So our trip started with a flight to Los Angeles, where most connections to French Polynesia fly from. We scheduled our flights to allow a few days to visit my wife's family in the LA area. While we were there, as usual, we did a little geocaching, which is a hobby you do with your GPS. In this case we were carrying what are called travel bugs. These items are left in geocaches for people to find and carry to other geocaches around the world. The owner sets the goal for each travel bug. When we travel, we always try to pick up an appropriate travel bug (destination and or activity) and take it with us.
Mikey the travel bug wants to inspect bridges.
Buzz wants to travel around and see space related things. This is Buzz at about 35,000 feet, a little closer to space and part way to Tahiti.
This was our Air Tahiti Nui plane, with some travel bugs posing in front of it.
On day 3 we flew from Los Angeles to the city of Papeete on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia. They actually boarded early and closed the doors prior to departure time and pushed back exactly on time. We left LA at 1PM and arrived in Papeete at 6:20 PM. With the 3 hour time difference, this works out to an 8-1/2 hour flight. We started off in EDT, then to Pacific Daylight time (-3 hrs) for a couple of days and on to Tahiti (another -3 hours) for only 36 hours.
We tried to stay awake on the flight, which is aided by the individual seat video systems that Air Tahiti Nui has on their planes. This appears pretty standard now, as all Air Canada planes and the later Chilean LAN planes all had this. What is not common on North American carriers are the free pillow, blanket, and personal goody bag you are given. The goody bag contains ear phones, socks for your feet, post it notes to signify if you want to sleep or be awaken for meals, and a few other things I can't remember. All in all, a nice change from the penny pinching NA airlines we normally fly on. Of course the flight is not cheap. A couple of movies later, along with a meal and snack, we arrived at the Faa'a International Airport.
We decided to rent a car for the 36 hours we were in Tahiti. Our Rental vehicle came with a manual transmission which is the norm here, as automatics cost a LOT more. Even with me navigating, we found our hotel for the night, the Manava, without much trouble.
We were upgraded to a beach front suite which was very nice. The view from the patio was beautiful. The flat surface you see in front of the ocean is the infinity pool. In the background is Moorea, where we will travel to at the end of our trip.
We were able to get a start on fish watching early the next morning by just looking over the jetty in front of the hotel. Still adjusting to the time, we were up early and started on our all day island tour of Tahiti, which will be the topic of my next installment. Don't worry, there will be more pictures and less text in the following entries.
