French Polynesia: in search of paradise

THE LONG JOURNEY BEGINS

here we are.. after many months of research and many years of dreams about Polynesia the day of departure has finally arrived!!! Up early... last preparations and a glance at the web to check if the plane from Bologna is on time.... and....Surprise!!! The flight we booked doesn't appear...panic... I immediately call Gloria from the travel agency that had made the booking for me and explain everything to her.. she checks and reassures me saying that there are no problems, the flight schedules have changed but our bookings are still valid for the flights in the program... I understand...but couldn't you tell me beforehand?!!!!?? Damn... I almost had a stroke!!! I had already seen the trip of my dreams vanish.... and so much effort wasted for nothing... Oh well... let's hope for the best...

meanwhile between one phone call and another the time to leave has come, I eat something quickly and then say goodbye to everyone and off to the airport hoping that everything is fine and no problems arise... As a start I didn't like it much, let's hope it improves!!

At the airport while we are in line for check-in I see behind me a very dear friend of mine whom I hadn't met for years.. he now lives in Norway and only comes back occasionally and today because of a strike, to get home he is forced to take an alternative flight via Paris and so for the first leg we are on the plane together. What an incredible coincidence!! Sometimes the world really is small...

At the checks everything is ok and finally we leave... first stop Paris and second Los Angeles where we waste all our layover hours in line for the endless American checks (after filling out several forms they even take our fingerprint and photo!) which I don't know what they're for since we are only in transit and don't even leave the airport!! To tell the truth, we don't even enter it!! I mean, they take us by buses to a reserved area from which we cannot leave and then they make us get back on the plane without even being able to take a stroll around the airport, so explain to me what all the checks were for!! We practically didn't even set foot on American soil!!! Fine, caution and more thorough checks because of terrorism, but this seems like paranoia to me!! In the end anyway we set off again... another 10 hours of flight and then we arrive!!!

FINALLY IN POLYNESIA!!!

6:00 AM on November 13, 2004, Tahiti Faa airport. Finally after having dreamed of it all my life, here I am...in FRENCH POLYNESIA!!!! I can hardly believe it... I go out of the airport... I breathe the warm and fragrant air...it's a beautiful day, it's over 25 degrees and the sun is beating down like crazy even though it's still very early. There's no doubt.... I really am in Polynesia.....on the exact other side of the world and now the adventure begins...... First we stop by the Air Tahiti office to pick up the flight passes (booked and paid for via the Internet, about € 402.00 each)....then to the bank (SOCREDO) to change some Euros (the exchange rate is fixed: 1€ = 119.33 FCP and you pay about 4 Euros fixed fee for each transaction) and to the Post Office to buy a phone card (1550 FCP) for 40 units (about 15 minutes of calls).

All this still at the airport, waiting for the flight to Rangiroa at 10:30. After waiting a bit sitting outside the airport and having a look around the nearby little shops we head to the check-in for domestic flights...allowance 20 kg... plus only 1 carry-on bag weighing at most 3 kg....but in reality even though they are very strict with the suitcases, as far as carry-on luggage is concerned they never weighed it for us... Once through check-in we go into the waiting room.... watching the planes on the runway I notice that they are not as small as I expected and that they are also fairly new. Great! Departure on time and arrival in Rangiroa early.... Now we can really say we are finally at our destination... after over 20 hours of flying and "only" 36 hours of total travel.. here we are...at the legendary Pension Glorine in Rangiroa...

On our arrival at the guesthouse we are welcomed by Sabrina who introduces us to Glorine (in the kitchen busy with a beautiful and enormous fish which I assume will be our dinner...) and then accompanies us to our faré... a very cute little house in the middle of the garden.. with two double beds and the bathroom (separated from the bedroom by a colored curtain). The first thing we have to get used to, which for them is normal, is taking off our shoes always before entering the house so as not to dirty it and not to bring in sand. Not stupid at all! As soon as we put our suitcases in the room we put on our swimsuits and head to the nearby little beach toward the Hotel Kia Ora... the beach is narrow and long with lots of coral but pretty... practically deserted..

and the sea is gorgeous...the water is crystal clear and the colors change depending on the seabed...light blue, green and blue in thousands of different shades. The sun is so hot that we lie down in the shade of the trees, but tiredness and above all lack of sleep are starting to take their toll and so to avoid risking falling asleep and thus wasting precious time, we decide to take a walk in the surroundings and look for the famous dolphin beach (which so many had told me about on the Polynesia forum) but we can't find it. Finally the dinner hour arrives (6:30 PM) and we reach the dining room that overlooks the lagoon.

At the table there are many of us and everyone has dinner together at a long table..there's a group of divers (French) who live in Tahiti and who have come here for the weekend, a couple of French couples and a couple of young Italians who however are seated far from us so we have no way to talk to them. Dinner is excellent..raw fish, which with a bit of courage we taste right away encouraged by the French divers and which we discover to be delicious...grilled mahi mahi with sauce and white rice and for dessert fruit salad. By the time coffee arrives we are practically half asleep at the table so we decide to say goodnight to everyone and go to bed, finally, after I don't know how many hours without sleep... and so the first day in Polynesia has already gone by.

RANGIROA - BLUE LAGOON EXCURSION

After going to bed very early, obviously we also woke up very early!!! At 4:30 or a little after we are already up and waiting for breakfast which is served at 6:30, we get ready for the excursion planned for today: the legendary "Blue Lagoon" (FCP 7500). After a long wait the breakfast hour finally arrived and since today is Sunday they serve us butter, jams, cheese portions, pan de coco, empty Croissants or filled with chocolate, coffee and orange juice. Excellent and abundant breakfast!! Just what we needed...now we are ready to leave and we sit in the garden waiting for them to come pick us up for the excursion. At a little after 8:00 they come to pick us up with a sort of covered pick-up and we leave for the port. Along the way a Canadian girl and six Italians also get on, who we later discover are with Avventure nel mondo.

Once we arrive at the Avataru pier, we get on Jean-pierre's speedboat, we leave almost immediately and in less than an hour we arrive at the beautiful blue lagoon...the colors are fantastic, the sea has a thousand shades from green to blue and the islets (motu) are very green... it's truly stunning!!! The boat, however, cannot get too close because the water is shallow so we load our backpacks on our shoulders and reach the indicated motu on foot, being careful not to slip on the corals. The water is crystal clear and in a few minutes we reach the shore. The motu is one of the many that delimit the Blue Lagoon which has a vaguely triangular shape with one of the sides facing the ocean. Our motu instead is one of the innermost ones and is beautiful...

very small...crammed with palm trees...a bit of little beach and a hut in the center where Jean-Pierre and his assistant immediately get to work preparing lunch for us. After having generously spread sunscreen on ourselves (the sun is beating down very hard and there isn't even a cloud) we throw ourselves into the water to do a bit of snorkeling but even though the water is beautiful and the place fantastic, truly dreamlike, there are few fish and so we go back up and devote ourselves to photography. Lunch is excellent.. raw fish Tahitian style, grilled fish and chicken, some exquisite pan de coco also cooked on the spot on the grill and to finish chocolate donut and coffee with freshly squeezed coconut milk.

Fantastic! Obviously at the end we are all stuffed so we stay a bit at the table chatting, then while someone takes a nap, we three along with some members of the Avventure nel mondo group decide to take a walk to the bird island.... a motu bigger than ours, not that far away, completely wild with dense impenetrable vegetation in the center and packed with birds. We take a few photos then return to our motu... The sun is deadly and walking on the water that acts as a mirror is suicide... luckily we brought our pareos with which we try to cover at least our shoulders.. we wouldn't want to get burned right away and ruin our vacation like that!! After being in the shade for a bit we couldn't resist and threw ourselves back into the water... it was too beautiful and warm!! At a certain point JP calls us to return to the boat and so we head back..

meanwhile the water has risen and while before it barely reached our ankles now it is up to mid-belly and so we have to be even more careful where we put our feet and keep our backpacks up so as not to get them wet. A few meters from the boat I look around for a moment and realize I am completely surrounded by sharks!!! They are small..at most a meter or a little more and JP says to stay calm that they are not dangerous but anyway I will tell you that even though I believed him I felt much more relaxed once I was back on the boat! As soon as we had all gathered JP started throwing food into the water for the sharks so as to attract many of them and try to catch one to show them to us up close.. at this point I understood why so many had arrived!! They're not stupid... these already knew we would give them food!!! Return around 4 PM.

Dinner at 6:30 PM after having taken a walk in search of the little beach (which so many told me about on the polynesia.it forum) from which often you can see the dolphins entering and leaving the lagoon but we didn't see them. For dinner chicken and asparagus rolls, white spaghetti, banana crepes and coffee. After dinner we had agreed with JP that he would come pick us up with his girlfriend to go to the Kia Ora to see a Polynesian dance show but he doesn't show up so after waiting a bit we set off on foot. The Kia Ora is not very far but as soon as we leave the village the darkness is total, it seems incredible but you can't even see where you're stepping.. luckily we have the flashlight with us and we proceed in single file.

At a certain point Alberto and Elena catch up with us on their scooter and offer us a ride which we accept very gladly..obviously one gets on and then he comes back to pick me and Melissa up on a second trip. We arrive at the hotel...they don't give us a hard time entering even though we are not guests, as long as we pay the entrance for the show FCP 500. It's still early and so we look around a bit, the place is nice but it's all deserted and silent.. how depressing to stay in a hotel like this... just because those who are there are on their honeymoon and find something to do, otherwise you'd want to slit your wrists!! Pe

have patience, sooner or later I'll finish writing it.....