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Published: March 4th 2007
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When we got to the Auckland airport bound for French Polynesia, it was so strange to see Los Angeles as the final destination of our flight. Even though we were taking a layover of five days in Tahiti, it was the last place we’d see, the last stamp we’d get in our passports, that was it. Next stop was home. At the time this made me both excited and sad. With every hour that passed I think the balance shifted to more and more sad than excited. As the reality set in that we would be going home in only a few days, I felt like I was struggling to hold on to the excitement I felt at seeing my family again, my friends, my clothes, another pair of shoes, clean towels and sheets, etc. Because I was so excited about all of those things, but as we got closer to actually getting them, inevitably, that excitement faded and Masa and I kept catching each others’ eye and just staring at each other in disbelief that it was actually almost over. But more on that later.
Tahiti was great. We arrived and eventually were able to call for our pick
up. We stayed at a place called Myrna’s Pension, which I’d recommend to anyone who is arriving late. Why spend more money at a resort if you’re only getting there and falling into bed. Myrna’s was comfortable, our room had a private bathroom, though by this time we were so used to having a shared bathroom that we didn’t even notice we had a private one until we were about to leave. I know that sounds really weird, but I swear it’s true. We had this door that looked like a screen door, with a handle that had a little rectangular black button on it, do you know the kind? Well anyway it looked like that but it was glass. We figured it just led out to the outside, since it looked like that kind of door. So we showered and washed up and stuff in the communal bathroom down the hall. Then in the morning, I got to wondering so I opened the door as we were about to leave. What do you know? A big shiny clean private bathroom. Amazing. Anyway I felt dumb but whatever.
We left early the next day for Moorea, an Island about
Les Tipaniers
where we stayed on Moorea 25 minutes away by ferry. We’d booked a room in a smallish, kind of shabby, beach front resort. At around 70USD / night it was pretty much as cheap as it comes on Moorea, and it was nice enough. We met a couple of people there, first Barbara who was traveling alone and then Jean-Marie, a salesman from Bordeaux, France. He didn’t speak any English, really, and none of us spoke very much French, but had dinner the four of us the two night we were on Moorea and had a great time regardless of the difficulties in communication.
After two days on Moorea - the second of which was marked by uninterrupted rain, didn’t bother us much though we slept a lot, read, and enjoyed it. Anyway after two days on Moorea we took the ferry back to Tahiti and checked into the very lovely Le Meridien Resort. Now this was paradise. We had a phenomenal ocean view room, perfect for watching sunsets, a huge sand bottom swimming pool, all the kayaking and snorkeling you could do, great restaurants, huge room. It was great after months of budget accommodations - ok granted we did stay in the really
Ferry Terminal
on Moorea, we were leaving to go back to Tahiti nice place in Auckland, but come on, you should have seen some of these places we’ve been in the last six months. We did a lot of kayaking and snorkeling, lots of swimming and sunning. Lots and lots of eating. We explored a little bit around the hotel but there wasn’t a whole lot to see and we weren’t feeling compelled to get out and hike or anything. It was great just to be complete bums for a while, knowing we’d be heading back to reality in a mere couple of days. We had a bottle of champagne at sunset and a fancy dinner at the resort on our second to the last night away to celebrate that we’d actually done this thing and made it through safely.
On of the best stories of the trip: our last day of our whole trip, we were hanging out at Le Meridien, and went out for a couple of hours snorkeling. I, being me, was totally paranoid about sharks. Thinking I was being smart, I kept looking at the schools of fish to make sure they were still happily flitting about and not cowering from some ginormous great white hovering over
Papeete
near the ferry terminals my shoulder. I learned this from A Shark Tale. The fish continued to flit and we swam around and looked at all the amazing corals and rocks and fish. This was definitely the best snorkeling I’ve ever ever seen. Anyway we went in when we were tired and had some lunch. Because this was our last day and because the snorkeling was so unbelievable, I let Masa convince me to go out again in the afternoon despite weird feelings of foreboding. The sky was ominous, it had been raining on and off and for some reason I just didn’t want to go back out. But we did and it was beautiful and I started to relax. Then I saw a shark. Everything else around us was moving in a certain way, either waving in the current or flitting around or moving in fits and starts. But the shark was totally different. It glided through the chaos in such a weird, steady way, like a machine or something. I recognized immediately that it was a reef shark by its fin markings, how I knew this, I don’t know, but I did. And so I wasn’t as scared as I could have
Damn Paparazzi
always snapping photos of us while we're just trying to get some relaxation! been, but that’s not saying much. The thing was probably a good 6 or 7 feet long and maybe 30 feet from us moving in a curve. Could have been curving around us, circling, could have not been. I didn’t choose to stick around to find out. I know these aren’t man eaters but again, I wasn’t going to test the theory. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and one of the most terrifying. Luckily Masa was right by me at the time, so I grabbed his arm and pointed up. We came out of the water and I said, “reef shark”. He looked at me like I was crazy, and because I know him so well I know he didn’t believe me, I could see it in his eyes. But I looked again, and he looked with me, and there it was. So we turned on our heels, or flippers, and headed back as fast as we could. I was just trying to keep from panicking, breathing as normally as I could. By the time we got back to the beach, our fear had morphed into a total rush of excitement. We came out
of the water at the beach laughing and shaking our heads in disbelief of what we just were lucky enough to see. It was the perfect ending to our trip. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
That evening we left for the airport. The woman we met on Moorea, Barbara, was on a flight for New York leaving at the same time as ours so we hung out with her in the airport before we left. Then it was time, and we got on our very last flight heading for LAX, home again.
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Dogfaced Jackson
non-member comment
... been there.
Awww ... i just got a little sad, reading your post!