Anyone heard from Captain Partypants? Leaving Rangi stuck in Tahiti

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After the dramas of yesterday we had to see the Gendarmes about the dive incident but as I didnt speak french and the Gendarme did that oxymoron thing and said I dont speak English (YOU JUST DID!) I was of little use so didnt have much to say or do and wandered back for breakfast. R and his wife and I were all booked on the 12.30ish plane, I say ish because my booking said Dept 12.40, Rs said depart 12.30..so no time for an early dive because packing wet gear is a nightmare. I spent the rest of the morning packing up the little cottage, hanging out any wet gear on the clothesline to dry and generally doing bugger all except sitting staring at the lagoon and breathing in the purity of Rangiroa.



Its a special place, different than the more French and tourist influenced islands. I want to explore more of the Tuomoto Atoll as I found this the most polynesian island yet...next trip I plan to get to Fakarava, thwarted this time by a lack of a plane due to air tahiti having an engine fire on take off on papeete and me making one tiny mistake in booking the inter island flights. Not all flights go on all days. Which was where I made the little fumble that resulted in longer in Bora Bora and would have required another flight from Papeete to Fakarava as you cannot go through Papeete twice on an island pass so less time on Moorea. With a plane down, Air Tahitis notorious reputation for unreliable planes made it an opportunity to say...well, next time, the Tuomotos, Australs and Marquisas..

I heard the joke more than once that the plane would get here when the pilots had had a dive and a few hinanos and were ready to fly..maybe its true. Our 12.40 flight never arrived..R came over and told me they had gotten an email from air tahiti and it would be now 4pm..I looked at him and said....Oh..So theres Wifi here?...DOH!



Id downloaded the Lonely Planet E guide for F.Polynesia - the first LP guide I have ever bought, simply because on Bangka Island in Sulawesi Dani and Wayne had saved the day by finding a phone number for me in Manado. I had a suspicious nagging feeling about having read something about the ferry timetable..so had a look to find we would miss our ferry to Moorea. R and his wife were planning a night there to chill before flying home to work..wasnt going to happen. I pulled up the ferry timetable and R rang and confirmed, we rang the airlines and found the next plane was 10am tommorow and that was fully booked. We rang our hotels and let them know we would be not arriving until tommorow. R started ringing around Papeete to find a hotel only for us to find there was a huge shortage of rooms as three big resorts had closed down and three cruise ships had arrived at the same time with a total of 8000 passengers.



We managed to get two rooms at the Manava, back where I had stayed in Papeete a couple of weeks ago, but not lovely suites with kitchens more your standard one size fits all hotel room. And at a premium rate. Thank god for travel insurance.



Someone came by from town and dropped into Maries and said the plane was going to be even later if it got here..and it may be full. We had confirmed bookings but it looked very possible that we may be spending another night on Rangiroa..which we all shrugged our shoulders about and laughed it was probably the best place to have to be stuck. I went back and sat on the wall around the atoll and watched wrasses and sharks and snapper and surgeons in a few inches of water so clear its transparent.



Rangiroa is the cleanest place I have ever seen on this planet so far. Its a closed loop system. Its healthy. The ocean feeds the people, the people walk out the front and throw the fish carcass back to feed the fish, the dogs eat lobster. Everyone on the island smokes menthols on mondays and tuesdays because the supply ship carrying more doesnt get here til wednesdays. Thats just how it is. Order more? why, its always been this way. You adapt. The kids arent human, theyre some sort of amphibian, they spend all day in the water. They even go to school by boat. The ocean is part of life here. You stand on the pier and hear the shreiks of laughter from the kids swimming through the concrete tunnel under the pier and a baby turtle swims past head up out of the water amongst them. Theyre far enough away for the currents to keep the rubbish of western civilization from washing up on their shores in more ways than one. Theyre far from uneducated, they just cant be Polynesian without Polynesia, they cant leave. The earth, ocean and sky are one to the Polynesians here, what truly is important - family and friends not possessions - is all that matters. Theres still an innocent purity here thats hard to define. Its that aeto peapea thing..no worries..and the lovely saying dont worry about tommorow its already happened in Australia.

4pm came and went. No plane. We started discussing the fact we may just be spending another night on Rangi, shrugged our shoulders and all went back to just sittin..staring..gazing out in wonder at the clarity and scale of it all. Grab a globe and spin it til you find nothing but blue and point down under the equator at that speck and you have Rangiroa. You are pretty far away from everywhere here. Except from yourself. And that aint a bad thing at all.

I was wading around in between the coral bombies outside my deck watching for the big free swimming moray eel who lived under the bombie I never took my eye off contemplating the ridiculousness of money, this whole pursuit of happiness and he who has the most toys wins bullshit in our modern societies when Captain Partypants came screaming in from the Marquisas just over roof height, banked to show off his wings and did a lap of the island.

THE PLANES HERE! QUICK!

A mad dash to the town and an ATM then off to the airport at last..although i really wouldnt have cared less if the plane never even arrived. The airports laid back, easygoing, everyone shows up because everyone knows someone going somewhere or coming from someplace so its kinda got a bit of a festival atmosphere. A lovely couple set up a pearl and souvenier stall on the off chance some wise tourist had avoided the big pearl tour and had the most amazing pearls for ridiculous prices. I bought a pearl I was told would sell for $350 - $500 for $50. Bought a few more tourist grade ones with the lady telling me those ones werent good but good for friends, so that was good enough for me at $5 and $10. Theres no haggle or scams here, she was letting me know my pearl was not set in silver it was just what she could make the design with at home and an idea to have a jeweller replicate, which i will, with a few diamonds. That honesty sums up the Rangi people. Its the thought that counts.

Finally got our boarding passes and were queuing for the plane..which was delayed again. Captain Partypants obviously wasnt ready to fly..or his acrobat display round the lagoon had used up more fuel than expected..whatever reason, we sat around and waited for another hour. At least we all had somewhere to sleep in Tahiti.

I spent most of the time waiting at the airport giggling at the little boy of about 4 who obviously knew the gendarme who had taken Rs statement as he was waiting for the flight too. The kid would pull open the cops pockets on his tres chic cargo pants and pull something out or make a grab for something then run off screaming with laughter. The little scenario went on and on, the cop never bothering with the kid, the kid amusing the whole airport while the cop fished around in his breifcase and the cheeky little robber blatantly picked his pockets. He'd run off screaming with laughter while the cop just continued on with his files and folders..the only time he reacted was then the mini bandit went for his gun...the gendarme quickly put his hand over it and pulled out some chewing gum for the kid. Well played! I got the feeling the cop and this kid had played the same game more than once.

We finally got onto the plane about 6.45pm..one rough and bumpy hour and a half later with the seatbelts needed the whole flight. I kept thinking about the joke about the pilots and decided Partypants was a good name for him as we lurched and chugged through the skies approaching Tahiti being lashed by heavy rain again. It was one of those everyone sitting quietly landings...Well Done PartyPants! We basically thumped bounced and skidded to a halt just outside the terminal and R and his wife and I shared a taxi back to the Manava suites.

The room this time didnt have a kitchen and living area but hey, its a bed, albeit an expensive one. We agreed to have a good bath and meet again in an hour and go and eat at the roulotte across the street. Polynesia has these really cool Roulottes, food vans on wheels, many of them never move but most like the one outside the manava appear every night. Not your pies and chips van, but mahi mahi, kebabs, salads, prawn curry, lobster through to steak and lamb. At $13 I grabbed a massive slice of snapper and salad while R and K got their food then we all went and sat in their room and ate watching CNN news. The roulottes are great and substantially cheaper than hotels for food of a great standard.

It had been a long long day and I knew we were all ready for sleep so I said my bonne nuits and headed back to watch more CNN even Oprah interviewing Lance Armstrong and fell asleep with my glasses on so I woke up with a huge dent one side of my nose..oh well. While I had organised to go to Papeete Marche Municipal with K I was down in the lobby and heard all the cruise shippers ordering taxis to get on the Moorea ferries and realised if I didnt want to spend another night in Tahiti I had to get going and onto a ferry so I headed to the terminal instead.

it was a wise decision.

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