Honeymoon Last Part of the Journey

After 12 hours of flight from Paris to Los Angeles, we waited for 2 hours at the airport and took off around 4.30pm (local time) for another 8 hours of flight to Papeete (Tahiti). I slept through most of the journey (just waking up for the meals!). For the hot meal we had:

• · Appetiser: Grilled chicken and four bean salad

• · Choice of Main Course: Beef Stroganoff with mashed potatoes and a medley of carrots, peas and corn or Moroccan-style roasted chicken thigh with white rice and mixed vegetables

• · Cheese

• · Papaya mousse

For the cold light meal:

• · Appetiser: Fresh seasonal salad with mozzarella cheese and Thousand Island dressing

• · Main Course: Bow tie pasta salad with roast beef

• · Rice Pudding

By the end of the flight, the plane was quite cold and it was nice to drink some hot soups available on board.

I started to watch a documentary before we landed, talking about Tahiti and its traditions. The documentary started with typical French Polynesian music played by three people on a bench.

Then we landed in Tahiti. It was the scariest landing I’ve ever had! It was very dark outside; we could only see the surface of the sea with the moonlight. As we approached the landing site, all we could see was water under the plane! It came so close to the water that we could almost see the fish in the sea!

We finally, safely, landed at Tahiti Faaa airport around 9.30pm (local time). The first impression by coming out of the plane was the ambient humidity making every move difficult. It feels slightly less bad than being in a steam room but as you may imagine, you feel like you are sweating all the time and breathing is a bit more difficult (maybe that’s why exercising seems more difficult too).

Again we were welcomed by a Polynesian person giving a Tiare flower to each passenger.

I found so funny that w few minutes after watching a documentary in the plane, I could see the real guys playing Polynesian music!

After getting out of the airport, we were greeted by one of the Tahiti Cruise & Vacation Agent who gave us our holiday pack with all the details and a necklace made with local flowers to each of us. The necklace smelt so nice and it had very colourful flowers. She gave us a lift to our hotel at Tahiti Airport Motel. It was 2 minutes away from the airport. We arrived in our room at around 10.30pm. It was great to finally see a proper bed to sleep on! We had free Wi-Fi in our bedroom which allowed us to communicate with the European World where people just started their day. The last place we slept, well in what looked like a bed, was 27 hours before in a night train bed. The last real bed we had was on the wedding night which was 51 hours ago at this point. So, around midnight, after a long 23 hours flight journey, we both fell asleep.

The next day, we woke up nice and early between 5-6am. We had a lovely view on the airport when we went for our breakfast at 7am. Everything looked new. It’s as if everything looked familiar and yet so different. You see the trees, but none of them look like the ones you are used to. When you see birds, you think that they are pigeons or sparrows but they aren’t.

At 8am, we left the hotel and walk back to the airport to check in for our next flight. We were very excited about taking this flight after which our honeymoon would really start. The airport is very small and fans could be seen everywhere on the ceiling. Our flight was not taking off until 9.05am, so we sat down and watched a film to wait and relax.

We took our flight at 9.05am with Air Tahiti. The plane was rather small, being quite tall, I had to bend while walking in the alley of the plane. The plane was white with red pattern representing sea waves.

We were amazed by the view of Tahiti from the plane after it took off. However, it was nothing as good as what was to come on the journey...

...we were advised to sit on the left side of the plane to see the view of Bora Bora Island before landing. We had the best spot! I made sure we were on the front so we wouldn’t have the wing of the plane blocking the view for taking photos. A group of French television (France 5) seemed to be quite annoyed to be behind us because of the propeller of the plane in the middle of their view for filming. They came with a lot of camera equipments for filming and taking photos.

The landing in daytime was as scary as landing in night time. Again, all you can see is the water getting closer and closer until you feel the plane landing on some piece of land that just appeared underneath the plane.

The blue of the water was wonderful. It was quite windy, which was nice with the humidity level there. There were no security check of any kind there, no scanners, no x-rays, nothing! We waited for a short time for our luggage to be removed from the plane and after collecting them, a person from the Meridien Hotel took them, and placed them in a private boat. We were, again, greeted at the airport with a necklace of flowers.


We went on the boat with a few other people and were driven around Bora Bora to the Hotel.


I could never get tired of looking at the colour of the water. I was making sure that each bit of our trip was taken in photo and filmed!



























We finally arrived at the Meridien Hotel were our luggage were being taken care of. We were greeted with free cocktails (very refreshing!) at the reception while we were filling some paper work and waiting for our room to be ready.



When the room was ready, someone took us on one of those golf karts around the Hotel Island and taking us to our bungalow over water.




There was a huge room with a plasma TV in our room 323 saying “Iaorana Monsieur Thomas Dudman” meaning welcome Mister Thomas Dudman.


There was half a bottle of Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte, Chouilly Epernay, waiting for us on a low table in a bucket of ice with flowers and two champagne glasses.


We drank our glasses on the balcony over the water.

After relaxing, we decided to take the free shuttle to the main island in the search of a supermarket to buy some food. We thought we would find something as soon as we would arrive because there was a school with a sport structure outside. It seemed like there were people living around.

I asked one of the children who were curious to see white people speaking French to them where they thought I could find a place to buy food from. They indicated me the direction of the road to take. By the way, there is only one road going around the island so if you ask you way it’s just a matter of going left or right. We started walking in the midday heat (we didn’t have any bottle of water at that point because we didn’t get to buy any anywhere).

We walked what seemed like hours (about 30-45 minutes) until we saw a tiny house which was a groceries store. They didn’t have any big fridge area, the food was piled up and the alleys just big enough for one person to fit. The light was barely existent, so t was hard to see the items in the back of the shop. There was a woman with a fan just next to her, so you can imagine the heat in the “shop” in the middle of the sun with the level of humidity. We bought some dry French toasts and things we thought would be safe to eat, well packaged, to make sure that nothing wrong would happen to our health.

When paying, we started chatting to the cashier woman about the reason of our trip and how “sad” it was that the hotel’s customers didn’t go to the island to buy food and stayed in the hotel instead. To be honest, if we had more money, we probably would have done that! However, it was very nice talking to that person, she was very nice. As a thank you, she gave to each of us a free wooden key ring with Bora written on it (very nice of her!). She said that her husband used to make them, so we would have a piece of Bora Bora with us.

We returned home and had a nice long rest. In the afternoon, I went in the water down the ladder from the balcony of the bungalow. The water was nice and warm (it always feels a bit cool when you try to get in!). The night falls very early (5-6pm) and very quickly, so we just enjoyed watching the sun set from the long chairs on the balcony of the bungalow. In the evening, we had a picnic in our bungalow with the food we bought and watched a nice film.