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South Pacific Trip
Part two of two.
FRIDAY, 11/2/01: Check in 12:22AM, getting WINDOW 35L. Ham and cheese and Hinano for 780F, using ALL change. Talk to Nadia (?) and rabbit-toothed husband. Sit, bored, and board 2AM. Bumpy flight, frosted window, guy sick and asking for doctor, woman next to me odd, calm at 77 minutes left, but going DOWN by 6:51! I miscalculate? 7:03 into grim gray clouds. "Jet stream pushed us." #2 FIRST sight of Easter Island at 7:10: cows and trees! Local time 12:10PM. Gray "normal" out. So it'll be a LONG trip back AGAINST wind! Sit and be sprayed and "You can go" at 12:28. #3 incredibly phallic phony THING at airport at 12:34. L.s taken to Hangaroa Hotel at 1:04. #4 at 1:06. #5 Main Square at 1:09. Into room 111 at 1:30. Out, unpacked at 2:22, taking pills for "breakfast." Decide to confirm ticket by walking to Lan Chile but find it's CLOSED with woman working inside, and it's a LONG way around "block," lots closed, lots empty, on ill-scaled map, and get to hotel to find tour will come BACK for me, and go outside and there they are at 3:05. I'm on sixth and by 3:20 we're twenty. 520-meter hill highest on other side of island. Three volcanoes, last erupted 3000BC. 4000 people. #6 all town from volcano at 3:42. 4-km airstrip for shuttle emergency landing. Four eras: 1) settlement 5-7th Century, 2) MOAI, 10-15 Century; 3) clan wars 16-17 Century; 4) birdmen 17-19 Century. #8 Orongo, birdmen at 3:50. #9 crown (?) 3:57. #15 birdmen island 4:03. Back to bus at 5PM. 5:34 at Tahai. #26 "early type of head" at 5:56. #28 ORIGINAL retaining walls! 6PM. #33 cemetery AFAR and under platforms at 6:10. Off bus FIRST at 6:20. #34 walk to my room at Otai Hotel at 6:22. Start typing 6:29, waiting for Iorana Restaurant opening that guide (same for next two days) recommended, ending now at 6:45PM, sleepy. Leave at 6:52, and it's just half a block from the corner. At 7 order the Menu de Casa with tuna frito, which comes with rice colored with corn, green-bean bits, and red-pepper bits; avocado slices, tomato slices, grated cabbage and chopped lettuce, so if there's anything wrong with the water, I would have gotten it by now. She suggested 3500$ would be 7, no 6, dollars American, and beer is $2 apiece, and all is VERY good, but she gives me $12 back from my $20, so the beers must have been $1, but I leave $1 tip anyway; I might be back. Watch school kids, who attend from 8AM-7PM, and everyone says I was dining alone because it was so early. Out at 7:50, VERY mellow! Watch waves along road to Armada de Chile sign and home at 8:38. Start to j/o at 8:45, playing with lamps and rubber bands and resolving to take a long time, but I cum at 9:05 and finish at 9:15. SIPPED tap water with Pravachol, tasted AWFUL. Bed 9:20PM.
SATURDAY, 11/3/01: Pee at 3:03. Pee at 8:02, slept 10.5 hours! Up at 9:03, to breakfast 9:20 because there's no hot water to shower. Back at 9:42, last out of breakfast room, "chocolate tomorrow," shit a bit, and out at 10. I'm lost (turned down FIRST road, not CORRECT road) at 10:20 at Takai, ask a courteous snack-bar woman who takes me to the edge of the moai area to show me the building, and a few minutes later a stampede of about 15 horses, chased by a rider, thunders past, picturesque against the surf, too fast for any photos. Into museum at 10:30: There are 887 moai, 288 on platforms, 397 in quarry. Biggest 21.6 m at 182 tons. Biggest STANDING is 10 m, "Paro." 53 houses in Orongo. 481 petroglyphs. Read a good English translation of the Spanish museum, then video best and leave at 12, Quebecois posing for last photo, sympathizing with my being alone. To market at 12:15, just closing, nothing of great interest. Wanted to share cab, but he said it was only 500$, with 600$/$1! I said he could treat me for that. To Artisanal 12:30-12:45, $40 for small kava-kava too much. To church. Roll #17: #1 Mary at 12:50. #2 birdsaint at 12:53. Masses at 9 and 11 Sunday. Across to supermarket and ham and cheese on roll and Cristal beer is UNDER $1.50, getting 380$ back from $2! To hotel at 1:10 to pee, and down to beach when a man calls from family festival, "Are you hungry?" I wave and go in: aunt of nephew, 33, killed in motorcycle accident one week ago being feted: "He's happier now, up there." Get a Coke, a huge plate of meat and sweet potato baked in an umu (which I hear about that very afternoon), and wonderful green-bean salad. A family funerary feast! Take pictures of the people. #7 incredible surf before "Armada de Chile" and beyond at 2:01. Watch surf and surfers and Reina del Mar freighter's boat and Lan-Chile plane land to 2:25. #8 "my street" at 2:28. Out of room at 2:40 and onto bus at 2:45:00. 16 of us by 3:05. #9 Akiva from bus at 3:23, not taken: bad angle. #9 whole group, #10 "best" eyes and intact neck at 3:35, in RAIN. #13 sign says "Sector Ana Te Pahu" at 4:17: the cave with vegetation growing in it, in many sections, mostly videoed in dark. 150 topknots of red scoria for kings. #16 beach from topknot hill. Three Lan-Chile flights from Santiago and two from Tahiti per week. To 4:58 to bus to Incan-style walls at 5:15. #18 and #19 FALLEN moai, first with FINGERS at side at 5:19. Built in 14th Century! #23 is 12th Century at 5:30. "Mo ai" is "Who was it?" asked of whatever they were named before, so they BECAME "moai." Leave last place, last, at 5:44, camera out of battery after only 6 minutes? Too much use of EIS? To hotel at 6:14, almost last, and check that hot water IS hot, though it wasn't before. Shower for tonight, Quebecois offered to let me join them at dinner at 8 before show at 10 at Hotel Hangaroa, at point, so I can go early and watch HUGE surf in clean shirt and pants, buying ticket and dinner THERE, paying for tour at hotel tomorrow morning OR afternoon, which means I don't have to check out until AFTER full-day tour! Start typing at 6:45 and end at 7:10, ready to dress for evening. Leave 7:18, watching waves until 7:50, TV about British football hooliganism until 8:30, dinner with the mother, son, and granddaughter, of which they supplied the fried tuna appetizer and I supplied the white wine for $18. I rattle on about Undurraga in Chile when he's worked in Chile since February; they're divorced; my chicken Matavari (with pineapple) is quite good and they like their food. I pay for my $15 ticket with the meal, and it comes to $53 and I leave a 10% tip just moments before 10PM when they've reserved us four front-row seats in the day room for the Kari Kari dancers, and after my quick pee it starts at 10:02, reasonably sexy, and Nils L. the next day said it was the best of the four he's seen in Hawaii, Rarotonga, Tahiti, and here. Battery almost runs out after 22 minutes of filming, with some of the waves outside. Dancing's over at 11:07 and I walk back in the dark to the hotel at 11:30, helped by a light that came on at the hotel at the darkest part of the lawn, and then from the Armada de Chile at the darkest part of the street! Battery to refresh. THREE swallows of water with Pravachol. Bed 11:45PM, one of the latest!
SUNDAY, 11/4/01: Wake at 2:10. Pee at 5:15. Wake at 7:45 and lie and brood and count days. Up at 8:15. Shit and brood and wash to 8:50. Resolve: NO LONGER TRAVEL ALONE! I brood too much. Breakfast 8:40-9, no hot chocolate, but decent banana bread with a banana as fruit, no meat but four tiny slices of cheese. To church at 9:11, no one in office. It's SUNNY! Leave church at 9:20: crowded, dogs barking, no particular music. Still no one in office. Sit on steps for van at 9:50. Twenty-fourth tourist on at 10:18. Buy 500 ml water for 500$, get 200S back from $1, have 580$. All finish shopping at 10:30. To Ahu Vaihu at 10:41. #30 fallen moai. Hanga=Bay, Roa=Long, so town is Long Bay. The circle is a "paina" or meeting place. Hotu Matua, first king, "dreamed of isle to east," and had long, red hair! Overpopulation with 15-20,000 people CAUSED 1500s wars. #31 from side at 10:56. #32 man versus waves at 11:03. Leave at 11:07. 1902-1950 Chile leased island to British firm as a sheep farm! #33 Akahanga, King's Burial, at 11:15. Three stages of ahu-building: recycled material, here. Eyes: first slits, then rounded at site, coral insert makes it a "living face." Only SIX eyes found. #34 broken head at 11:35. #35 NATURAL sculpture at beachfront at 11:37. Moai TOUCHING GROUND before platform LOST mana. Work wasted. Junk left. Leave 11:54. CHILEAN hawks and finches only here. Hawks to eat rats, ate birds' eggs, few native birds survived. #36 Ahu Tongariki at 12:06. 1960 tidal wave DESTROYED this. 1982 Japan exhibition of moai led to 1992 restoration. 6-7 meters high, largest is 9 meters. #37 platform at 12:04. Roll #18: #1 back at 12:27. Leave 12:35. #3 start of Rano Raraku at 12:42. #4 back to Ahu Tongariki at 12:46. #5 kneeling moai 12:50. #6 head, SHORT ears, ROUND head, as OLDEST, 10-11th Century, like Marquesan statues. Full lips and beard. #8 at 1:03. #9 nipples and ship at 1:05. #11 bodies totally buried at 1:15. #12 22-meter biggest at 1:23, better later. #14 big beard 1:27. #15 INSIDE crater 1:34. 800 meters across and 3 meters deep, second largest. Totaro reeds inside, from South America, BUT growing HERE for 40,000 years! #16 PEOPLE on left at 1:37, and ocean beyond. #17 teens in weeds 1:41. #18 and PEOPLE at TOP of picture at 1:45. Start lunch 1:52, good beer, lots of beef and rice and potatoes and an orange, finish at 2:40, chatting with L.s. #19 overview with 22-meter one up right at 2:45 on way out. Ahu Te Pito Kura at 3:01. #20 Paro, biggest erected, but missionaries pushed it over as "pagan god," but will be re-erected in next few years: "Come back." #21 magnet deviated at "navel of world," where I felt the vibrations from the waves on the beach below at 3:10. #22 fisherman at 3:11. Leave 3:21. Arrive Anakena at 3:27. Be back on van at 4:30. #23 Anakena overview at 3:30. #24 and #25 engravings on back at 3:37. #26 great ears and fingers at 3:40. #28 peak above at 3:58. #29 at 4PM. Walk up this hill, walk along that hill, video site, buy Escudo beer for $1 and 400S, saying THAT is 1000$. Catch peeing native, watch bather, write this at 4:25, TIRED. Leave 4:33. My bus leaves at 8:40PM. Back to hotel at 5:03. LIE DOWN at 5:05. Shower 5:45-6:15. Type this to 6:50, wondering when I'm going to be knocked up to pay my Aku Aku Tours bill of $60 for two half-day tours. Not hungry; getting antsy about long night-ride on plane. Guess I'll start packing. Pack to 7:09 and decide to sort through puzzles and throw out "done" ones. Throw away TEN old sheets by 7:22. All ready to get stuff from safe (and pay bill?) at 7:33. So I go to office: closed! Look around and this charmingly ugly French girl, with the authority of a six-day stay already, says, "They're gone." OH? I say I need my stuff from the safe, she looks concerned, then a woman from the kitchen comes out, opens the safe, essentially says, "Take what you want," and I show her my passport picture to prove it's mine. WHEW! Back to type this at 7:45---what do I do NOW? At LEAST relieved that File 5 hasn't run out YET, and, essentially, only 14 days left! Look at tickets, itinerary, and passport to 8:20. Go to desk. Leave key. Wait. 8:30 van comes, but goes to back of lot. Then he comes to get me, has me sign a slip for ONE tour for $50, I think, and takes me and two others to the airport at 9, giving them and then me a sea-shell lei. Get seat 19L, order beer and HOT ham and cheese for $5 and they somehow give me $1 back at 9:25. Maybe the rate's changed. 9:33 lotsa shops and no buy. Plane LANDS at 10:12? Board at 11PM. Estimated at 6:20! About 1AM! 11:12 take Pravachol and sleeping pill, which should be taken 30 minutes before bedtime. Off at 11:21. Try to sleep at 11:30, but it's bouncing a lot even though I'm right over the center of the wing! Pee at 1:20, guy beside me moved to empty seat, so I have two, but it doesn't work for sleeping. Pee at 4:56 and getting some juice for dry throat, miserable from not sleeping and constant bouncing. BRIGHT moon at last as I can finally see stars above cloud-cover.
MONDAY, 11/5/01: Potato chips and chocolate chip cookie and juice at 5:22AM, not on way down YET. Going down at 5:30. Land 5:38 AT LAST in Papeete and change watch to 12:38AM. Through passport line at 12:57, get bags after long wait at 1:11 and, as I exit, MY cab driver waves at me and shakes my hand! To hotel at 1:21; when he charges 2000F I balk, but he takes me in and the Chinese at the desk says it should be 2500F from the airport! So he IS my friend? He writes his cell-phone number for me---"If you should want to call me." Get room 605. QUEEN-sized bed, small sitting area, am I being charged more? Air conditioner on, wash face, and get into bed at 1:40. Wake at 2:50, 4:05, 5:42, and up at 6:30 to skim TV, SUNNY day out. Shit and dress at 6:50. Down at 7 with 5-item list: 1) My room IS 99XXF, 2) My bag was kept behind the desk! I take it up. 3) Breakfast could be served in the room, but it's not included. 4) All-day 4x4 tour leaving at 8:30 or 9AM is 8000F, while other, leaving at 9:15, is 7500F, both including lunch, though the first one doesn't seem to say that. Confirm the cheaper one. So four are off list by 7:10. Go look for breakfast at 7:15, maybe the 5-peopled place on the waterfront? See a sign for a roll for 300F, order a middle-sized Sprite for 170, and somehow my croissant is only 140F. Eat it, but then buy a ham and cheese sandwich "with special sauce" for 150F, so the croissant was a real ripoff. Try Nouvelle Frontieres for Bora Bora trip, but they suggest Air Tahiti across from the Market, which I'd been through a few times already: colorful, not yet set up completely. Tried 3 more ATMs to NO avail! Firm up Village Pauline on Bora Bora from 7:10AM at airport tomorrow to 4:30PM Wednesday, when my lagoon tour will let me off at the airport; she really had to rush things at 8:45 so I could start my tour at 9:15, thank goodness I scheduled the LATER tour! Finish with tour-making at 8:40 and back to hotel at 8:50 to put cap and jacket and new film into bag, wash face and put on suntan lotion, unload bags to hide things, though they made my bed before I got back, when I ate my breakfast sandwich from my bag while I got things together for the tour. (Just drew the curtains aside to check sunset: long gone now at 6:11PM, but it couldn't have been very colorful from low clouds.) Sit in lobby at 9:10 and she stops outside about 9:12. Pick up three older French in some parking lot! #30 valley at 10:06. #31 Topatari Falls at 10:24. Wild hibiscus leaves come out yellow, change to orange, and fall off RED each day. Miconia, purple and green leaves, introduced by American in 1926, now ALL OVER. #32 Vaiharuru Falls at 10:36, with video. #33 Puraha Falls at 10:43. #34 at 10:56. #35 waterfall lines. #37 map at 11:32 at lunch place. Lunch of ham and cheese sandwich, apple tart, and multifruit juice 11:35-12:15, French talking a lot. Roll #19: #1: view from campground at Farehape to Hotel at Maroto, which happened to have its restaurant open that afternoon for the car behind us. #2 "geographic/history" petroglyph of sun and pirogue. #3 general view at 12:48. #4 Maroto, on leaving at 1:01. MAPE tree holds all the epiphytes. #5 from 1700 meters altitude at tunnel, highest point is 2241 meters, 1:42. #6 Natural Lake at 2:14. #7 and #8 Blue Lake at 2:33. They always stop for smoking. I'm feeling SLIGHTLY nauseous from movement. #9 parrot's beaks with flash---too far? at 2:54. WONDERFUL ending of colorful croton-leaves, bright-red leaves I got on video, multi-petalled hibiscus BRIGHT red, berries to be picked and eaten, purple-green Miconia, exotic trees, guava, bananas, papaya, whole island a blooming botanical garden, MUCH more lush than Amazon. Onto ROAD at 3:25 and past constant buildings, road construction, and traffic to hotel and room at 4:26, TIRED. Shower to 4:55, watch TV, Tempo, with a French-speaking movie on physics from the Manhattan Project to the Supersonic Supercollider, and brush teeth to 5:47. Then type this to 6:26, thinking to have a VERY small, early dinner to prepare for awful 3:20AM flight day-after-tomorrow. Write (last) three cards to 6:52. Out to look for place for dinner, feeling VERY lethargic but I MUST eat, and places either have very loud music or are totally empty, like Moana Iti, which might be good. By that time I'm close enough to the L'Api'zzeria, which intrigued me from the 4x4, and it has a bunch of people. Dither between the ham special, something else, or the pizza, which I really don't have an appetite for, but since this IS a pizza place, get the Regina, or Reina as before, and it's good, but I mope about eating it: the overworked trainee and too-smiling trainer, the supercilious single male complaining when the trainer pinches his cheek too hard; the Indian trio, one of which I'm sure has shoe-polished his bald crown; the feckless youth and his somewhat older girlfriend, the whiny kid with the pretty blonde mother, the skinny waiters and waitresses, but I pay by credit card and get back at 8:52. Bed at 9:02.
TUESDAY, 11/6/01: Wake at 12:28. Pee at 2:04. Drink water. Pee at 3:04. Look at watch at 4:15. Turn watch-alarm on and take out earplugs at 4:45, look at watch at 5:15 and somewhat after shit a vaguely-yellow, vaguely-loose shit, but I needed a little cleaning out. Counted days and meals and flights. Then take to ears with tweezers it took me a long time to find. Now finish typing this at 5:47AM on 11/6, FINALLY completing the everlasting File 5, surely enough room left in three files for 12 days. Open door to room-temperature outside air, sun bright on clouds over Moorea, cloudier than yesterday, but still not stormy-looking for my trip to Bora Bora. Start repacking at 5:49AM. Sort and choose and pack and repack, and at 6:24 come to the conclusion that I can only locate twenty-FOUR rolls of film, not twenty-FIVE! Did I START with 24? Did I lose one? Is one somehow in another bit of luggage I haven't searched? What a PAIN! Or, paranoia, did someone, somehow, TAKE one roll? Could I have DROPPED one or LEFT one somewhere? Is a puzzlement! Finish at 6:41, packing this away last, ready for downstairs to probably pay bill and get taxi to Faaa for Bora Bora! Had a jolt when I saw this going through x-ray machine, but thank goodness all's still here! Down at 6:45, NO bill! They really TRUST me, but then they have my bag. Taxi man waits, rubbing in again that I should have taken his advice to stay in the 5000F motel near the airport. To airport at 6:59, $20 or 700F for 1500F ride. Check-in at 7:04, boarding at 8. 625F for tuna sandwich (on white bread, ugh) and a decent orange juice at 7:10. My bag marked "controlée," but I go outside to eat with it. Finish at 7:25, international hippies still floating around. Do puzzle. Board at 8:07, told "left side" for Bora Bora, contrary to what I thought: right side to be away from the sun. 70-seater plane, free seating, not quite 1/2 full, gay French couple in two windows in front of me. Off at 8:20 for 40-minute flight. #10-#14 fabulous shots of Moorea to 8:22. #15 and #16 a mystery isle that may be Tetiaroa, 8:46, since it's nearby but not clearly marked on my map. #17 another at 8:49. #18 is Raiatea, and #19 and #20 are Tahaa from 8:51-8:54. Bora Bora #21-26 from 8:56-8:58. Land at 9AM exactly. Fabulous surf-ringed green lagoons, nicely spaced houses, many seemingly without a major village. To transfer ferryboat 9:16-9:31, GREAT trip as I'm outdoors below and then on deck above. Onto bus at 9:33, and move at 9:35 but sit to 9:51 waiting for four others. Arrive at Village Pauline at 9:59, room VINI, palatial: double bed, big room, outdoor shower, drinkable water, fan. Settle in to 10:23, deciding to bike NOW to try to use the cool morning rather than the hotter afternoon. Bike for 4 hours is 1300F, leave 10:30. At 10:51 I find I PASSED Matira Point by ten minutes. Back, #27 central heights from Matira Point 11:06. Back to "turn spot" at 11:15. #28 unknown (mapless) motu at 11:21. #29 on private property to avoid WIRES (NONE on Moorea, all buried) at 11:38. #30 11:48 with nice house at base. Highest point at 727 meters is Mt. Otenomo, the name of the local tour company. #31 smaller (?) at noon. Cycle getting me sore and tired and thirsty, when a far-distant person starts waving her arms and coming from the beach to the road, and it's Wendy and Warren! Cycling around the island the other way, staying at the Sheraton, and we chat nicely for about half an hour, leaving at 1:32! I'll clearly not make it back by 2:30. #32 mountain at 1:40. Just south of town I MUST stop for a Schweppes Lemon and a Grapefruit (not as tasty) for 250F each, wonderfully cold, to 2:25. My legs and butt are SORE. Pass Alain and Linda's and look for Village Pauline but come to Bamboo House without finding it! Back, looking carefully, but I'm at A&L again! How can this BE? Back, looking VERY carefully, and finally ASK someone, who says it's BEYOND Bamboo House. I say, "It can't be." He replies: "I've lived here all my life, I KNOW where it is." OK, OK. I go farther south and there it IS, perfectly well marked, just not where the map SAYS it is. In at 3 and the charming receptionist says I'm the first who's mentioned this, AND that I should write a letter to Air Tahiti praising Taira, because she phoned HIM to make sure I got the Lagoon trip tomorrow that'll let me off at the airport! Then he suggests I take the bicycle up to the Hotel Bora Bora: "You'll be there before you think you will be," he says with his charming what-I-take-to-be-Russian accent. OK, out to road and to hotel by 3:10, locking bike on handy chain and walk three meters to see the bike-rack! Better to camouflage it with others, so I relock it. First order a 400F pink lemonade, which is sheer heaven (lemon with grenadine), then choose the 1800F club sandwich, which comes warmly toasted, with bacon and fried egg and chicken separated by bulky not-so-great tomatoes, a bit of lettuce, and another slice of toast. Have a second pink lemonade, then a glass of water, and they accept my Visa card without question. Youngish couples (one from Boston), oldish couples (one from Chicago), and a lesbian couple provide the view, along with a tattooed man with a dumb wench, though someone at the bar says, "Yes he IS Tommy Lee, the rock singer." Oh. Finish at 4:25, figuring I've kept the bike out long enough, #33 at 4:34. Return bike, and in to open fridge (which wasn't locked) and put ice cubes in two glasses of water and drink three MORE glasses, which makes EIGHT by 5PM. Collapse on bed, recovering from SEVERE right inner-thigh cramp three times on down-pedal, but thankfully going away. Sore tomorrow! Out across road in shorts and slippers to watch sunset at 5:15, taking two MORE glasses of water and peed once. The Paul Gauguin "takes over" whichever bay it's in. Ratty music EVERYWHERE: shuttle boat, houses, streets, bar at Hotel Bora Bora. Dogs and bugs come INSTANTLY to silent sunset sitter. #34 totally cloudless at 5:43:21. Kayaker carries his kayak ashore on his head (that'd make a great cryptogram!). Sunset ABOUT 6:12, kayakers kayaking to see it? Color totally over by 6:20. Talk to NIR, from ISRAEL (it means, poetically, just-plowed field---yeah!), Sasha is the half-Chinese from New Caledonia who took his name from Sasha Distel, the French singer, though this Sasha doesn't sing. Great chat with Nir about City of Joy---Calcutta---made into a movie with Patrick Swayze in 1984, about starving families from Bihar trying to survive, until 6:42, while I had to have lunch at Hotel Bora Bora because Sasha's Snacks wasn't open until 6:30. Back to Vini to drink a lovely glass of refrigerated water, video two of the three geckos at my two fluorescent lights gobbling bugs, which actually can come up through the wide cracks in the floor! Finish this at 7:35, debating whether to "snack" or not, or just go to bed. Oh, Nir told me about 7000F tour, picking me up at 9AM, going snorkeling, shark-feeding, ray-walking, no towels supplied, leaving me off at airport at 3PM for 3:45 flight! Couldn't extract anything from my right ear, where I felt---maybe a small ant?---like I brushed off my feet before I learned to SUSPEND them from the upturned catamaran on which I sat to watch the sunset. But the crawling feeling seems to have stopped. Guess I'll go over to check out the Snack at 7:40PM. Total darkness; nothing doing. On my way back to my room, a Polynesian woman stands in reception area. "Qui cherchez-vous?" "I---was just looking for something to eat." "The Snack Bar is closed tonight." "Oh." "Would you like some bread?" "Are you connected with this place?" "Oh, here's Sasha, he'll give you something." He makes a ham and cheese sandwich stuffed with chopped salad, which he sprinkles with oil, asking if it's enough. MORE than enough. A large beer? "Put it on my bill?" "No, this is separate, you must pay me tomorrow." "How much?" "700; take some bananas; leave so I can shut off the lights." A man with a "taxi" badge asks if he's open, and he says no, and the lights go out and taxi man leaves. I type this to 8PM, gnawing on at least a foot of sandwich. NEVER KNOW!! Now it's RAINING at 8:06!! It stops quickly. Eat and read New Yorker until I'm tired and bloated with food and drink at 8:55PM. Bed at 9 and out at 9: how symmetric! Get to sleep fairly quickly.
WEDNESDAY, 11/7/01: Wake at 1:30, again at 3:55, again at 4:55, and pee in the sink. From then I lie in bed and doze, and count destinations and days again and again. I NOW have that "idle time" of which I dreamed when I was scurrying from one island to another, but I can't do NOTHING, because then I brood and worry. Can't get Actualism started. Finally decide to get up at 6:10AM, wondering if they'll have anything like breakfast, thinking, "Oh, another day of snorkeling with the sharks and rays, then another island, then more planning, then another island." Really in a FUNK, so I decide to catch up with this by 6:17 and then read the guidebook on Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora. 7:06: Did that. I guess I'm just about sight-seed out! Nothing seemed interesting to read; I seemed to miss nothing of importance. Ready for Fiji and new territory. But, as usual, I can rely on EACH DAY to supply new and exciting UNEXPECTED pleasures. Guess I'll shower before I dress. 7:30: remarkably, no muscle soreness or arm-redness from that bicycle ride yesterday---unless it takes a day to appear. Shower interesting: hot water from the gasometer, cold breezes from outside, but effective. Until suntan lotion pre-9AM snorkeling. Too bad: SECOND map gives PROPER Village Pauline location! 8:06: ridiculously long time to sort things out for snorkel-trip and flight, putting on bathing suit, diving shirt, and jellies in preparation. Now to look for breakfast and pay bills? 8:09: HA! Forgot shoes and socks! Must go in BLUE bag, since A&K is full! 8:43 pay 700F to Sasha, who asks if I want breakfast, heating up yesterday's bread and TWICE reducing it in size: "I get fat!" I protest. Big glass of pineapple juice, two more bananas, three slices of pineapple, all for $3, which he seemed happy to accept. Nir makes my bill for the tour at 7000F, forgetting about my bike yesterday? I don't remind him. Back for a last pee and take bags to entrance to finish my pineapple. Sasha VERY sympathetic about my being from New York. Truck comes about 9:05 and picks up others, including "the beard line (guys with beards)" from my place. We leave at 9:20, 19 of us for a "perfect fit" of 2 & 3 & 3 & 4 & 4 & 3, the last of the last 3 being me, where the boat is deepest and my bag-bottom gets wet so that when I put it into plastic, it drips down to the bottom and wets my bag even more, including VERY close to my tickets and a lot of the New Yorkers. We go on the ropes and then the Japanese girl is BEYOND the rope, and we ALL are, and the guide laughs and says the rope is to keep the PEOPLE in place, not the sharks! Then we're taken to a LANE of coral with a current CARRYING us past the fire coral and other coral and fish, to the beach, where some walk and others, me, ride to the lunch place, where they cook and we picnic from 12-1, half-dayers off at 12:30, and I find the laptop bag is wet, but it STILL works! New Yorker wet 20%, damn! Wait at 1 for boat to go. 1:26 quick rain to 1:35. Board 1:53!! #35 think she BLOCKED beard at 2:05. #36 I think I gottim at 2:32. To airport at 2:38. Finish cleanup by 2:54, JUST when shuttle boat arrives and counter is jammed. Check in at 3:03. Board 3:45. #37 Bora Bora at 3:55. Change film. Roll #20: #1-#2 Bora Bora at 3:57. #3-#4 Tahaa at 4:00. #5-#6 Moorea 4:27. #7-#8 Papeete at 4:30. Land at 4:32. ANOTHER arrival waiting for luggage. On curb at 4:50 and NO taxi! Wait. But THEN he waves at 4:59, saying I should have looked for him, and to hotel 5:13. He WILL come for me at 1AM! Unpack things to DRY, take sleeping pill at 5:33. 5:34PM: FIND my 25th roll of film! Shower, set wake-up call for 12:30, and bed at 5:58. But can't sleep. Look at clock at hour 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.
THURSDAY, 11/8/01: Up at 12. Packing at 12:32AM: No call yet, so I phone and ask him to confirm time for flight 45. He calls back and asks, "To Los Angeles?" "No, flight 45 to Nadi, Fiji." "Oh, I call back." He rings me, but no one is there when I answer. I dial 9 for reception. "Yes, 3:20AM." "Is it on time?" "3:20AM." "Is it on schedule?" "Yes, on schedule." Wow, what confidence I have now! 12:50AM: Phone rings: "OK, your wakeup call at half-past midnight, ha ha." "Thank you." "OK, you're welcome." Out at 12:55, paying with Visa, NO phone charges at ALL on bill. Into cab at 1AM. "2000F." I give him $20, THEN say, "You owe me 200, here's 800F, so give me $10." He's dubious, but he DOES. I have NO francs and a total of $71 ENTIRELY. Dinner here? Visa? My big bag is 19.5 kg, with limit of 20. Get seat 31K and think it isn't a window at 1:34. At 1:46 in the upstairs snack shop I find there's a 500F Visa minimum, with sandwiches at 480F. No problem. 895F for ham and cheese (which didn't taste like ham and cheese) and Schweppes Lemon and a Mars bar. Finish my "dinner" with pills at 2:15. Tired. THAT BABY is on board! Germans talk LOUDLY! I lie down on bench while place fills with transit from my flight. Board 3:20, AT window! 1:50 flight, off at 3:45. Land at 5:27; I tried to doze, but couldn't, watching the leggy guy next to me eat his breakfast, seeing first rays of light as we land. There's a long line as EVERYONE'S off, but then they say transit can wait by themselves. I pass time with puzzle nicely (now that I have the energy to THINK, as I didn't last night!). It's raining HARD and WITH umbrella I get VERY WET boarding at 6:20! Off at 6:30, 3:30 flight. #9 "normal" island at 8:31, said to be Vevau, part of Samoa. 9:10: uninhabited atolls, lots of them, and then islands! To 9:17. LINES in water at 9:23. Floating weeds, reefs? 9:25 BIG islands, one Bora Bora-like in #10, and another bigger, like Moorea, #11 at 9:28. These are PART of Fiji islands. Sea is FULL of islands! Thirty minutes across Fiji. #12 Fiji farms at 9:35. Interior mostly hilly jungle, then #13 Fiji interior at 9:42. Erosion and logging mar hillsides. #14 prosperity at 9:48. Land at 9:49, or 7:49 local time. $20F airport departure tax IN Fiji dollars required. Moody's Namenalala is listed "in north," but very expensive. Most hotels over $100 per night, but that's all Fiji dollars. 8:10 in line at ATM and HOPE. GET CASH at 8:20 and roped in by tour agent. I make list of 1) Tonga, maybe Saturday 7AM-8PM, 2) Apia in American Samoa: "No Nandi-Apia this month." 3) Noumea, not reliable service, may be two or three days delayed, and 4) Vila, in Vanuatu, who cancels all the time. Then she takes me to Royal Tongan Airlines to find that the plane Saturday has a ONE-HOUR turnaround, or I'd have to come back on Tuesday, which doesn't work. She signs me up for a museum tour this afternoon that SHE will guide with an hour's ride down the coast for $100, and a Sunday boat tour with lunch and snorkeling (and probably sharks and rays). She's still planning at 9AM, and at 9:40 she calls for the free pickup to West's Motor Inn near the airport for $99/night, and I pick up brochures from the Information Office and get $800 MORE in cash, since it might be the last chance I have, though it looks from the card suspiciously like a "cash withdrawal," which probably starts earning ridiculous interest as of NOW. To car at 9:46, waiting for a Canadian couple who've spent five days in Rarotonga. Into room 132 at 10:05, NOT at pool, tipping $2 for bag. Unpack and study Fiji book to 11:15. Down to pay $4.95 for a charger-plug converter, find the water is OK, and put passport and airline tickets in safe. Start typing this at 11:25, moving air-conditioning thermostat higher from 18 to 20, still too cold, and it's 11:58AM and time for my lunch, with morning pills that I DID have in my carry-on bag but hadn't realized at breakfast time. HOT outside! Fish and chips lunch, with beer and fruit juice, all under $10US. Up at 12:48 to ready for Ka Levu museum tour. Leave 1:15. #15-#16 Hindu Temple at 1:19. Few flowers, lots of sugarcane fires, harvest of the burnt stalks about to begin before the rainy season. Into Ka Levu at 2:12. #17 canoe in museum 2:34. Lots of video of sexy bodies and cannibalism features. #18 rich Indian's house from truck at 3:46 (out of museum 3:11). #19 killing stone with Joe at Tavuni Hill Fort, a Tongan fortification, at 4:19. Fijian Resort, he says, has fire-walking ceremony 7:30-8 tonight). Out at 4:45. #21-22 trains for Steve H. at 5:13. SAME Indian mother and three kids at roadside trying to sell green bananas. Corrugated aluminum siding painted BRIGHT yellow. 6:13 everyone at the bar and around the pool says no to my suggestion some might want to see the fire-walking ritual, but husband says he'll take me anyway, so I'm up at 6:21 to dress and drink lovely cold water and partly recharge battery to leave at 6:30 on the dot and get there at 7:30---to be told it's OVER. He catches up with the bus of fire-walkers from Beqa (pronounced Benkey) and they say they're doing it 6:30 Tuesday, after which he promises me a kava party at his house. Back in dark and maddening headlights at 8:25. Sort pills for the final days. Down to eat at 9:26, after watching some television, including the beautiful Weiss face in The Profiler, to find snacks stopped at 9PM, so I have a Mango martini, good, and excellent faux chicken Kiev, listening to the fairly decent singer getting NO applause WHATSOEVER as he finishes with a flourish and puts on a Streisand CD. Loud nothings at bar, fatty in a sulu with a pocket shouting something repeatedly about "A billion!" Up at 10:36 and type this to 10:41. TV weather says tomorrow's max is 30°, but that's only 86, which I can hardly believe after today. VERY tired, so turn on air conditioner, put on ceiling fan, throw stuff off bed and crawl in at 10:52PM.
FRIDAY, 11/9/01 (actually SAT, 11/10, in Fiji across the International Date Line, but it's easier to keep my watch on NYC-day time): Wake at 3:55AM to pee, feeling good about a five-and-a-half–hour, straight-through sleep. Again wake at 4:50, then doze and think to 6:27: now the rest of the trip is SET: Fiji at West's Motor Inn for the next four nights (Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon), then Rarotonga Sunset for three nights (Tue, Wed, Thu) with a day-trip to Aitutaki, then Friday-night/Saturday-morning start of 24-hour trip home by Sunday morning. Get up at 6:50AM to verify all the above, transfer the poorly topped new bottle of sunscreen into the old useful one that they hadn't yet collected from my wastebasket (can't wait to check the $17.50F price against a 125 ml Coppertone 30 Shade bottle in the US). Retype yesterday with the proper names of the places visited, and finish this at 7:35, GOT to get down to breakfast to get on an EARLIER schedule for some early-morning departures on tours the rest of my stay here. So many panicked searches: WHY would they take my Lonely Planet Fiji? Then I found it. Did they take 25th roll of film? Found it. CAN'T find my Mauritius T-shirt. Found it. Earplugs and tweezers lost a couple of times, too. Then it's my wooden comb. Finally down at 7:55AM! Athol waves me over, one of the guys I asked to come last night, and he laughs that I'd missed the performance. Lovely continental breakfast for $9.75 of hot chocolate, Weetabix, juice, two slices of toast with butter and honey (and jam), and a platter of fruit: small piece of mushy watermelon, overripe papaya, tiny banana, two orange wedges. We chat about Australia and Fiji and at the end he says SOMETHING about two guys being gay, "But it don't matter, they didn't bother me; what they do doesn't bother me." Looks like the circumnavigation won't be going, which isn't that bad since even the "tourist coast" trip wasn't that great down to Sigatoka. But she finds me a half-day highland tour, including Kava and a waterfall swim, for $85. AND she found me a feast and Fiji-dance performance at the local Sheraton tonight at 5:30 for somewhat under $100 all included. So things are starting to shape up. Return from breakfast at 8:40 and type this to 8:49AM, wanting to give teeth a quick brush, dress, and get down by 9AM. Down at 8:54 and into clean, air-conditioned van by 8:57, sullen dark John passing by in HIS cab. To airport at 9:03, picking up a United Nations worker who lives "in upstate New York: Bucks County," born in Byelorussia, between connections at 3AM this morning and 4PM this evening. #23 sugar train at 9:12. 800,000 people in Fiji, 35% Indian, 55% Fijian, 10% Chinese and others. 332 islands. 75% of people live on this one, Viti Levu. Dalo is Fiji name for a root-crop---brown outside, white inside, boil and salt and eat---that we call elephant ears. Hindus have a tiny red flag on a staff outside their houses. To Garden of the Sleeping Giant at 9:23. #24 red-trunked sealing-wax palm at 9:26. #25 Throne of the Queen bromeliad at 9:29. #26 ORCHIDS! Private collection of Raymond Burr given in 1977, containing 2000 of the world's 25,000 orchids. #27 black-bee orchid. Fred's red-tail bloom is called Monkey's tail. "Plain white" is plumeria. #28 cat's whiskers ("They're soft") at 9:32. Royal poinciana, flame tree, flamboyan, and Fijian Christmas tree are all the same. #29: Musianda is colored, poinsettia-like blossoms on tree. There are shell-shaped ginger blossoms. MOST beautiful, bird-filled, quiet gardens to 10:06, with a fruit drink, then through another path of MORE orchids, incredible to 10:18. To Viseisei Vuda, which means Separation and Beginning, village at 10:30. Buy kava for $5 and mask for $5 and seed necklace for $5 and a soapstone elephant for $5, getting thanked furiously by the women from whom I made these enormous purchases, at less than American $2.50 each! #30 warrior chief's tomb and mangos. #31 Bure of village chief with cowrie shells at end of roof-beam (he's also President of Fiji---Ratu Josefa Iloilo) at 11AM. To overlook at 11:10. #32 Vuda lookout at 11:13. #33 Rosie's house at 11:23, after videos of wonderful view and flowers taking me to 1:47:29 of video #45. Leave at 11:45. #34 Sleeping giant at 11:57, head to right. Leave guy off at airport and to hotel at 12:12, after guide refuses to drive me to island championship rugby match at 3PM because "Rosie wouldn't let me." Up to room to find it being cleaned, so I take off shoes and take up New Yorker, to finish reading it at 1:22. Start typing at 1:38 and fuss putting things away, hoping kava and seed-necklaces aren't food or vegetable products that'll be confiscated by any future inspections. Finish up at 2:23, again looking into Fiji guides and tours. Seem to be reading the same sections over and over. Now 2:51, nothing to do until 5:30 except have a snack for lunch before early dinner. 3:03: just shat the loosest shit of the trip; debated taking an Imodium, but decided to wait for the next one and see, since a previous "threat" amounted to nothing. But I’m tired, not even FEELING like lunch, so maybe something IS wrong. Nothing like brooding about things! 3:20: If I'm GONNA have lunch, gotta go NOW! 4:12: Hamburger surprise: a fried egg on top! Spaced-out, skinny-sunburnt-legs "White," at least that's what he said his name was, and the more-normal Steve, tile-layers getting a boat ride around the islands tomorrow to celebrate their day off. I just feel so OUT OF IT, though the Garden was fabulous this morning and probably the feast and dance will be interesting tonight---letting me get to bed early for the sunny day-out tomorrow. Watch mosquito-fogger, sounding like a miniature helicopter, and clip toenails till 4:30, then chew down a few fingernails, annoyed at the little Indian boy on the balcony who's looked in two or three times when I wasn't expecting it. Obscuring my view of the cutie in a brief blue bathing suit who videoed the fogger but wouldn't get out of his chair to let me get a better look at his bod. Now 4:35, what to do NEXT? Watch Batman cartoons on TV to 5PM, then dress for evening. Down at 5:10, not remembering whether a car is coming or I have to get one here. Wests' taxi costs $10 to the Sheraton Royal, set on a huge artificial island where you drive for MINUTES without seeing any accommodations. But then the Coco Palms isn't open until 6:30. Arrive at 5:50 and go into the hotel proper to pass time. #35 singers at 5:55. Video battery DEAD because switch had gone on. Wander beach: few shells on a sterile-looking, dark-sand beach. #36: drummers in sunset at 6:15. Meke and Megiti, NO reservation for me at 6:30, but they put me with 2 guys from US and 2 Germans, adding an American woman with an unpleasant-looking Indian man. Mediocre buffet food, but lots of desserts, some rather good on their own but ruined served with six others, and lots of fruit. 7:40 and table partners are NOT interacting at all. 7:57 chanting from the "wings" and dance starts at 8, not very good in movement or sound or personal attractiveness, and I'm REALLY put off with the UGLY old crowd of mostly fat Americans dressed abominably. At 8:35 they shake hands goodbye. #37 man at 8:37. They do NOT give me bill for my $8.75 wine. $12 taxi back at 9PM. Bed at 9:12, then think "Emmys!" Watch it. 10PM Confirmation call for tomorrow at 8:30AM. Program ends 11:30 with surprise Streisand number with the names of the dead on the walls. It was broadcast 11/4. To bed 11:35PM!
SATURDAY, 11/10/01 [but here SUNDAY, 11/11]: Pee at 3:18; pee at 5:56, then shit to 6:04, not a problem. Read guides AGAIN from 6:30-7:30. Breakfast after a rather long wait 7:50-8:10, still continental, hot chocolate tepid, but whole melange is filling. Upstairs at 8:12, wash face, dress, pack and out at 8:23, when they phone and I'm into van fourth from this place at 8:24. SEVEN of us by 8:30. By mistake I put on CLEAN pants, AND forgot to bring my "swimming [start file 6 at 7:23PM, 11/10, last file lasted ONLY four days and still 8 days left] shirt." LOUD rap music in van: earplugs in! 8:37 stop for one MORE person. HOT! Arrive at dock at 9:30. Juice and good cookies. Video little top-fish in muddy river. Pay $63F balance. Chat with Czech couple, onto boat 10:07 with lots of other people. Boat starts at 10:10, and I'm named "Chief." Jeff is my spokesman. On video, note mangrove AERIAL roots above what is lower-now tide. Roll #21: #1: Robinson Crusoe Island at 10:37. Schedule: 12:45 lunch, 3PM to turtles!, and then crab race. 3:45 dancing, then leave at 4PM. Left side of dressing room for men. Kava is licorice-ish, no real effect, ceremony over at 11:10: clap once, say "Bula," drink it all, clap three times. All get it. Into our boat to be taken to reef to snorkel from 11:30-12:15, NOT great, wavy, mostly dead coral, not a great variety of fish, so-so visibility, and then we have to stay together and when I'm the last back on I have to swim against the current to get onto the boat, which is exhausting. Change to 12:28, then coconut-tree climb, cutting and eating them to 12:45, CUTE blond on video. Then basket-weaving to 1PM, and a small fire walk after uncovering lunch from rock-fire. Lunch 1:15-1:50, fish like chicken, chicken tasteless, no fruit, but glass of red wine and a beer and later a Sprite, which THEY call lemonade, too. Men dance and I put in video roll #46. 2PM I walk into Jungle Walk; this is really Likuri Island on maps. Vaivai gives BLACK seeds for my necklace. Joseph (fire-walker) starts MEDICINE tour at 2:19. I grasp phallic tree trunk up high and blond grasps it between his thighs! TURNON! Noni is KURA in Fiji for skin ailments and "any kind sickness," including cancer. #5 tokatokatolu medicine for baby colic at 2:50. He goes on MUCH too long, with three fidgety kids in front, to 3:18. Walk back to 3:23 and to turtle look, before which I had a Sprite, and there's a GUY under shell (forgot "cannibal" attack at start, too), for which I had to take my shoes off AGAIN. Put on ONE jelly to hop aboard at 3:55 and it worked, but then wind carried surf ONTO boat and SOAKED my shoe! Land about 4:30 and have more juice and cookies, and people mill about saying goodbye, Joseph really MANIC to entertain on boat and then in our van! Leave landing at 4:50 and to Wests at 5:35. Still no circum-Fiji partner and I start farting WET, so upstairs at 5:45 to shit and shower till 6:12 and down at 6:19. Plan rest of stay: Monday tour to Nausori at 8AM with Rosie again for $69; Tuesday fly to Suva 8:45AM, leaving for airport at 8, return on 6:30 flight, paying my own taxis, for $173; Wednesday Lautika tour 8:30-1PM before going to airport about 2PM for 4:35 flight to Rarotonga. This takes to 6:48, and I give her my Visa tomorrow, and up to unpack wet and sandy and salty stuff to 7:08. Start typing and finish at 7:42, still cold though I turned down the air conditioning to 21 degrees. Down for SNACKS now, with credit card. She writes me a slip for $287F. To the bar and order fish fingers with triple tartar sauce, which she says she's running out of, and two glasses of good Riesling for $4 apiece! Perfectly good dinner. Goony is there, having loved his first day of snorkeling, and the stolid single fellow said he liked it, and the murk was all that could be expected at a river's mouth. Back up at 8:45 and catch up with this to 8:50. Watch a Law and Order that's over in 45 minutes (no ads)---what a TV! Almost falling asleep. Bed at 9:47, asleep instantly.
SUNDAY, 11/11/01 [MONDAY, 11/12 here]: Up at 4:45 and shit to 4:57, dazed. Up at 6:15 and wash face and type to 6:26. To breakfast 6:36. BUT breakfast "Officially starts at 7, yeah," per Aussie Steve. Luxury: four shorts and three pair of clean socks left for seven days. Pack for day trek; leave again for breakfast at 7:04. Up 7:38 from Front Rowers Breakfast: hash browns that tasted like gruel, ham and bacon indiscernible one from the other, and LARGE glass of orange juice, and overfried eggs with a watery undercooked white in part. Then she undercharged me, changing total to $16. CHANGE shorts, so count is now EVEN at 3-all. 7:53: Shit again, take more toilet paper, dress, ready to leave, and down at 7:56. Onto Rosie's van at 8AM, waiting for two P.s. Leave at 8:07. Bumpy ride into interior. #7 burnt hills at 8:42. #8 road down at 8:50. Start on trail at 8:55, by going UP. If this continues I'm sunk. Not that hot at the beginning, but heat constantly builds up. #9 rocks and Norwegian couple at 9:20: Espen and Irene aren't married, but use same surname. They're cops, on six-months' leave, coming on same plane with me to Rarotonga on their way to New Zealand. Ben, the guide, manfully joins in our conversations. #10 horses at 10:07. #11 kava mixing at 12:32, inside, where I thought we'd never get as he told us about village rules in sun outside fence. Not that picturesque, but the kava gets passed and passed, stronger and stronger, and I have about 5-6 cups, modified by glass after glass of delicious, mild, not-sugared pineapple juice of remarkably refreshing quality despite being room temperature. Lunch of rice, yam, coconut-creamed spinach most delicious, fried corned beef, and fish, followed by lemon-leaf tea that they added sugar to without tasting, and I found it was lovely as served, though ludicrously hot as I continued to sweat throughout the period, talking of my favorite travel places as they figured kava loosened my tongue, though it didn't feel as such: only a "funny" texture between the tip of my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I see Rosie's truck drive down the road outside before 3, and we leave at 2:58PM, and drive back by 3:35, TIRED. Undress and lie down at 3:42. Feels good. Turn on TV about 6PM, hoping for news but getting none. Shower at 6:54, and then type 7:13, still watching TV, now Oprah after National Geographic blurbs, with a Giuliani interview about 9/11 on now at 7:30PM. Oprah from "16 days" after, thus 9/27, broadcast in Fiji now on 11/12 at 7:52. Phone call to pick up airline tickets tomorrow morning. But she isn't working tomorrow, so I have to have the ticket TONIGHT, and she arranges it so I get it about 8:20 while dining on samosas and spring rolls with a chili sauce at the bar with my two glasses of white wine, not seeing anything of the Norwegian couple between 8-8:35 dinner. Back to TV with some Brooklyn family comedy with Alan Alda and young unknowns. Type this at 8:46PM. Movie ended at 9:55 without giving its title, but with Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Rudd in leads from 1998, it shouldn't be hard to find the name of it (The Object of My Affection, it was). Take Pravachol and bed at 10:02PM, tired, gotta get 7AM breakfast again.
MONDAY, 11/12/01 [TUESDAY, 11/13 here]: 4:32AM dreams 1) I'm attending some crowded seminar on Jewish extermination camps and am looking through files on IBM cards in somewhat alphabetical order, and see "Zolnerzak" at the top of a little sub-stack in a box when someone else wants to look at the very section I'm looking at, about which I make one of my typically acidulous remarks, and there are talks and meetings that seem important. 2) I have to get back into a college where I'm studying, and go around a long detour through bumpy roads that are very difficult to traverse (not REALLY like yesterday's trip into the interior), but as in lots of dreams like this from the past I keep getting lost on roads that seem to take much longer than they should to traverse, and I know I have to take a particular inside stairway, but first I have to pass a number of office doors where I hope to avoid a particular teacher, to whom I owe a term project that involves printing a computer file with a cover sheet that I'm not sure how to access in my computer, and when I talked with her on the phone there was a long pause (like in the movie I saw last night on TV), and I felt that she wanted some kind of personal relationship with me, but feared that she might think I'm acquiescing only to get a good grade on my paper. Complex topology of terrain and land and roads on which I'm walking, getting exhausted, as I'm tired trying to recall these details now at 4:38. Peed at 2:45, earlier. Still counting, counting, counting days left. Shit at 6:15, having started Actualism in a VERY ragged way at 5:30, continuing on and off with moody, gloomy mental maunderings until I'm dragging myself out of bed at 6:47AM to write this and get into the fifth-last non-returning-home day of this ENDLESS lonely trip. 7AM put on TV and find an American Airlines Airbus has crashed in Rockaway, affecting 12 blocks, killing 255 as they took off from Kennedy toward Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, 9:17AM local time in NYC, no indication of terrorism at this time, data recorder recovered: "one engine fell off, two months and a day from 9/11." Airports closed. Breakfast 7:15-7:40, and up to dress and watch TV, mostly repeating, out at 7:53AM. Taxi 8-8:10, $5, check-in at 8:11, moved from 7A (which turned out to have NO window!) on left side, to 5B at right window. Board 8:32, stealing 7B, behind the wing, from 5B, over the wing. 13 of 15 seats filled. TWO pilots. 25-minute flight, off at 8:47. #12 Suva, Fiji, at 9:12. #13 landing at 9:14. Clearish flight over mountains, usually more picturesque over seacoast, no dams, no chasms, no waterfalls. Farmlands and then wealthy Suva suburbs. Fijian woman (pretty) offers to share her taxi with me: "About 20 minutes." Land at 9:25. She's a lovely guide to outskirts and industry, off at Visitor's Bureau in middle of town. Get map, mark places out, and start at 10AM. Map items 1-6 and sit in Cathedral and check off walking tour in Fiji book until 10:40, having essentially seen the town, new towers not worth picturing, Anglican Cathedral ugly, Catholic Cathedral plain. #14 Government House at 10:53 pretty much sums up Suva: Lala Sukuna in front, Cakobau on white, and odd Angkor tower all "moldy" per guide. #15 Three cops---send photo? #16 Grand Pacific Hotel, watchdogs, and bay at 11:02. #17 GuardForce Salanieta and new hotels, $2 for video and photos inside, send photo? Out 11:18. #19 Botanical Gardens entry at 11:22, which was best part, as #20 gardens at 11:23 shows. $3.50 museum entry at 11:30 and pee. #22 Masi (tapa) costume at 12:36 after some videos. Leave museum 12:51, hot. Sprite in cafe for $1 to 1PM. At 1:10 make taxi arrangements for $40 tour to falls and airport starting at 3PM. Lunch at Vikatoria's Restaurant in Holiday Inn: beefburger and two beers for $16.90 when the buffet costs only $18 to 2:05, but table was good for viewing tourists, Chinese diplomats probably gone from this morning's three-bus caravan. Shit a bit to 2:11. To cab at 2:17: he's not there. Comes at 2:20, and drive through town and country to Colo-i-Suva (THOLO=above) at 2:45. #23 upper falls at 2:55. Slippery and hot, but pleasant guide (Jimmy?) and leisurely walk at my pace and photos. #25 flash at 3:04. Out at 3:40, grateful for air conditioning in car, smelling like the guides: rank! To airport at 4:10 to be told, "No room on 4:30 flight," which left early, losing my Fijian friend, too. Driver suggests Bau Island, I look at landing before realizing I'm meant to take BOAT and go AROUND little island electrified and watered for Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1982, who stayed in rooms I videoed at Grand Pacific. Sam's a cute, informed guide, quick ride, some splash from puddles, no rain at right time, only IN taxi---driver said I was lucky. To airport at 5:10, finding flight took off at 4:17 before. I hope we may leave early, in light, but we talk, I read a bit of New York in waning light, and we board at 6:24 with great large windows but twilight only, in seat 2A. Wait for long time on stifling runway, then up at 6:37, announced for 30-minute flight, and we're off to east (winds?) and circle around lit city before ascending into sunset-colored clouds for some bumps, some circles of sugar-cane fire below, then down through clouds PAST 30 minutes, then WEST past Nadi to circle over ocean in dark and land at 7:14, 37 minutes. Crowd at airport leaving, but I find cab to take me to hotel by 7:34 for $5, again getting change at desk, which happened more often than not. Ploy for tip? Lie down, watch TV a bit: mixed National Geographic, underwater fish, surfing, and Okinawa, waiting for Super Body, but it never comes on. Dinner of chicken legs, avoiding rice, from 8:32-8:52 with only one glass of wine: bar crowded with smokers, piano bar jammed with drunken singers. I feel VERY alone. Up to an Ally McBeal repeat to 10, TV news, and bed at 10:09, glum.
TUESDAY, 11/13/01 [WEDNESDAY, 11/14 here]: Shit at 3:53. Brood; Actualism tried but just can't get into it. Maybe doze a bit, but feel like I don't: counting and counting. Up at 6:09 to shit smellily and shower to 6:35. Then type this to 6:58, ready to start packing for penultimate time on trip! YAY! NEVER travel alone to brood and think and anxietiate like this! Put some things away in PREPARATION for packing, and go down for breakfast at 7:08. Breakfast to 7:45: it could have been so IDYLLIC had I not been obsessed with anxiety and apprehension and worries. Will that EVER change? So I can just go "moment by moment" and not WORRY about the next flight, or time-change, or country-change, or money-change? 7:55AM: Phone: "Your pickup is here." "What, it was to be 8:30!" "OK, don't worry, we'll advise him." 8AM: phone from tour desk: "You were tentative for today, only one going; must cancel unless two people." "What if I pay $90 for tour?" "I'll check back with you." 8:11: Phone: "Yes, we can confirm your trip for $90, but the pickup will be at 9AM, is that OK?" "Yes." Check everything three times by 8:20AM, and decide there's nothing to do but go downstairs and check out and wait for the tour. Leave room 8:33. TOUR pay by 8:40. Checkout to 8:46, $2 to porter. Into van, waiting for me "Fiji time" at 8:47! BAD bus/truck exhaust all the time; to distillery 9:18. 9:22 guy takes me back to lady---SHE thought I was a former engineer here and I was about to get a grand tour. #32 tasting at 9:54. Tour to 10. #34 kava root in market at 10:14. Meat only in supermarkets, not "fresh," like fish. #35 "Christmas tree" and Lautoka facades at 10:34. It's "like bougainvillea, but no thorns, and blooms before Christmas." Driver knows people in market. Definite "deja vu" with fruits and spices and fish. #36 sugar mill, no tour allowed, at 10:42. #37 woodchip pile and vines at 10:44. At 11:11: "Drop you at UTC office?" "Brewery?" "Closed, day before holiday; I forgot to tell you." "To Garden of Sleeping Giant." OK. Off there at 11:30, get drink to 11:37 and back to stroll orchids with GREAT pleasure in TOTAL absence of other people except a few workers to 12:33. Second drink to 12:43. Video to 1:10 and call for cab at 1:14. Video more to 1:23, bags to entrance, and cab arrives at 1:27. Roll #22: #1: burnt cane at 1:31. To airport at 1:40; $8 cab to airport: ripoff by another Muslim Indian. Long line already, hello again to Irene and Espen. NZ46 at 4:20, not 4:35. Check addition on Wests' bill: perfect. But I think I rooked $33 deposit for a day? 19.5 kg bag again. Check-in at 2:20. NO windows left. Lunch at 2:30: fish and chips and beer for $11.95 to 2:53. 3:25 from new Lonely Planet, Wests HAD BEEN Westin Plaza, called "good bargain." $5 VILLAGE prices sometimes as low as $3.95 in airport for kava and soapstone animals! WEARY, and finish New York by 4:05. Board at 4:25 and cute guy wants to sit next to girl and gives up his window seat! 3:05 flight, off at 4:30. #2 Northeast coast of Fiji at 4:46. #3 Bau AT engine at 4:47? #4 STRINGS of reefs at 5:07. Shit at 6:05, halfway. Add two hours to watch. Land in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, at 9:30 and to baggage claim at 9:44 thanks to form handed me by Swiss charmer who gave me his card, obviously QUITE well off, so I gave him mine. Into van at 10PM. Shop for $6.50 steak and cheese (without cheese?) pie and lemon with New Zealand Paeroa (lime and passionfruit, says chipper driver), both QUITE good. To Sunset 10:17. To MAGICAL BEACH in dark to 10:24. Eat to 10:50, reading tourist stuff. Ransack EVERYTHING to find Pravachol at 11:09. Bed at 11:16 and sleep INSTANTLY, feeling GOOD about this last destination and accommodation.
WEDNESDAY,11/14/01: Wake at 5:25 and pee, lower fan. Up at 7:11, shit to 7:21. Unpack to 8 and out at 8:05 with stuff: office only open at 9AM. Breakfast 8:10-8:40 with lots of Germans and a few Americans, mostly older, pleasant Kiwi as hostess giving me tea and two "spare" pieces of toast. Noncommunicative crowd. To lovely beach at 8:50: nice to hear SURF right there, and BEACH cabins are air-conditioned and look right out to sand. Lovely. Type 8:52-9:10, and NOW to office. 9:23: CUTE New Zealander with quick mouth (umm) confirms tour leaving at 9:45 today, putting it on my bill; confirming tour tomorrow, lock key in room, they provide towels; gives safe code---170000 indeed---chatters on about NYC and touring and lovely patter. Room service tonight?? Now to change and get ready at 9:27AM. Wakeup call 6:45AM tomorrow for 7:15 departure. Take island map and water and voucher. Lock $171 in cash, passport, and plane tickets in safe. Leave 9:40, ready for day. To road at 9:45, not Cook's bus but special van. On van 9:49 to village at 9:55; LOVELY island: Moorea 14 years ago? Little traffic, casual roadside, low-key everything. LOTS of people for tour, about 50 (then counted 49!). It's a going concern. Sit in room at 10AM. Tongaroa is tiki-god WITH prick, which mine has NOT. Norongo is god of agriculture. Kia orana=hello. Me-e-taki=I'm fine. Intro to 10:13. LEFT-ear flower=looking. #5 costume kiosk at 10:25. Skirt band is a titi---she keeps talking or arranging her titis. To fishing at 10:33. Sea cucumber glue for cuts in water as sealant. 10:55 to medicine, kaka at base of coconut leaf is netting used as sieve. #6 soul trap on left, candlenut chandelier on right at 11AM. Papaya as laxative, seeds for tapeworm, and papain heals cuts and eases pain. Tipani tree-leaf sap for bites and stings. To coconut hut at 11:06. Pu=conch shell. I blow pu pretty well! Only RIPE, brown, dried coconut---akari---yields cream, copra, and oil. Flat moth EATING palm trees in last 18 months, imported by hotelier whose trees were affected first, "but nothing done against him, terrible." Mynah birds control stick insects, but ate other birds. 11:30 to cooking. Volcanic rock holds heat in umu (earth oven). Pork, chicken, veggies, then fish, placed in order of cooking times. Myths PREDICTED the missionaries' ships exactly: sails, ropes, size, and they converted readily. One old adz and one tongaroa in museum, but NOT on display. 12:08 to weaving. 12:23 to entertainment. #7 drummers at 12:24. Lunch 12:45-1:05, GOOD chicken, taro and spinach, banana, papaya, with dancing and drumming and sticky fingers on cameras. Lots of lady-dancing. Then asking to dance at 1:15. #10 dancers with no flash at 1:11. On bus for round-island trip. 8000 on Rarotonga, 60,000 in Australia and New Zealand. #11 churchyard at 1:41. Art stop. #12 needle rocks. #13 Sheraton "white elephant." Shop 2:16-2:35 and snorkel-good beach. Cannibalism here, TOO. Lunch spinach was boiled taro leaf. #14-15 mountain peaks, highest, at 2:56. 8000 down to 1800 in 1800s from diseases brought by missionaries. Avaroa stop 3:18-3:38, at which I meet a Rarotongan maui, equivalent of a mahu, and buy Cook Islands book for $19.95. #16 bathers, getting back at 3:41, last. Perfume factory 3:43-3:57, tasting coconut/coffee liqueur and too-alcoholic pineapple schnapps at 80 proof. Buy spotted black pearl for $4 and later find he's put in a SECOND pearl! #17 tangaroa on lily pond at 3:56. International airport celebrated by Queen Elizabeth in 1974, start of tourism. Out of van at 4:08; office is locked but she opens it to give me my key. At 4:15 woman says most of coral is dead, but fish are nice for snorkeling, so I change and go in and BEFRIEND a blue-and-yellow-finned beauty with an orange-edged tail and blue-green/orange-rainbow-fringed head who keeps looking up at me and swimming into my shadow. A parrotfish keeps trying to chase me away, coming so close I fear he may actually nip me. Awkward snorkeling in knee-deep water, but I can put hands down to keep me in position or turn me about to follow my various swains. Some larger fish, and a spectacular "neon-writing-on-side" pair of fish with different messages, almost a foot long, are intriguing. Snorkel to 5:25, shower to 5:50, read guide to 6:23, when I go out to check the sunset into clouds, figuring at 6:30 there's at least another 20 minutes left. Type to 6:47 and out to watch, but couple leave, saying it set in clouds at 6:53. I sit until 7:03, watching just in case, but it just gets dimmer and the sexy topless guy with his wife on one of the balconies doesn't even give me a nod, though the single guy on the right nods, "Beautiful evening," and I say back, "Yes, it is," and come in to finish typing this to 7:12, hoping I'm dressed well enough in blue-jean shorts for next-door dinner at Alfredo's, open only 6-9PM for dinners. Leave for Alfredo's at 7:20. In about third, but it rapidly almost fills, some appealing male faces interesting: the narrow-faced elongated fellow who flexed his calves for me, the guy who looks to be 17 who seemed to order with authority, the pleasant waiter. Got the sirloin special with mushroom sauce and garlic bread and a baked potato, had a lot of salad with a double helping of fresh papaya, and then vanilla ice cream with a DOUBLE of coffee liquor on it "on the house," so I added a $5 tip to the $53+ bill, very pleased, even though the $19.50 half-carafe of Spanish merlot wasn't that great, out happily at 8:30 and to the beach, at last sitting on the chaises, much of the time intrigued by six fast-moving lights beyond the reef-line, I guess some sort of jet-ski caravan (later said to be one-man motorboats chasing flying fish!) that gradually moved across my horizon from right to left, finally being lost to view behind an arm of the island, and I went back inside to type this to 9:30, thinking of j/o to finish off my buzzy evening. Prop pillows to forever, get out the rubber bands and bring the TALCUM to the scene, getting things nice and smooth and to a peak at 9:47, trying to go for a nice long time, but can't resist and cum at 9:58, pleasantly but admittedly without THAT much intensity of feeling. But it feels good to HAVE BEEN DONE. Toilet-paper off, wash hands, record this at 10:07PM, ready for bed. Put phone near bed. Bed at 10:14PM.
THURSDAY, 11/15/01: Pee at 4:09. Shit at 5:45. Up at 6:40. Eat two bananas for breakfast and take pills and get wake-up call by 6:50. Eat another banana, shit again, wash face, pack snorkel stuff, put everything in bag, write this at 7:05, ready to go. Out to road 7:10AM. Even all ROOSTERS are muted and distant in Rarotonga (except for the next morning). Van at 7:15, airport at 7:22. 7:32: charged $4 each way "extra insurance," and I just happen to have four $2 coins. Down to $60.05, with $25 departure tax still coming. Forgot to bring anything to READ while waiting! Read map and sit at 7:40. Tourists not interacting. 7:49 get travel stuff to read---like, what to do tomorrow? Board 7:55 to seat 2A---no window! Moan. Then at 7:58 switch with guide to 11A, last of left (preferred, per stewardess) WITH window. Hot unventilated tiny (34-seat) plane, as usual. 40-minute flight, 2 pilots. Off at 8:10, straight north. Lots of clouds at multi-levels, lots of blue ocean. Tea and muffin served. 8:43 start down: LOTS of clouds! #18 Aitutaki atoll 8:49. #19-#20 at landing at 8:51. Land at 8:52. No one says anything about tour. Follow crowd to van at 8:54. Germans gabby. 9:21 off van till 10AM. We can change in the boat. I video feast preparation for at least 250, maybe 300 people. Only SECOND chief's installation in 50 years, and now they've got two of them. Into van at 10:04, Canadian who looks like John Lithgow in at 10:05. Population 2000---7-8 years ago it was 6000. To boat at 10:20. To motu at 11:20, to coconut husking at 11:50, not much else to do on island: walk, look, beachcomb. Back to boat at 12:05, he would NOT climb tree---"didn't bring ladder." To snorkel 12:25. Sunless, rather wavy, people keep DIVING and splashing past with flippers and taking photographs rather than just LOOKING. Not much coral, same old fish. Back about 1:15 to lunch: glass of wine $5, chicken and onions good, watermelon and papaya, coconut and cabbage, sausage. Australian couple just married, chat. Then to One Foot Island (not a big deal) after videoing frenzy fish-feeding with donut. More snorkeling "in channel," but not much to see but fish and the biggest cigar fish---pink---ever. Walk back at 2:35 and change and watch the flurry of feeding in the clear water and am too lazy to video it. Write this to 3:07, ready to GO. #29 Lagoon Resort at 4:03, overwater costing $1800NZ/day. Boat docks at 4:13. Video rocks and crabs and fish. Van leaves at 4:38, to airport 4:44, getting seat 5A, I think first in sun, but it's not. Read "What's On" and find two tours for tomorrow, to 5:22. Plane arrives but it's small. 5:25 OUR plane arrives, and I think it leaves at 5:36, but it was the smaller one. Board at 5:42, RIGHT over wing. Off at 5:47, 40 minutes again. #30 One Foot Island at 5:50. Get an extra Perkynana candy bar for Vicki. #31-32 Rarotonga landing at 6:24. Into van 6:36. Off van 6:48 to find no KEY at bar: she forgot! Get key at 6:55 and dash to beach for bright #33 sunset at 6:57. #34 sunset at 7:06. #35 [Start file 8 at 7:53AM, 11/16]: ignition! at 7:09. Into hotel 7:16. To Kikau Hut 7:20: cream of chicken soup VERY thick, 1/2 carafe semi-sweet wine with two glasses of ice, pork cordon bleu mercifully small with small salad and too many hash-brown potatoes. Then tables light up cigarettes and a native couple comes in with a BRAT, ignoring its noise, so I leap up for the check, paying $41 with tip at 8:30. Sit on beach for FIVE lights this time, 8:50-9:10, and in at 9:20 to shower to 9:48. Bed at 9:55. Sleep instantly, thank goodness, this last night in a bed in the South Pacific.
FRIDAY, 11/16/01: Wake at 2:30. Shit normally at 5:35. Actualism to 6:45, affording no relief from agonizing about last two days' activities upcoming until I just GET UP at 7:25. Shit VERY loosely and copiously and smellily to 7:34, and shut off dripping water in shower, wasting precious fluid all night! Start typing at 7:37 and finish at 7:59, leaving it to the office to formulate my last day here! Dress and to breakfast at 8:09, still no sun on beach, darkish clouds around about. But still bright and hot outside. LAST breakfast alone on trip, aside from plane's breakfast tomorrow. Almost don't go: TOTALLY listless; just think, I have this WHOLE FILE to bitch and moan in!! Brood. Gloom over itinerary. To breakfast 8:19. Join the last of the Vancouver threesome: Bill and Beth, rather grim, and the single Dave, who greeted me both evenings from his single terrace, and I've nothing to talk about but New York's smell and my LSD trips in New Westminster, which has come up in the world with posh new apartments which, unfortunately, hadn't been waterproofed sufficiently. They leave and I finish alone, joined by the taciturn eyebrowed guy and his silent wife only at the very end. To the office at 8AM, open already, give one key back, say I want a day-room, which is good until she takes me to the airport about 11:30PM! Then try the tours: the submarine isn't going at all today because it's too rough; the "cheap" 4x4 for today is TOTALLY booked up, but the expensive one has left for the morning and has no other takers for the afternoon! Come back at 9:12 and begin to type when the phone rings: they'd GOTTEN four others for the afternoon tour, so they'll pick me up at the road at 12:30 today! And she can put the charge on my hotel bill. That takes care of a FEW hours, anyway. NOW what do I do at 9:20AM?? Information sheet says TV only operated between 5-10PM, but I turn it on and get French news. Settle in with toothbrushing. Then sort through more tours and find "Highland Paradise," $30 for 2 hours, $5 for transport, but when she calls at 9:45 it's not going today, and anyway, she keeps insisting, the tour is followed by a heavy lunch and lasts FOUR hours, despite what the brochure says, and anyway it's not going today. Down to beach to see MANY dark clouds, yet the sun manages to beat through as I type this at 9:57. Turns out to be "Téle Wallis et Futuna," and it has the same oceanic music-videos and news and sports and cartoons as any other junk station. Decide to take rain stuff on trip this afternoon. Interesting male-genital-oriented thief in cartoon on MWK or MNK children's network, something in a series named Baypigal, or something near that, to 10:43. Live-action, computer-oriented "possession" film, probably English dubbed (very well) into French, until 11:08. Then something on cooking. Put things away, see that bar is CLOSED, making lunch a problem, unless I have the three bananas on the shelf here. Now 11:33, less than an hour to tour pickup. Will take melitonin for first time before I leave. 11:54: Raro Tours calls, changing pickup time from 12:30-12:45PM. 12:04: watching a program on mummies, and Cook Islands television comes on to wish a good day, and then there's NO picture! So, go down to BEACH to pass time, after dressing and putting on suntan lotion for the afternoon's trip at 12:20. 12:40: The SEAT at the beach is wet and it SURE looks like rain as I go to street for pickup. Toward curb and meet icky girl who just spent 8 months in Australia, who talks about paying in cash, and it occurs to me I haven't picked up my voucher yet, so I dash back and get it, getting to curb at 12:48 when girl announces SHE wants to get a voucher, so she vanishes but comes back before 4x4 appears at 12:52, six of us. Arrowroot = cassava = manioc = tapioca in Fiji. Lantana is flower with combined orange and pink flowers. #36 interior hillside at 1:05. #37 airfield at 1:15. Roll #23: #1: Alfredo's on left, Sunset in center, and Kikau Hut octagonal green, on right. I find I got my Easter Island first-dish serving on a RUBBER-tree leaf. #2 The Needle at 1:41. #3 balloon weed at top of African tulip tree (which was imported to give a target to the fruit bats that were eating away at the kapok trees that furnished furniture stuffing, but now it's furnished by department stores). Fruit and crackers and Milo and juice at food stand to 2:30, my lunch! #4 motus and pointed stone fish trap: about a meter below high tide, then above low tide, at 3:05. He talks and talks to 3:30, using the breaks to smoke two cigarettes each time. Then it starts POURING rain and I wonder how I'm going to get back to the room without getting stuck with icky, but by the time he drops the others off and she's asked her fifth stupid (or repeated) question, it's stopped raining at 4:30 and I dash to my room while she stops into the still-open office. Can hear her being terminally cute and appreciative of anything vaguely cute: chicks, flowers, people, kids, trees, the road---with someone down the door-row now at 4:51. Thank God I'll be home in something like twenty-four hours! Look through RCI catalogs and Fred DOES belong, since Club Bali Hai Moorea IS listed. Finish this at 5:22, deciding to sort through "past" and SAVE TIME in New York later, finishing THAT at 6:13. Watch a bit of Talking Movies, though it's a bit like a foreign language since I don't know any of them. Then out at 6:45 for sunset, nothing much; find out they're having some sort of celebration in the yard next door, making the Hawaiian racket instead of someone's radio. Back at 7:10 and there's an English sitcom on TV, so I decide to put pants on and go to dinner. Leave 7:19. They don't serve anything smaller than steaks in meat, so I end up with Fettucini Alfredo for $12.50 and an Old Dark Ale for $4.50, for a total of $17, which I pay in cash, leaving me with $8 in addition to the $25 for departure tax. Loud family group made eating miserable, and, just when I thought "at least there are no automobile alarms here," there was the sound of an automobile alarm, probably from the party of merchants at the Pearl next door. Nothing on TV, so I decide to finish packing at 8:10. VERY hot and humid! DAMN! Keep packing till 8:33, then shower to 8:50. News goes on to 9:30, lots of sports, and I essentially finish packing. Decide to put this into bag at 9:42. WHY is he coming so LATE? Religion program on at 10:35. 10:44 I go out to get cart for my bag and meet him and---his girl?---and he agrees to take me NOW. To airport at 11, GOOD chat with the sexy-eyed guy about his Army experience, um. Check in at 11:16, window 20 to Los Angeles. At 11:30 plunk down $8NZ and $1US for a $10NZ Tongaroa---real ripoff but GOTTA have it: can’t afford the cost or the space for a bigger one. Buy Amarula liquor. Start puzzles at 11:42PM, moving away from screaming baby.
SATURDAY, 11/17/01: Board 12:35AM, blessedly way away from babies, 9:05 flight! Off at 12:50, take sleeping pills at 1:10, but they don't work. Not THAT uncomfortable, but there are enough bumps to keep me nervous and aware and awake. Take two more at 4:25, not having watched Planet of the Apes, and THEY don't work either, despite repeated attempts at Actualism. Morning pills with 7AM breakfast. Many bumps. Announcement: CONNECTING baggage desk at right after going through immigration and inspection in Los Angeles. Travel AGES over Los Angeles, contributing to the awful smog lying low over the city. Land at 9:49 (11:49AM in LA) and wait long time for luggage, which gets put in front of loaded connecting conveyor at 12:36. Get told verbally, and also check with my decaying Air New Zealand folder, that United flights leave from Terminal 7, long way around on the shuttle bus. Find I don't have to wait around downstairs, but can go straight to gate with my boarding pass, which I want to change to a window seat. Onto long, slow line at Gate 74 (squalling baby three gates away) at 1:06. Flight moved up to 2:20, but Denver flight also moved up 20 minutes! I'm SWEATING as I stand in line doing another puzzle completely. At 1:29 I'm told that the flight is COMPLETELY full, no windows, and I'll have to be satisfied with 56E, which is probably in the MIDDLE of the VERY LAST ROW. LOTS more kids on American flights than in the islands, dammit. Glad the hop to Denver is one of the smaller ones, but it's in daylight and I'm going to miss a new part of the country---unless I can switch with someone. Finish this at 11:41 on my watch, 1:41 L.A. time, already PAST announced boarding time. Get out Pravachol with puzzles so I don't forget my noon 1/2 mg. Board at 2:09, MIDDLE seat, cattle car 747! 1:42 flight. Off at 2:48, do puzzles every minute, seeing snow-capped Rockies off to the left before landing at 4:31 (5:31). To gate B26 at 5:54, where sign says it departs at 6:20, and board at once. Off at 6:33. 3:05 flight. Move to rear window for good views of lit small-town America, dinner to 4:47 (7:47) with dinner pills, and land at 6:40 (11:40).
SUNDAY, 11/18/01: Very sleepy waiting for bag at 12:05AM! Get bag and oust jacket and beret at 12:12, 44° feeling quite warm enough without sweater. On line for New Jersey cabs, and I'm quoted $46 plus tolls, which are $6 through the Holland Tunnel, and I give travel-interested driver a $5 tip for a total of $57 door-to-door, certainly worth it. In at 12:53, take Pravachol at 12:57. Bed at 1:03AM, but at 1:14, after a quick Actualism cycle, up to j/o to 1:55, finding something wrong with VCR-GO tape. Bed and manage a complete, rather deliriously happy, Actualism session. Dream: 4:29AM (really 3:29AM, as I later find daylight-savings time went out when I was away, making my clocks an hour ahead now, wake from j/o buzz to INCREDIBLY luxurious dream: I'm beloved by someone very rich, rather like a a good-looking Don M., and he INSISTS that I command whatever food and variety and entertainments I wish, so I concentrate on food: rooms are filled with permanent feasts, enwreathed with chocolate desserts both cold and hot, and he insists I order more as we eat more; have a wall of tasting dishes, and I command a second wall in a distant place because "the first is too far away," and he's charmed with my reasoning. Someone with house-responsibility tries to say I go too far, and he denies their authority. We go in a car filled with food, kissing him in front of servants to everyone's delight: we love each other and show it so freely. After this tasty dessert comes another adventure, and I order more food. He kisses me for my inventiveness and I program a day's activities centered around love-displays and food-pleasuring. It goes on with infinite variety, and I wake to find my mouth salivating into my pillow and I'm up to record the time and what little justice I can do to the Indian sybaritism of the luxuries he permits me in my dream, and I'm only slightly sorry (such a relationship would be SO demanding!) when I wake that it's only a DREAM luxury, rather than a real one, with dishes to clean, clothes to maintain, food temperatures and freshnesses to be controlled. End typing at 3:37 and pee again. Look at clock at 9:49 (8:49) and 10:49 (9:49). Dream of interview with architect who designed opera sets---and watch a baritone who runs past sheer, stone wall of set fleeing from the bass. Up at 11:20 (10:20), feeling tired, to shit. List four phone calls from 1) Tara, couldn't wait for indexes, more later, 2) election, 3) Dorothy H., who'll call me back after 19th, and 4) Spartacus welcoming me back. Finish transferring this to PC at 11:15AM 11/18! Computer has a high whining sound! Change watch to the FIVE-hour time-difference. Start phoning: 1) Spartacus 11:20-11:45AM. 2) John over 11:50-12. 3) Mildred 12:20-1:11. 4) Carolyn 1:12 LW. 5) Sherryl 1:13-1:48, inviting me to dinner tomorrow night. 6) Pope, get no answer 1:49, 1:59, and 5:04. 7) Shelley 1:51 LW. 8) Vicki 1:52 LW. 9) Charles 1:54 NA. (All phone numbers had to be restored except Spartacus's.) 10) Fred 1:55-1:56 WCB. 11) Ken 1:59 LW, he calls back 4:35-5:03. 12) Marj 2:03-3:48. Catch this up to date at 5:30, phoning Spartacus to say dinner should be at 7PM, since I had two slices of bread and neuchatel around 4PM, reading current New York Times Magazine article. Now to do a quick scan of the mail stacks. Carolyn calls back 5:42-6:12. Go to Spartacus's for good leftover chicken and potatoes, back at 10PM to pee and go to bed, but up to j/o to 11:35, cock sore. Bed 11:40PM.
MONDAY, 11/19/01: 1:48AM: Wake at 1:40 with sweat and nausea and a ghastly dream: I'm traveling in the south and pick up an old woman who thinks I love her (hm, how is THIS connected with Jean-Pierre?), and two horrible people who might be her sons, but I hope they are just hangers-on looking for a kick; I have to shit, but they won't let me leave the room, so I have a large champagne-glass-like stool on which I sit and strain a turd into, throwing it behind the building, but then they get ugly again and I'm feeling a little residual turd, so I take down my pants and try to wipe myself with a candy wrapper, which is so smooth it takes nothing away from my ass but a slime. They try to attack me and I threaten them with the glass, breaking the rim until a tiny broken rim remains, and they laugh and run off. There were more ugly details which I've forgotten, but I've at least succeeded in recording this by 1:53, feeling somewhat cooler, but almost sick from the two tumblers of wine and the "Kahlua Especial" with which I finished Spartacus's dinner at 10PM before coming home to smoke almost two bidis and jerk off again. 3:50: Another horrid "lost" dream: I'm in London, visiting cousins of Laird's, and I'm to meet them tonight for a performance to which they have the tickets, but I don't know where they are, nor their names (though hers is Marge, I know), nor any other address. I try to find a taxi, but the only one I see turns out to be a toy riding-carriage in some kind of park where no one knows even how to get out of the building. I find two ladies of the night, disappointed that I don't want THEM, whom I follow down a short ladder, but they can't point me in the direction of Marble Arch or anywhere else, so I'm in a state of final desperation, again banging on a railing with my clenched fists, looking at my watch to see that it's getting close to 8PM and I have no hope of getting ANYWHERE, knowing I don't even have a letter with their return address on it, can't find a taxi, have no idea where to go, and there's even ANOTHER appointment for 8PM that I'm supposed to be at and I have no hope of getting there---and at one point I "know" that this is NOT a dream and my desperation grows: how COULD I have come out without ANY address or name to get back?? At one point they might have been in the fancy restaurant in the middle of the Beresford Hotel, but someone on the escalator says it occupies two floors, enormous ballroom-sized floors, in the hotel, and I can't imagine standing on the terrace between the two shouting out "Marge" and hoping that the right one would recognize me and come to my assistance. Utterly, totally, agonizingly frustrated. Wake and lie in a stupor before figuring I've GOT to take an aspirin or two for my headache and get MORE sleep now that I finish at 4AM exactly. 6:19: The worst one yet! I'm in London, and Helen and Jimmy bought three tickets for tonight's performance of Love's Labour's Lost, at 8PM, and I don't have the ticket, don't know the name of the theater or where it is, and am riding with a new-met friend on a bus going in some unknown direction while I try to find out where to go and how to get there. Finally off the bus, friend gone, and I try to ask people on the street, to no avail. At least people speak English. Go to a booking office and ask for a list of plays, and they come up with some kind of flyer that lists only 15 or so, and NONE of them are by Shakespeare, and I say, "This can't possibly be all the plays in London at this time," and they can't adequately answer me. I try a number of resources, finally ending up in a posh hotel, no idea where I am, but someone IS trying to help me, and finally I think of the name Love's Labour's Lost and the clerk says, at last, "Oh, they're calling it Folinari." "AH," I shout. "And where is it?" "I don't know; let's look at the office." Go to a bureau in the hotel and find a shelf of packets of brochures for each play, but there are only about six of them, and none of them are Folinari. Keep looking at my watch and it's getting closer and closer to 8PM. "Isn't there any other information?" "Yes," he says, "but I need the key for that." "KEY?!" "Yes, it's at that desk," and then maddeningly he has to answer someone else's question, so that I rush to the desk and ask for the play-key, and they GIVE it to me, a key with a heavy metal tag attached, and I can FEEL myself gliding across the room toward the clerk, who's racing toward the desk for the key, and he opens a drawer below, and a strange plump man appears with strips of actual tickets, mostly red, in his hand, and I almost shout, "I don't WANT a ticket, I HAVE a ticket, I just want to know where it is and how to get there---what time does it START?" "8PM." "Oh, God! Where IS it?" And he frustratingly stands pointing out in a direction, saying, "Well, you know, the tickets are 50 pounds each. I'm not paid to give directions; if you're not going to buy a ticket, I won't be able to get my commission, and why should I help---" "Please, please, please," I beseech him, "I'll pay you---how much do you want (I realize sickeningly that I have only American dollars in my wallet)---$5? $10? Just lead me to a cab and tell him the address; or take me there yourself if it's close---I just want to GET there before it's over!" And suddenly he's riding an elaborate bicycle or even tricycle with bags and a huge stuffed animal hanging off the handlebar (like the elephant provided with my Amarula-liquor bottle?), and he rides outside the lobby and around the corner and up a small, wire-enclosed, circular staircase, I hope to discommode himself of his burdens to escort me to the theater, but he doesn't come down immediately, and I crumple into a heap on the street, very conscious that I'm wearing a very good pair of tweed suit trousers over my dusty and worn and tattered-looking Velcro-close sandals that I've worn through the last five or six trips, knowing that this must look incongruous to anyone noticing my crying there on the sidewalk, and I bury my head in my arms and sob and sob and sob, knowing it's now 8PM and I have not even yet started on my way there, and sob and sob brokenheartedly---and wake up: drawing up and back from my body as if in a dolly-shot, drawing maybe six feet away from my body in the light into my dark body lying in my bed, weak and limp with relief that, once again, it was only a dream, not even sure if this is the fourth or fifth dream I've recorded this evening, finishing now sitting on the edge of my bed at 6:37AM, faint morning light in slits around the edges of my blackout drape over the window opening in my bedroom. Need to pee for the third or fourth time tonight, too. And did I record, at the end of the dream before that, that I was coughing and coughing and coughing and WOKE UP having to cough? I COMPLETE Actualism to 7:21. Up at 7:43. Spend the whole day going through mail. Talk to Pope and Vicki. Dinner at Sherryl's at 6, buying her water and beer, getting home to j/o again.
TUESDAY, 11/20/01: Bed at 12:40AM and wake at 9:10, for a wonderful 8.5 hours dreamless sleep! FINISH unpacking. Mail 4, go to gym for the first time, and go through Sunday Times #1. Dinner with Shelley at Vaux, meeting her at garage at 7PM and having a great meal with lots of talk, then back and bed at 10:58, but again at 11:02 up to j/o, feeling that's the best sleeping pill in the world!
WEDNESDAY, 11/21/01: Bed at 12:37AM. 6:50: Dream: I'm waiting for an elevator, and a naked 55-year-old Dennis prances past, trying to fix the elevator cables: the elevator is stuck about six feet above the brick floor of the shaft, and two other men are also trying to fix it, who make gentle fun of him, and they isolate wires that they roll over pulleys to try to fix the situation, and finally the elevator lowers to the proper level. Dennis has gone off to the side, where some women are making fun of him for being naked, but he enjoys the attention in his puppy-dog way, and there's no air of real animosity that would make me worry about his safety. Wake and lie for a bit, then type this. Up at 8:09, reading New York Times #2. Last night Spartacus recommended Speaking in Tongues, so I phone Audience Extras for two tickets and get Sherryl to come with me, and we meet at 1:45 and see interesting play; she's disappointed I'll have to leave her before "having coffee," which she knows I don't have. Back to read more Times and change and out to Chanterelle (and I smell) with Mildred for good $50 dinner. Back to j/o and TV yet again, five nights in a row a record??
THURSDAY, 11/22/01: Bed 12:39AM. Pee at 5:30, sore from gym. 9:44: Dream: I'm living with my family in a home that's like Dietz but unlike Dietz: lots of people are coming over and we have to set the kitchen table, which is exactly like Dietz in that its extensions have to be pulled out from the front and the back, and I ask Mom to help hold down the table in back while I pull out the front extension, and vice versa, and she wanders around with a blank look on her face, preoccupied with something else or just trying to annoy me, and I shout at her to HELP me as I try to open the extension in front by myself and the table simply slides toward me. I try again and decide it's more of a priority to shake out the tablecloth that will cover the table when it's open, so I unfold a bit of it and find that a particle of food left in from before has attracted an enormous number of red ants (not the TINY ones from the South Pacific, but regular-sized ones from Ohio), so I shout in disgust and take the whole bundle out to the back porch, which is much larger than at Dietz, and I'm in the process of shaking out this enormous billowing tablecloth when the visitors, including first Aunt Marion, are heard coming in the front door. I'd just wearing my jockey shorts, so I can't possibly be seen outside in the next seconds, so I let the billowy tablecloth out of my hands and it floats across the backyard to light I don't care how, and dash into my bedroom to dress. Without transition I'm in the backyard of a Hollywood-style mansion and I have to go pee before OTHER, younger, guests of Rita's arrive for ANOTHER gathering unrelated to the first, and since hers is nearer I go into her bathroom just in time to hear a large mixed-sex group coming down the garden path toward this wing, all intent on the bathroom. Without consideration to them (BIG consideration to me, but what can I do?) I come out of HER bathroom and say, "I'm her brother; women on this side for her bathroom, men on the other side for the men's bathroom." With everyone coming down the narrow corridor to her bathroom between me and MY bathroom, and all the women are going toward hers and all the men now toward mine, I say, "But I have to get there first," since I need to go from before, and I want to make sure it looks OK for them before they enter, and I just want to be first. Wake and type this. Up at 9:53. Read New York Times #3. Talk to Pope from 10:20-11:45, then go through my "last-call" list: 1) Madge 11:25-12:45, 2) Rita (busy), 3) Charles 12:45-12:55, he said he'd call back but he didn't, 4) Fred 12:55-1:05, and I say to him "gimme a call sometime," since HE is always busy. Finish cleaning stuff away from trip. To Duane Park with Ken and Jay 7-9PM; back to play FreeCell to 12:55AM.
FRIDAY, 11/23/01: Take last melitonin, bed at 1:20AM. Pee at 2:33 and 8:05. Up 9:50. Talk to Rita 10:55-12:35! Go to gym again for MAN tomorrow. Do part of the Times but I'm falling asleep! Channel 13 is back on! To stay awake I start FreeCell at 5:15, sitting through the WQXR-synagogue program again, stop for dinner about 9PM, and play through to 3AM!! 9 and 3/4 hours!! Total madness!!
SATURDAY, 11/24/01: Bed 3:12AM. Up 10:30. Finish New York Times #4. To MAN. Finish New York Times #5. To Beard for Russian Tea Room with Ken and Jay, starting with ridiculous almost-straight vodka, decent meal, pleasant Jake the psychiatrist and Steve and Bob the couple. Buy New York Times #7. Well, j/o AGAIN!
SUNDAY, 11/25/01: Bed 12:40AM. Pee and record dream: I'm traveling in a rental car with Mom, who's more like a girl friend than my real mom, and we have to stop for gas, which I pay for with a credit card that I get out of my wallet, which I keep in my dop kit, which Mom wonders about the contents of, and I say, "Well, we're away for a full day-trip, and there are lots of things that I might have to use, so there are lots of things that I brought along." Leave her with the credit card while a guy comes into the car to put the gas-hose into a tank-like receptacle in the backseat, and I go off to buy something, which takes so long that at one point I wonder if Mom is reading to pass the time and how she's holding off the gas station attendant who'd want her to move the car. But I go into this apartment complex to try to find a shop, and wander backyards and even model-village areas where I take care not to step on the sand-constructed gardens and pavilions laid out by kids in some of them. Also encounter a miniature village for kids and I think, "So this is the place that I've heard about (rather like the Village in that British series [The Prisoner] that was filmed in Portmerion in Wales) with half-size houses surrounded by neat gardens, painted in elaborate flower patterns, with outdoor tables and chairs and village squares that are neat, charming, and useable at the same time." Then ask for a men's room, and get told there isn't any. Then ask for the employees' men's room, and they laugh and say I won't believe it, but there isn't any, and someone even starts directing me "Go out, make a right to 51st Street---" and I refuse to hear any more about that. Out to some back alleys, running with water, and step onto a shelf and take out my enormous cock and it half-hardens as I urinate (isn't that unusual, still in the dream?) for a long time, my dick getting harder and curved like Bob R.'s, and I think that people seeing me will want some of THIS. Finish peeing and find that I'm dressed only in my shorts, and wonder where I've put my clothes! Look at the exit I came out of in order to find this place, and they're not there. Where could I have left them? Look with increasing dreamlike distraction back through model towns, taking care not to step on intricately patterned gardens with my feet in shoes, and still wander as I wake. Finish this at 8:59AM. Still hung over from too much wine last night, so I take two aspirin and doze till 10:32AM. Finish New York Times #6, not hungry at all. Breakfast at 2:15PM! Finish New York Times #7---today's!! Lunch at 7PM. Then proofread from page 27 on, typing as I go, and by 9:30PM I've finished up to date but still have lots of Summary pages and auxiliary pages to type before I'm through with this humungous trip!
FIRST DO LIST: 11/18: 10:40AM: 1) Laptop to PC, 2) Change calendar sheet, 3) Reset clocks, 4) Call Dorothy H., 5) Check computer whine, which turned out to be the Bernoulli drive, which I shut off, 6) Call Spartacus.
FINAL TRIP STACKS: 11/18: 1) Sunday Times, done 11/25. 2) Souvenirs on table. 3) Video on stereo shelf and mail. 4) Edit and proof journal, done 11/25 but for slide-page and dream-pages and calendar pages. 5) Slides and copy and mail Jean-Pierre.
11/25 DO LIST: 1) Photos to Fijians. 2) Commendation to Taira, 3) Charles on address list. 4) Call Dorothy H.. 5) Mail videos to 5 people? 6) Jim S. massage: 638-1792. 7) C.: results? Flu shots in? Aids test? Testosterone?
2001 FLIGHT LIST: Thought THIS trip, with 18 flights, exceeded OTHER 2001 flights, but 1) Turkey=3,+2) Mexico=4,+3) China=10,+4) Vienna=6 = 23, 41/year!
EXPENSES LIST enormous: 8/23/00: 25% Aranui deposit, check to Fred $843.75
OUT BACK 2/26/01: Visa for basic flights 2026.70
Duffel: 32 44 2/19/01: check for Easter Island flight 740.00
A&K: 14 15 2/27/01: check for Easter Island tours 285.90
Total: 46! 59!! 8/18/01: checks for Aranui balance 2815.50
11/18/01: cash spent on trip 484.31
10 hrs. videotape! 10/29/01: Visa statement 48.89
22 rolls of film! 11/8-11/9/01 ATM: 489.73
11/??/01: Visa statement
$7, . /40 = $1 . /day! TOTAL $
TRIP SUMMARY
WED,10/10: NYC-LA 12:20-5:42PM. Wolfgang Puck's pizza lunch. Read magazines.
THU,10/11: LA-Papeete 1:22-3:08AM (+6hrs). Beachcomber Hotel. Tahiti-view Tour.
FRI,10/12: Aranui starts. Moby-Dick on TV. Buy jellies. Wine free with meals!
SAT,10/13: Takapoto walk; lunch on beach; flying fish. Meet Bud and Arlene.
SUN,10/14: Chat with Wendy "like in Peter Pan." Seasick for few hours. Dinner.
MON,10/15: Ua Pou on jeep. Hakahau lunch, cemetery, museum. Paul and Marie-Odette.
TUE,10/16: Nuku Hiva and Taiohae tent, cathedral; tropicbird lunch; Typee tikis.
WED,10/17: Hiva Oa: Gauguin grave and house. Vaitahu museum and cathedral. Charter jeep.
THU,10/18: Fatu Hiva hike by jeep via Omoa, museum, perfume-making, dance.
FRI,10/19: Hiva Oa: Puamau tiki. Hanaiapa walk to Jean-Pierre B.: lovely!!
SAT,10/20: Ua Huka manta, museum, botanical gardens, buy 3000F tiki; lunch-dance.
SUN,10/21: Engine-room tour. Nuku Hiva Anaho Beach lunch after Hatuatua Bay walk.
MON,10/22: Dolphins in Hatiheu Bay; tikis and male-dance; restaurant lunch; Ulla film.
TUE,10/23: Nuku Hiva: Taiohae sightseeing walk; Ua Pou: Hakahau and Anohoa Beach view.
WED,10/24: Watch Love Affair (Beatty), Mulan, my video, Bob's talk, Tabu.
THU,10/25: Rangiroa: glass-bottom boat, snorkel, lunch; video group. Pack.
FRI,10/26: Off Aranui 8:17AM. Fly to Moorea. L'Ananas Bleue lunch, snorkel; WHALES!! Dine at Honu Iti (The Little Turtle). Club Bali Hai for six nights.
SAT,10/27: From Hotel to Overwater Cabin. Dine on Alfredo's pizzas. SUNSET!
SUN,10/28: Snorkel, walk to church, write postcards. Dine at La Snack Mahogany.
MON,10/29: Moorea tour and Belvedere and falls; lunch at bar; dine at Caprice Des Iles.
TUE,10/30: Motu-lunch cruise with sharks and rays; laundry; Allo Pizza pizza.
WED,10/31: Ia Ora Sofitel glass-bottom boat-cruise/rain; Hotel dance; La Cocotier.
THU,11/1: Snorkel, pack, lunch at bar, fly to Papeete. Aranui visit. Faaa airport.
FRI,11/2: Fly Papeete-Easter Island 2-7:10AM. Walk Hangaroa; Orongo tour; dine in Iorana Restaurant, then to beach for incredible southern-Pacific high-surf!!
SAT,11/3: Walk to Museum, Artisanal, Church; Death Fest lunch; tour of moai; dinner and dance at Hotel Hangaroa after watching fantastic ice-blue wave-surf!
SUN,11/4: Church. All-day tour: Ahu Vaihu, Akahanga, Ahu Tongariki, Rano Raraku as quarry; good outside lunch; Ahu TePito Kura, Anakena Beach; dine at airport.
MON,11/5: Fly Easter Island-Papeete 11:21-5:38. Kon Tiki Hotel; breakfast aside market; cross-Tahiti 4x4 tour: falls, Maroto, lakes, flowers. Dine L'Api'zzeria.
TUE,11/6: Fly Papeete-Bora Bora 8:20-9AM. Ferryboat and bus to Village Pauline; bicycle island: Wendy and Warren! Hotel Bora Bora lunch. Sunset. Sasha's Snacks.
WED,11/7: Funk. Bora Bora lagoon snorkel, sharks, lunch. Fly Bob-Papeete 3:55-4:32.
THU,11/8: Dine at airport 1:46AM. Fly Papeete-Raro 3:45-5:27. Fly Raro-Fiji 6:30-9:49AM. Book at West's Motor Inn. ATM works! Kalevu Museum and Tavuni Hill Fort and Sigatoka private tour. No fire-walk at Sheraton. Dine: great hotel rest!
FRI,11/9: Arrange tours. Garden of the Sleeping Giant, Viseisei Vuda Village, buying kava and mask and elephant; hamburger lunch; Sheraton dinner and dance. Emmy's!
SAT,11/10: Robinson Crusoe Island tour; I'm Chief! Kava. Snorkel, lunch, Jungle Walk, coconut-palm climb, hot-stone walk; fish-finger snack and wine dinner.
SUN,11/11: Nausori Hill walk: Espen and Irene; kava lunch; Object of My Affection.
MON,11/12: Air crash in Rockaway! Fly Nadi-Suva 8:47-9:12. Visitor's Bureau after free taxi; artisans, Cathedral, Grand Pacific Hotel, Botanical Gardens, Museum; lunch in Vikatoria's Restaurant; Colo-i-Suva falls, Bau Island, Fly Nadi.
TUE,11/13: Distillery tour, market, garden. Fly Fiji-Raro 4:30-7:30(9:30). Sunset.
WED,11/14: Rarotonga Culture Village tour, dance, lunch, around island; snorkel and sunset; dine at Alfredo's; watch flying-fish fishing boats pass as lights.
THU,11/15: Fly Raro-Aitutaki 8:10-8:52. To Motu. Snorkel. Fly back 5:47-6:24. Dine at Kikau Hut and go to sleep for the last night in the South Pacific isles.
FRI,11/16: Watch TV. 4x4 tour of heights. Dine at Alfredo's. Van to airport.
SAT,11/17: Fly Raro-LA 12:50-9:49AM. Fly LA-Denver 2:48-4:31PM. Fly Denver-NY 6:33-9:40 (11:40PM NYC time). Sleepy waiting for checked luggage to 12:05AM.
SUN,11/18: Taxi Newark-Hicks 12:15-12:53AM for $57. Sleep 2AM-10:20. Phone 13!
MON,11/19: Go through mail; dinner at Sherryl's (last night Spartacus). J/o 2x!
TUE,11/20: Unpack; mail; gym; Sunday Times; dinner with Shelley; home at last!