Disembarkation day. We had to leave the ship by 10 am and our flight was at midnight. Unfortunately, the agent we booked the cruise with misinformed us and we thought we (and our luggage) could stay on the ship until late afternoon so we didn’t make any arrangements for a place to stay and leave the luggage. Fortunately tourist information office was right in the harbor so we went there and they directed us to a small hotel nearby where we got a “day room” at a reduced rate so we could leave our luggage and crash in the air conditioned room when we got hot and tired. We wanted to take a tour of Papeete, but were told that there are none. It’s really not surprising because there isn’t much to see there. We walked around in search of nicer parts of town, but couldn’t find any within a walking distance. Quire accidentally we bumped into the French woman from the ship (wife of the Chief Justice of French Polynesia) so we asked her where wealthy people live. She said that many live in their neighborhood, which is east of Papeete, near the airport and the Intercontinental hotel, in the hills. She also said that French Polynesia is quite polarized. People are either poor or wealthy and the only middle class are the French government workers who are in Polynesia on government contracts, usually for three years.
We took a taxi to the airport at 9 pm. We thought we’d have a ton of time since the flight was at midnight. We were wrong. Papeete is one of the world’s slowest and most disorganized airports. The lines to check-in were a mile long, so was the line to passport control and then to security where the metal detectors probably weren’t working (even though they claimed they were) because they padded every person down and opened and checked every single bag. It was a very frustrating end to a wonderful trip. We have to block this last bit from our memories.
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