as if we will just squeeze it in. A nice French woman
in customs was very understanding and whisked us through the
process.
Well, the people in Bora Bora
stayed open for us. At least they left the runway lights on.
Actually, there was nobody there but somebody in a fire truck,
and they left. As soon as we got our luggage off the plane
somebody turned ALL the lights out. We had parked some distance
from the terminal (wonder who thought up that name!) and Pat
had to walk about a quarter of a mile to get a luggage cart.
We decided we could make it using the Braille system, which
was kinda spooky, because there were crabs crawling all over
the tarmac.
Pat used his Iridium telephone
to call the hotel to send the courtesy taxi, which happened
to be a boat. Since it was dark, we would have to wait another
day to see the beautiful blue lagoon over which we were passing
on our thirty-minute ride to the hotel. The General Manager,
John, lei-ed us at the boat dock and told us that we could
wait and check in the next day.
(We had some more bad luck on
the short flight from Tahiti to Bora Bora, our autopilot failed.
Tom is hopeful that it will re-engage on the next flight.)
Our weather luck remained the
same in Bora Bora as it had for the last month, it rained
for three days. The bungalows over the water were really nice
and had the usual 4-poster bed with mosquito netting (not
just for looks). There was a little bamboo desk where Pat
put his laptop. We never were able to send our Emails, but
we could receive them. There was no air conditioning (got
a floor fan from the manager) and no television! Pat called
Robin back in the States to get the news.
This was truly a place to either
relax & read or do water sports. We decided to go snorkeling.
From our deck, it was three steps down a wooden ladder to
the shallow water of the lagoon. We put on our snorkel gear,
slipped into the tropical water and swam out to a rope with
some orange balls floating on it. That was the highway to
the beautiful coral and hundreds of colorful fish. The coral
grew so close to the surface that we had to be careful not
to cut ourselves.
There were lots of honeymooners
and hardly anybody over the age of 35. Actually, there was
hardly anyone under the age of 30 either (they get married
later now). One day we thought we'd leave campus and have
lunch in town…..but NO!…..All restaurants are closed for the
whole month of December. If a cruise ship stops, they'll open
the bars & shops. This is French Polynesia, so the food was
wonderful with lots of French wines imported from the very
wine region (Bordeaux) we had visited about two months ago.
The prices were about double what they were in France.
Our second night at the Hotel
Bora Bora, Tom and Pam, who were staying at another hotel,
came over for dinner. During drinks, Tom made a startling
announcement. He had been trying to reach the man in Honolulu
with whom he had contracted to put in the extra fuel tanks.
After several weeks of failed attempts, he had finally talked
to someone that day and discovered why the man had not answered
his Email. He had been killed in an airplane crash on October
21 in Hawaii while we were still in Italy. He had agreed to
do the work over the Christmas Holidays so that we could return
home on December 29.
We would have to find someone
else to do the work. Now there was no way we would get the
ferry tanks installed on the airplane during the holidays.
We would have to leave the airplane in Hawaii, fly home on
a commercial airline and return for the airplane after the
work was done!
The last night there was a buffet
and a Polynesian performance. A twelve-year-old boy was playing
the BIG drum, and he really put his heart into it. There were
a couple of much older women in long-sleeved tropical printed
dresses who were the instructors (we guessed) who would yell
instructions out to the dancers…and then there were some men
on the ukuleles who also sang native songs in French. Pat
got some pictures. There was a little girl who was about 6
years old who did a dance all around the floor by herself,
and she had all the moves. I guess one of the dancers or dance
instructors was her mother.
Ashley
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