Getting From There to Here

In the lobby of the Intercontinental Resort in Tahiti, there's a notice that encourages you to settle your account ahead of time, even the night before leaving, because the resort is close to the airport and they have people arriving and leaving at all hours of the day and night.  They aren't joking.

The distance from Tahiti to all other major landmasses is the villain.  International flights basically are forced to arrive and depart either very early in the morning or last thing at night.  Inter-island flights come and go throughout the day, but the big long-range flights are almost all before 9:00 am or after 10:00 pm.

This further means that if you have a late flight you have a lot of time to kill.  The Intercontinental smartly provides a group of free "transit rooms" which offer you a chance to shower up and change before heading to the airport for that late, late flight.  So I used one, after a whole day of sun and pool, and was nicely cooled off and ready to go when my airport transfer picked me up at 9:30 pm.

Then I got to the airport.

Getting back to Hawaii from Tahiti was an experience of extremes, to put it mildly.  Tahiti's Faa'a International Airport is not air-conditioned.  By the time I finished heaving bags to the check-in counter, lining up for passport control, and removing everything that has to be removed for security, I was left with a sweat that just wouldn't quit.  The crowning insult came when we were allowed to board and found it was actually cooler outside the terminal than inside (this was a new experience for me in Tahiti).  By this time I had successfully transitioned from "First Class Passenger" to "Passenger requiring extra time to board" because the arthritis in my right knee had flared up so badly.  The long flight of stairs to the aircraft door with 2 carry-ons suddenly looked remarkably like Mt. Everest after global warming finishes removing the snowcap. 

But then....  As soon as I walked through the door of the plane I was back in the Arctic.  I've never stopped sweating so quickly in my life.  I figured the temperature would moderate within 10--15 minutes after the cabin door was closed.  But no.  By 10 minutes after take-off I had joined my fellow first-class passengers and wrapped myself in my blankie.  The flight at least went right on time at 11:30 pm, and arrived right on time at 5:15 am.  We were given a "bedtime snack" soon after take-off which would have been a good-sized meal at dinner time.  I never would have believed that I would ENJOY eating hot pumpkin soup while deep in the tropics, but sure enough.  And then I went out like a light and stayed that way for 3 hours, which is a record for me on a plane flight.  And the cabin was still an icebox for the entire flight!

Customs clearance in Honolulu was reasonably quick and trouble free but the knee flared up again during the walk to the connecting terminal for inter-island flights.  Haven't had so much trouble with it in years.  That left me with still over 2 hours to wait for the short 40-minute flight to Kona Airport on the big island of Hawaii.  

But eventually I arrived in Kona, and got reminded of something I knew but had forgotten.  The Kona airport is all outdoors, except for the shops and offices.  It's like walking through an outdoor shopping mall, as you make your way between buildings to or from the street side of the complex.

There's a very good reason why this is practical, and I'll be covering that in the next post.