January 17, 2011

We had seen a lot of Hiva Oa and decided to do a slow last day here. Viktor played some saxophone in the morning:

There are passion fruit plants all along the staircase here. They fall down when they are ripe, and Tania told us we could just help ourselves. We were not difficult to ask. Here is the morning´s catch:

We drove into town, visited an art sales outlet and went back up again.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3pm. At around 1pm, as we were starting to pack, I got the brilliant idea of checking on the net if the flight schedule had been changed. We have seen so many other flight changes in South America and in the Pacific, so I was a bit anxious when I logged on. On the Air Tahiti page there was a link to updates on today´s flights. Our flight was marked “schedule changed!” It had been moved to 2:30pm. Great, and we had at least half an hour of packing ahead of us. We reluctantly changed gears from “Don´t worry, be happy” to “WORRY!” and packed like crazy.

On our way to the airport we remembered we had forgotten to fill up the tank of the car. There is one gas station on the island and we were far from it. Bummer.

At the airport the guy from the car rental was not there as we had agreed. Luckily Tania was at the airport, sitting in her car.

She had just sent her son off to school in Tahiti. They have special flights for the students and the student flight had just taken off. We had rented the car on her advice, and she picked up the phone and called the guy. We agreed on a compensation for the missing gas and we could just leave the car at the airport and the keys and the money with Tania. No explanation given. Things are a bit more relaxed here than we are used to.

We hurried over to check-in where there was a relaxed “Don´t worry, be happy” atmosphere. No one had heard anything about a flight change and they intended to send the flight off at 3pm as scheduled. Oh well.

We were transported yet again by an ATR-72:

We once again passed over the Tuamotu atolls and got some nice views of several of them:

With the help of a moving airplane and post-processing with image stitching software I managed to create a photo of a complete atoll (right click and “View Image” to see a larger version):

We were starting to feel at home at the airport motel in Papeete as we checked in for the third time. This time we got a room closer to the wifi boxes and could actually log on from our room and didn´t have to sit in the staircase all night.

We went back to the same Chinese restaurant as last time and had a great meal. We were immediately recognized and given royal treatment as returning guests.

The kids loved the Chinese round movable serving tray on the table and didn´t stop sending each other things using it.

Tomorrow we leave French Polynesia and head for the Cook Islands.

Eirik

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