Saturday 28th July

Papeete,
Tahiti

17 32.422 S
149 34.279 W

Again we were awake fairly early and breakfast was over and done with at break neck speed. There is another half hour time difference here and as we had altered the clocks yesterday Gerry got the time wrong for the radio schedule and missed speaking with the others. We then seemed to take an age to organize ourselves to go out, mostly as we were trying to connect to the internet via the provider we had paid for in Nuku Hiva; our attempts we unsuccessful and frustrating. We have a Swedish boat behind us and as we prepared to go exploring we stopped by their boat to see if they could get the internet. It appears that they have the same problem with the same provider that we were having, not a good thing but at least we are not alone! We chatted with them for a long while, exchanging charts and stories and even getting an invite to drinks and dinner with them that night; we accepted the drinks but as we had to pick Abigail up form the airport we took a rain check on the dinner. Eventually we took off in the hire car and drove around until we found the airport, the marina to the other side of the town and then a huge cash and carry store where we wandered around eyeing up things that we need and filled a trolley with the essentials for the moment (NO there wasn’t a single bit of chocolate in the trolley!) Having done our grocery dash Gerry tried to force Micky D’s on me for lunch, luckily there were no vacant parking spots and the drive through was tailing back out on to the main road almost to a round about; we headed back to the boat and ate lunch there. We spent the afternoon clearing all the stuff off of the V berth bunk, airing it out and making up the bed there for Abigail. At 17.00hrs we joined our Swedish neighbours and their friends for cocktails; we had a great time chatting and establishing a new friendship with them. As we sat there we were suddenly watching a large plane coming in to land, Gerry was a little concerned that we might have the time wrong for Abigail’s flight and we quickly bid our neighbours goodnight and headed out to the airport. Of course it wasn’t her plane at all and we had another 2 hour wait before her flight landed, we filled the time by having a quick bite to eat and then sat people watching until the arrival of the Sydney flight. Gerry bought some Leis which we festooned Abigail with as soon as she cleared the customs hall; it was so good to have her with us again. As we left the arrival hall Abigail pulled our “Bear” and had to have an arrival photo taken with him at the airport.
Bear belongs to a friend of hers and Abigail asked if she could take bear on a holiday with her, the condition being that there had to be a lot of photos. I can see this is going to be a very silly month! We arrived back at the boat, settled in and chatted for a couple of hours until we finally dragged ourselves to bed, there was still so much catching up to do but it would have to wait for the time being.