Hello from Papeete
July 5th....Papeete.....635 PM about 75 degrees
Dear Ones: Who knows how many odd keys there are on a French computer...we will see......
Air New Zealand (when it finally left) was good....even though we departed a bit after 130 AM, they served a full dinner on the flight to Tahiti:
I gave up after the bay scallop salad...moved on to some great NZ cheeses and a glass of port and wafted to the land of nod.....seats ok, not great...but of course infinitely better than in steerage (the orlap deck?)...Dawn brought me awake with a sky the color of the right hibicus on my terrace...sort of pinkish, voluptuous and ever so slightly vulgar....then landing at Faaa (every vowel pronounced), a happy little airport looking like a series of A-FRAME buildings...customs a breeze and the nice guy from Tahiti Nui met me....and began to catch me up on the few people I remember from the momentous days here. A lovely drive through a totally changed, almost transmorgified Papeete for FAAA is on one side of the town and Le Royal Tahitien out on the other.....The hotel is perfectly ok and a bit better...a sort of twisting two storey motel built around a wildly lovely garden, a pool with a sexy waterfall, a stretch of ugly black sand beach looking across to beguiling Moorea (which is pronounced mo-OR-AY-a please).
I crash into bed to be awakened local time about noon by a guy in a strange looking uniform (a bit like that one Nixon designed for his Marine guards in those awful days before the current awful days): said stalwart hands me an invitation with great aplomp: the president of French Polynesia, one excellence Oscar Manetehi Temera is requesting my presence at 700 that evening for a reception in the garden of the presidential palace...to honor the American national day and the innaugation of Tahiti Nui Airline's nonstop flight to New York.....I thought I was having DTS...but accepted...and was picked up at 545 PM in a limousine (along with 3 people already in tow) and driven to the palace.
Said palace is a lovely colonial heap, looking somehow whimsically New Orleans-Jackson Square-like...the garden is alive with a sound show with American flags playing around the palms and exotic plants...a hundred blue and red balloons are festoning the high palms, a group of 20-odd dancers (the women all dressed up in what looked vaguely like Mormon going to church clothing, the men in tux shirts and black tie)....the group from the Tuaomotos danced and danced and champagne was passed around and then a lavish buffet was unveiled (the people did not rush it like I remember certain buffets being rushed during carnival season in Vienna...everyone very decorous)....The president, a fellow who looked like he might be a phys ed instructor in the Rio Grande Valley (one with a very retrousse nose) spoke for a while....I don't remember much of what he talked about but he did let everyone know he loved American because he was mad about playing golf in Oregon.....yes, the whole evening (with my jet blahs) is greatly Alice -down-the- hole...I look dolefully at my plate of glorified puupuus and just as the American consul general starts speaking (he looks like the the late bandleader Kay Kyzer (sic?).
I can't take another moment of the pageantry and leave, telling the guards at the gate I was not well (I think the jet blahs qualify)....and flee down the street to find a taxi a mere 10 blocks away....I treading gingerly in my expensive Zegna yellow shoes feeling a bit like Cinderella though one who walked out in slippers....odd all of it...very good.....the strangest first day I have ever spent anyplace. How did they find me and why?
At any rate, I slept in, had a lovely breakfast this morning looking at Moorea on a terrace over the ugly beach, did a circle island drive (much like Tina and I had done oh so many years ago)...and all is right in the world...it feels like about 650 PM and it is 645 PM......My impressions of Tahiti are odd at this point...I am struck by the many androgynous waiters (?) not only in my dining room but also at a place we stopped for coffee...perfectly cheerful types who are greatly more feminine than any woman....they put the Gabor sisters to shame......The population of the island has grown like topsy...there are still lovely stretches though which are not peopled....the people are friendly...the weather is hot but not terribly humid and so far I am not suffering from the usual hebetude...
Costs are high, beer is good...and this might be (oh shout hoorah dear long suffering reader) the last communique for a bit...though I am tempted to try and write something a tad more scholarly at some point.....(Tahiti as everyone knows does NOT particularly inspire scholarship.....and, also as everyone also knows it is merely ONE of the islands in French Polynesia...one of the Society Islands....not the name of the nation)....but I leave you with that pedantry....and looking terrifically forward to a dinner ALL BY MYSELF save for the adrogynous staff.
-Fred
Dear Ones: Who knows how many odd keys there are on a French computer...we will see......
Air New Zealand (when it finally left) was good....even though we departed a bit after 130 AM, they served a full dinner on the flight to Tahiti:
I gave up after the bay scallop salad...moved on to some great NZ cheeses and a glass of port and wafted to the land of nod.....seats ok, not great...but of course infinitely better than in steerage (the orlap deck?)...Dawn brought me awake with a sky the color of the right hibicus on my terrace...sort of pinkish, voluptuous and ever so slightly vulgar....then landing at Faaa (every vowel pronounced), a happy little airport looking like a series of A-FRAME buildings...customs a breeze and the nice guy from Tahiti Nui met me....and began to catch me up on the few people I remember from the momentous days here. A lovely drive through a totally changed, almost transmorgified Papeete for FAAA is on one side of the town and Le Royal Tahitien out on the other.....The hotel is perfectly ok and a bit better...a sort of twisting two storey motel built around a wildly lovely garden, a pool with a sexy waterfall, a stretch of ugly black sand beach looking across to beguiling Moorea (which is pronounced mo-OR-AY-a please).
I crash into bed to be awakened local time about noon by a guy in a strange looking uniform (a bit like that one Nixon designed for his Marine guards in those awful days before the current awful days): said stalwart hands me an invitation with great aplomp: the president of French Polynesia, one excellence Oscar Manetehi Temera is requesting my presence at 700 that evening for a reception in the garden of the presidential palace...to honor the American national day and the innaugation of Tahiti Nui Airline's nonstop flight to New York.....I thought I was having DTS...but accepted...and was picked up at 545 PM in a limousine (along with 3 people already in tow) and driven to the palace.
Said palace is a lovely colonial heap, looking somehow whimsically New Orleans-Jackson Square-like...the garden is alive with a sound show with American flags playing around the palms and exotic plants...a hundred blue and red balloons are festoning the high palms, a group of 20-odd dancers (the women all dressed up in what looked vaguely like Mormon going to church clothing, the men in tux shirts and black tie)....the group from the Tuaomotos danced and danced and champagne was passed around and then a lavish buffet was unveiled (the people did not rush it like I remember certain buffets being rushed during carnival season in Vienna...everyone very decorous)....The president, a fellow who looked like he might be a phys ed instructor in the Rio Grande Valley (one with a very retrousse nose) spoke for a while....I don't remember much of what he talked about but he did let everyone know he loved American because he was mad about playing golf in Oregon.....yes, the whole evening (with my jet blahs) is greatly Alice -down-the- hole...I look dolefully at my plate of glorified puupuus and just as the American consul general starts speaking (he looks like the the late bandleader Kay Kyzer (sic?).
I can't take another moment of the pageantry and leave, telling the guards at the gate I was not well (I think the jet blahs qualify)....and flee down the street to find a taxi a mere 10 blocks away....I treading gingerly in my expensive Zegna yellow shoes feeling a bit like Cinderella though one who walked out in slippers....odd all of it...very good.....the strangest first day I have ever spent anyplace. How did they find me and why?
At any rate, I slept in, had a lovely breakfast this morning looking at Moorea on a terrace over the ugly beach, did a circle island drive (much like Tina and I had done oh so many years ago)...and all is right in the world...it feels like about 650 PM and it is 645 PM......My impressions of Tahiti are odd at this point...I am struck by the many androgynous waiters (?) not only in my dining room but also at a place we stopped for coffee...perfectly cheerful types who are greatly more feminine than any woman....they put the Gabor sisters to shame......The population of the island has grown like topsy...there are still lovely stretches though which are not peopled....the people are friendly...the weather is hot but not terribly humid and so far I am not suffering from the usual hebetude...
Costs are high, beer is good...and this might be (oh shout hoorah dear long suffering reader) the last communique for a bit...though I am tempted to try and write something a tad more scholarly at some point.....(Tahiti as everyone knows does NOT particularly inspire scholarship.....and, also as everyone also knows it is merely ONE of the islands in French Polynesia...one of the Society Islands....not the name of the nation)....but I leave you with that pedantry....and looking terrifically forward to a dinner ALL BY MYSELF save for the adrogynous staff.
-Fred
posted by ultimatetraveler at 6:49 AM
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