That's priceless! I'll have to head into Bunnings today.
After dinner at Te Moana, the evening headed downhill even further. On return to the hotel I checked the status of our outbound flight to Papeete and got the first indication of a four hour delay :evil:.
Headed to the airport about 10pm and due to road works, we had to go 270 degrees around the entire airport and so copped double the taxi fare. Check-in confirmed the delay and we were given a voucher for meals at a restaurant in town and a shuttle bus was running between there and the airport.
I include the pic on the left as, on arrival at the restaurant we were told that the voucher was good for a certain main course only (we already had dinner of course) and while we waited for some drinks to pass the time, poochie here plonked himself down and scored a rub on the tummy for my and one of my friend's shoed feet. Big mistake - flea bites ensued!!
After some napping at the restaurant, they eventually evicted us, and others and we returned to the airport. Immigration still wasn't open, so we just veged in the small check-in area that didn't have enough seats.
The RH pic above was after immigration, who eventually turned up so at least we could progress that far.
Or maybe not.
I recount here my experience at exit immigration that night (morning). 'Bizarre' is an over-used term, but that would adequately describe my experience.
Thankfully the inbound plane arrived and we boarded about 4am local.
... which meant we arrived about the same time at Papeete. cough experience continued as we got a taxi driver who blatantly tried to rip us off and when I said what the fare was supposed to be (researched, of course), he told us to get another taxi ... which fortunately was just behind.
We had the night booked a the Airport Hotel, which is up the hill a bit behind the hotel given the hour, darkness, luggage and tiredness we decided beforehand that we'd get a taxi but another time I'd just walk.
View from the airport the next morning and out my hotel window a bit earlier - the LATAM flight was just about to depart. That's Moorea, our destination, in the background. Then, another view of the airport and the breakfast at the hotel, which we groggily turned up for at about 9am. The bread and
pain au chocolate proved we were in France (sort of)