Arriving in Papeete!



MFT: Amazing Shower Water Pressure & Air Conditioning
LFP: Waking up at 3 am to motor through the nasty squalls

Hallo, so it was our last day of the SEA cruise and our arrival into Papeete! I had dawn watch, which was a bit of a misnomer because the only dawn we saw was a very faint brightening of the sky. The nasty squalls and bad weather continued all the way into Papeete. So dawn watch consisted of switching helmsman and lookout every 30 minutes. Not the best way to end the trip but oh well. Along the way, we even managed to pick up a passenger! A Brown Noddy (small sea bird) took refuge on our quarterdeck for the majority of the storm (at least for 12 hours). He was very cute and hopefully unhurt. We didn’t want to check too closely as he had a rather long beak. But it looked very cute to glance towards the gutter and see this little brown bird huddling down with all his feathers fluffed out.

Everyone had to frantically finish packing their bags in the morning as we motored into Papeete harbor as the students had to leave the boat by 9:30 for the last part of their trip (a week in a jungle bungalow high in a Tahiti Valley — tough life!). We finally docked by 8:30 and then by 9:30 everyone else was off the boat. It was amazing how quickly everyone left. Lots of hugs were given round and some tears. I was rather anxiously checking to make sure that my field assistant had made it to Papeete (given the stormy weather and a quick connection in Detroit). Luckily everything worked out very nicely! 

Lynn and I spent the morning repacking all my stuff (including the equipment) so things were ready to go on the plane the next day to Rangiroa. We tried to buy a new suitcase for my GPR antenna (since the wheel has been broken since the first flight to the Marshall Islands and it is slowly falling apart), but were unable to find anything in the usual places (we weren’t helped by the fact that almost everything is closed on Sunday). So we decided to wait to pack the giant gallon sized bags of sand (Taylor’s samples) till Monday. 


We left the boat after a nice lunch with the crew and staggered away to find a taxi to our hotel. We truly lucked out with the hotel. It’s called Fare Suisse, run by a Swiss Gentleman, and is amazing (especially given the price). It’s only about 15 minutes walk out of town (Papeete) with air conditioned rooms (thank god) and AMAZING water pressure in the shower. I took about a 15 or 20 minute shower after moving all the equipment to the hotel (there was tons of rain water for the last 3 days so I don’t feel too bad). We took a nap in the afternoon (jet lag & pure exhaustion from the SEA cruise!) and then went to the roulettes (food trucks) for dinner. We had a very yummy Chinese meal (I was craving something NON Polynesian). It’s been lovely to be beginning the last part of the fieldwork! The end is in sight :).

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