Thursday, September 13^th, 2001.  11:30am
Sitting in Bora Bora airport next to Tami.

            I had problems sleeping this morning and got up fairly early.  I don’t know if it was my dreams or the fact that I was a little down about leaving today, but I was up before 6am.  I walked out onto our porch overlooking the gorgeous lagoon surrounding us and tried to take in the view as deeply as possible.  I wanted my memory banks to record every nuance of what I was -- and had been seeing for the past five days, but knew deep inside that time would dissolve everything but the most obvious details.  I would remember things like the majestic mountain that was so perfectly framed outside our window.  I would remember the blueness of the water… the richness of the greenery… the textures of the wood and leaves… the feel of the sand beneath my feet.  I would remember how gorgeous Tami looked every morning rising from bed… walking onto the deck to see the rays of the sun play delicately upon the water.  I want to remember these details as deeply and completely that I can.  These are the thoughts that I will come back to for happiness… when I want to remember how lovely life can be.  What a direct opposite to what has been going on in the states. 

             (We have just boarded the plane.  A sheet was passed around announcing a few things about resuming flights.  They are stating that they will begin again tomorrow.  There are no cellular phones allowed on board anymore, and we have to begin the check-in process FIVE HOURS before our flight is to leave.  We are not yet sure about our exact flight… or its status.)

            We began the tedious and depressing duty of packing fairly early as well.  We have quite a lot of stuff… in between we kept walking outside for pause.  I think we were both feeling the same things.  Almost a sense of loss.  We finished, and then went out to return our car… catching the boat to shore for the last time.  We returned as quickly as possible because we were supposed to check out at 10.  It was now 10:10.  Late as always!  We checked out, paying about $200 in room charges.  Down at the dock we fed the fish – perhaps the most aggressive fish frenzy that we have seen the whole trip!  These 4-inch or so white fish with upturned flack fins went absolutely nuts for the bread.  Hundreds of them swarmed to the area tossing and turning all over each other to get the food.  We were then given shell leis.  Two of the employees came down to the deck to play music and blow a conch shell as well left by boat.  It was a nice send off… and only added to the downer of leaving Bora Bora.

            The boat took us straight to the airport on the motu and we waited for our flight to board.  Thus brings us current.  We are now in the air headed for Papeete, Tahiti – where a mess of stranded people is sure to greet us.  What fun this return portion of our honeymoon is sure to be.  I was looking forward to NOT wanting to go home at the end of our trip… now I am just worried about getting there at all!

TAHITI
5:30pm

            Here we are lying in our room at the Sofitel Tahiti hotel.  The airport wasn’t like I expected – actually it was the exact opposite.  It was barren.  The entire international section of the airport was shut down.  The windows and shutters were closed, and there was not a soul around to ask questions of.  We hoped on the shuttle to our hotel to check in.  I was right about their mistake – they have us listed as being here through the 15^th!   Our flight actually is scheduled to leave tomorrow, the 14^th… so it is obviously a pretty good mistake benefiting our side.  It will save us at least a night’s hotel stay.  I have heard that if we are forced to stay that we will have to pay the “local rate” of $140 a night instead of $265.  The nightly rate for our hotel on Bora Bora was over $700 a night!  The good thing about the room is that the air conditioning works great.  It seems that the island of Tahiti is much warmer than the others… that is strange.  The others are closer to the equator than this one.  We threw our luggage down and went straight out to the main street to catch a “Le Truck” ride back to the airport.  We went directly upstairs to the Air Tahiti Nui offices instead of wasting time downstairs in the deserted airport.  I am not sure if we were supposed to be up there.  They answered our questions with non-definitive answers.  We just wanted to know that if they resume flights tomorrow, would the people that have been waiting in the airport have priority, or would we be able to board the flight that we have reservations for.  We just wanted answers.  They really had none to give – a few interesting tidbits, but nothing to let us know if we were going to leave tomorrow or not.  Nice people.  We then went to make calls home – once again, it was nice to hear family voices… we really would have liked to give concrete information, but we didn’t have any.  Another Le Truck ride, this time to downtown Papeete.  After being to the other islands, it is astonishing to see how dirty this one is.  The smells of the city are dirty, and a good many of the people are dirty.  Happy, but dirty.   We went for lunch… at McDonalds!  Ahhh… the taste of home again.  We both thoroughly enjoyed lunch.  After walking around the town for a while we decided that we’d had enough for today and returned to our room.  I think we are going to settle on another movie on the laptop then hit the hay.  No big plans for tomorrow – if we could have found out for sure that we couldn’t go home tomorrow, we probably would be going on a dive again.  However, we can’t dive 24 hours prior to flying… so we can’t.  Damn.  Goodnight…