…and twice on Sundays

Day 200-200 bis – Papeete, Tahiti

I left Matamata Sunday morning by an early bus and if some humidity clung to my eyelids, it was surely the dust in the atmosphere. Or the pollen. Yes, let’s blame the pollen.

The first bus dropped me in Hamilton for around an hour, the reward being that the second bus dropped me straight to the airport instead of making me take a shuttle at Manukau. I was thus nicely 4 hours early for my flight, which you will agree is more than ample time.

So ample that I had to find a place to while the first hour away before the opening of the check-in counters. Of course, what little seating there is at that point is full, which left one to go back outside to the bus pick-up and drop-off area.

This time at least, I wasn’t shivering under the cold wind and the rain, as I did when I arrived from Fiji.

Finally, I checked my bag, passed the security… and found myself with quite a while to while away again. I dropped again at my favourite shop, Mountain Jade, to buy a second ring -I love mine so much that I would be very sad to break or lose it.

Finally, it was time to board, and since I was going to Tahiti, I was given a flower at boarding. The question is, what do you do with a blossom aboard a plane? The answer is, while moving stuff around, it falls in the magazine slot and you can’t get it back because it is a rigid plastic slot and not a net. You wonder what will happen when it decays.

I arrived Saturday night because well, I crossed the date line. Yeah!

For once, immigration was very easy. No form to fill, no visa to get stamped on my passport…

But I had a nasty surprise when I got my luggage back: one of the side straps was torn away and held only via the buckle clipped to its other half, and one of the shoulder strap was torn almost all the way through. Since that one was unbuckled and tucked away into a special pocket, I really wonder how they managed to do that.

So… since I don’t trust a simple needle and thread repair to hold, I will have to buy a new bag.

Well. I found an ATM, hailed a taxi, went to my hostel (they speak French here! And drive on the right!), woke up probably more than half the dormitory between dropping my bags off and getting in the upper creaky bed after a nice shower.

So when I woke up the next morning, it was Sunday again.

A quiet Sunday. I walked a bit around in the morning and tried to fix my phone in the afternoon, it won’t connect to the wifi -for quite a few months now- and it’s a pain. It was in vain, but still, I had to try.

And that night almost everyone had deserted the dorm, I was cosily left with a woman -well, it was a female dorm- who was leaving very early the next morning. So we chatted a bit, it was nice.

And I slept a lot better.

(I cheated with the image header, as I didn’t take pictures in Tahiti, so it’s a picture from Anakena Beach on Easter Island.)