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Letters from the South Pacific • July 28, 2021

Letters from the South Pacific • July 28, 2021

July 28, 2021 was a day most­ly missed, at least by me. The overnight flight (just under eight hours) was most­ly enjoyed by sleep­ing passengers…all except me. Try as I might, I could not get com­fort­able or sleepy. I dozed a lit­tle but not much, so when we arrived in Tahi­ti, I was large­ly a sleep deprived zom­bie oper­at­ing on autopi­lot. Once off the plane, we were shep­herd­ed into an arrival area, com­plete with bright lights and a trio singing tra­di­tion­al Poly­ne­sian music. It was love­ly, It was loud. Obvi­ous­ly these folks have been doing the tourism thing for a long time.…

Although the steps through immi­gra­tion were a bit of a blur, they were com­pli­cat­ed by, guess what? A COVID test! every­one had to take a COVID test pri­or to clear­ing cus­toms. For­tu­nate­ly, no one in our group failed the test, and so we were set free into the wait­ing arms of all the tour com­pa­nies, trav­el agents and oth­ers wel­com­ing friends, fam­i­ly and vis­i­tors to the islands. We received our leis, board­ed the van to take us to the fer­ry (our first week is on Moorea, which is only acces­si­ble by boat, and found our­selves at the dock at a lit­tle before 6am. Every­thing was closed and no one was there to greet us.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, I would have just brushed off. But as a sleep deprived zom­bie, it was more than I could take. Our van dri­ver tried to help. He said that because we were ear­ly, there would be no one to meet us at Moorea, and so we should wait for the next ferry…in two hours. So, we wait­ed until some­one arrived to open the fer­ry office, left our lug­gage there, and went upstairs in search of some­thing to drink, and a bath­room.

Two hours lat­er, we board­ed the fer­ry, after dou­ble check­ing to make sure our lug­gage made it aboard, and head­ed off to Moorea. The sun was just com­ing up and it was breath­tak­ing. Worth all the wor­ry, and the stress.