January 6, 2011

We had a 2:35 pm flight to Tikehau and could take it easy in the morning. We showed up at breakfast just before closing at 9:30.

We have a family rule that everyone speaks French when we are in France, so we had all switched to French last night when we landed. At breakfast we fit right into the “crowd” Everyone seemed to come from France.

French Polynesia is a strange place. It is a part of France in the Pacific. A good old-fashioned colony and an anachronism (just like Easter Island, actually), where the colonial power rules supreme and where police and customs officials are caucasian French (at least the ones we saw).

For breakfast there was French baguette, pain chocolat and French jam. What? French jam? It seemed very strange to eat red currant jam transported from France in a place abundant with all sorts of exotic fruit. Even the butter and the milk came from France. 12 000 km (7500 miles) closer than France lies New Zealand, a large dairy producer.

We got a phone call from FedEx that a package had arrived. We originally had a deal with the motel that they would keep it for us when it arrived so we could pick it up when we would be back in Tahiti in a week. Now they wouldn´t have to.

At 11 the package arrived. It was the Christmas present DVDs I had ordered from amazon.fr which Dauro and Laura had resent from Brasil. With criminal Brazilian import taxes and the cost of resending to Tahiti they had cost about 3 times as much as planned. But now they were here. Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas!

Thank you, FedEx!

Thanks to the package traces I can show you where those DVDs have been traveling:

(Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.)

Not bad for digital content on a physical medium, heh? The total traveling distance is 47 400 km (29459 miles), more then the circumference of the earth. The DVDs were ordered on December 10 and the package was sent from Paris on December 14. Once it reached Florianopoilis it was resent the next day. We received the package 22 days after it was sent from Paris.

I will now proceed to rip the DVDs and throw away the physical media so we don´t have to carry the weight. There are many paradoxes in our modern-day semi-digital world.

We repacked our stuff and left 3 backpacks at the hotel. Air Tahiti has some of the worst bagage restrictions I have ever seen. 10 kg of checked-in luggage per passanger and one piece of hand-luggage with maximum weight 3 kg (6.6 pounds)! Heck, my carry-on suitcase must weigh at least half that when it is empty! These restrictions led to some pretty tough prioritization and some creative packing. In the end we managed to get within the limit with the exception of the saxophone, which weighs 7 kg (15 pounds). We decided to take the chance and try to talk it through.

We had a great view of Faa´a airport from the motel (right click and View Image for a larger version):

We had lunch at the airport with French stuff:

and checked in. There was no control of the hand-luggage whatsoever. Oh well.

Ah, Tikehau, the name vibrated Pacific paradise:

We flew an ATR-72

The flight was almost empty:

Papeete:

Tikehau is an atoll with about 350 inhabitants (The last census showed 503, but about 150 are students or others who do not live there) and a few tourists. It is one of the Tuamotus, an island group with a large number of atolls north-east of Tahiti.

It is still not certain exactly how an atoll has been created, but the major theory is that they started as volcano craters when sea levels where much lower than today. As the ocean has been rising corals have been building up around the crater rim, always searching for that sweet spot just under the surface where there is sea water and maximum sun penetration. The results are doughnut shaped islands with shallow lagoons in the middle. The lagoons are havens safe from the forces of the open sea and contain an amazing variety of fish. Often the rim is split into many islands, called motus. Here is a sattelite photograph of Tikehau:

The airport in Tikehau does not have lights along the runway, nor an electronic guidance system, nor a control tower. We are talking one strip of tarmac and one building. Here it is:

We were met by our hostess from the bed & breakfast with the traditional Polynesian welcoming flower necklaces. The kids got to sit in the back, really in the back:

There is one road here, it goes around the coast of the main motu (island) and measures the impressive length of 9 km (5.6 miles).

We were staying at Pension Hotu, a small family-run business with 5 bungalows on the beach. We immediately took advantage of the little daylight which was left and had a look around:

 

Yeah, we could live with staying here for a week, even though there were sharks in the lagoon:

We were told they were completely harmless to humans as long as you did not bleed in the water.

Our bungalow was about 10 meters (30 feet) from the beach, had 3 beds in a room and a spacious bathroom. Just what we needed. In this climate all you want is a place to sleep and a place to shower:

The owners´s daughter, two-year old Oceane, quickly gained Helene´s confidence:

After a great dinner the kids quickly fell asleep:

In the Tuamotus, the islands Thor Heyerdahl reached with his Kon-Tiki raft, at last.

Eirik

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