Travel // Going Around // South Pacific
Sofitel Tahiti Maeva Beach Resort
Just checked my computer for any photos I still have in “safe keeping” about French Polynesia and look what I found here! I thought I already deleted from my laptop all this French Polynesia stuff back home. I already made back up DVD copies of all those photos so obviously I can free up some space now without losing anything. This photo here would be my last reminder of French Polynesia – the Sofitel Hotel in Tahiti (Sofitel Tahiti Maeva Beach Resort). I stayed over for the night in Sofitel to catch my first leg of three connecting flights to Manila early morning on the following day.
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The plane landed Manila 30 minutes past 9PM and roughly before 11PM I was cleared from the immigration and the customs. I am supposed to be asleep by now but here I am, still awake at 1AM. The long flight from French Polynesia to Philippines was a bit exhausting. It really was, but thinking that I will be with my family tomorrow it seems the exhaustion doesn’t beat me at all. The heavy traffic in Manila took me almost an hour to get to the hotel. Obviously, I should start getting used to this normal Manila thing – heavy traffic.
Moderate to rough swell during the transit from Huahine to Aitutaki was just fair enough to remind everyone onboard the M/S Paul Gauguin that we are not on land but on a floating 5-star hotel transiting the Pacific Ocean. The ship reached Aitutaki, the second port of call in the itinerary, at 7:00 AM today. The ship remained drifting very close to the western side of the barrier reef surrounding the island of Aitutaki just by the entrance of the passage leading to Aitutaki’s small pier until we set sail at 6:00PM. It is a narrow boat passage leading to an anchorage area inside the lagoon. The passage allows access for smaller boats only. For larger boats like this cargo ship in the photo as well as the M/S Paul Gauguin, the only option is either to drift or to anchor near the entrance of the passage. For the M/S Paul Gauguin, the master prefers to drift near the entrance as it is easier or much safer for the cruise ship to avoid getting to the shallow area. Passengers and crew are then transported to the pier using the ship’s beachers and tenders. This freighter here chose to anchor while discharging its cargoes to shallow draft barges that comes alongside which then bring the shipments to the small pier of Arutanga.
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Read more: Cook Islands: Aitutaki
M/S Paul Gauguin arrived Bora Bora from Nuku Hiva very much early than the scheduled time which captain jokingly referred to as “world record”. Well, he is right because as far as I can remember, the ship had never arrived Bora Bora that early. As early as 5:30PM, the ship dropped anchor at Vaitape Bay in a fine weather, perfect for the crew party that was held ashore later in the evening on a place famous of being “famous” – the Bloody Mary’s. All crew were all set for the party that took place at Bloody Mary’s including me. I managed to escape attending parties on the ship but this one seemed to be very irresistible one. After few days
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