Hello all,
If you’re reading this page right now, you’re lucky enough to be viewing my first ever trip report. Please bear with me, as the trip was in November and as of writing, it is early February. As such, much of what I’m writing is based off of memory. If you’re one of those who prefer picture-heavy reports, you won’t find that here. My original plan was to take lots of pictures, but when you’re on your honeymoon, the last thing that your new wife wants is for you to spend more time with your big, bulky SLR than you do with her.
So here we go, my inaugural report (on my honeymoon trip nonetheless). Enjoy!
Sunday, Nov.6, 2011
AC flight 445
YOW-YYZ
Departing 9:00am Arriving 10:00am
Equipment: E90
Economy class
Seats 31 A, 31 C
November 6, 2011 was quite a brisk morning in Ottawa. In fact, I think that it was probably our first “legitimately cold” day of the year. Our original plan had been to take the bus from our apartment downtown to the airport in the south end. Thrifty is Nifty! However, we were offered a ride last minute by a generous family member, to which we graciously accepted. We left the apartment early, sometime around 6am. My wife had her “newish” designer luggage, and I had my brand new samsonite, fit with overly large wheels. Great for handling all types of terrain (I’ll explain why this came in handy later).
Unfortunately, the wife’s luggage, although nice looking, is not very practical.
I had heard about the incredibly high food prices in French Polynesia, and as a result, my new samsonite was packed to the gills with granola bars, chips and other non-perishable food items. Luckily, the climate is tropical and I had decided that I would not need to pack all that many clothes.
Upon arrival at the wonderful Ottawa airport, we said our goodbyes, grabbed our luggage, and headed into the airport. It wasn’t very busy. I negated to put luggage tags on our luggage myself at this point as I had questions to ask the check-in agent about baggage routing. I knew that AC had an interline agreement with Air Tahiti Nui, but was unsure if our luggage would actually be checked all the way through to PPT. Sure enough, the check-in agent was able to do this.
We then headed down through security, which was a breeze this morning. We had gotten to the airport quite early and had plenty of time to kill. We went to the gate, grabbed some starbucks coffee, and took some pictures of ourselves at the start of our adventure.
This flight was relatively non-eventful. A typical rapidair flight. It took off on time and arrived in YYZ on time. That’s about all I remember, apart from filling out my US CBP customs card for the pre-clearance in YYZ.
AC flight 799
YYZ-LAX
Departing 12:10 pm Arriving 2:24 pm
Equipment: A320
Economy class
Seats 32B, 32 C
I had hoped to be offered to purchase a few last-minute upgrades on this flight. Alas, that didn’t work out. It turns out that Air Canada doesn’t have much trouble filling this route. Upon arriving in Toronto, we made our way to the US preclearance zone. After waiting about 20 mins for our baggage to arrive, we made our way through customs. There was no line! I couldn’t believe it. My previous experiences in YYZ preclearance had been long and drawn out to say the least.
After a quick chat with the customs agent (he sounded like a Texan!), he congratulated us on our marriage and wished us luck on our honeymoon. We headed through security again and dropped off our bags. Unfortunately, my wife lost her bottled water as she had forgotten that there would be multiple trips through security on this day.
We headed down to the gate with about an hour to spare before our flight. I had hit up starbucks again and picked up two of their super-expensive turkey sandwiches, as the LMU hadn’t worked out and I didn’t feel like paying for AC food. We were then told that our gate had been changed, and had to relocate all the way down to the other end of the transborder zone.
Eventually we boarded the plane, slightly late. I was a bit nervous about this as we had a fairly tight connection to make in LAX to the last TN flight of the day. Luckily, our seats were near the front of economy class on this bird.
Unfortunately, we were pretty much surrounded by young, loud children and their indifferent parents on this flight. They really enjoyed kicking our seats…for the full five hours. However, seeing as how it was economy class I wasn’t one to complain or let it ruin our trip. On went the headphones and it was movie time. I watched a few flicks, including unforgettable with Liam Neeson, which I found to be quite good. I also ordered myself a Heineken. I was finally starting to feel relaxed. This was going to be a good trip, I thought!
Time flew. It was a clear day and we were able to get a pretty decent view of the rockies. I must admit, though, that I had a better view of them on a trip I took to SFO a few months earlier. We soon arrived in LA, and I witnessed the monstrosity that is LAX for the first time. There is certainly a lot of construction going on there.
We taxied by the Tom Bradley International Terminal where we could see various Qantas and Turkish birds, among others. Then we turned a corner and saw it. The bright blue, flowery Air Tahiti Nui A340 that would soon be taking us to one of the most isolated and beautiful regions on earth!
TN flight 7
LAX-PPT
Departing 4:30 pm Arriving 11:00 pm
Equipment: A340
Economy class
Seats 21D, 21E
This flight would be our longest of the trip, scheduled to be about 8.5 hours, flying over the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean the entire time.
We arrived on AC 799 at LAX terminal 2. Again, tons of construction going on here. It definitely isn’t the most appealing of terminals; though, it does have many similarities with typical American airports.
At this point, I was really hoping that the ground crews would somehow magically get our luggage off of AC 799 and onto TN 7. As we didn’t have any luggage, we decided to walk from terminal 2 to TBIT, which took about 8 minutes.
I must admit, I was initially very impressed with TBIT, despite all of the renovations that seem to be going on. The check-in area with all of the different airlines is certainly very impressive. However, the impressiveness ends there. I found the rest of the airport to be downright weird.
We headed to the TN desk, which only had one agent working at it. There was no line at all, and I assumed that by this point most of the passengers had already checked in. I inquired about possibly buying two upgrades to business class; however, the agent told me that there were no more business seats available.
We headed through TSA security. There were a ton of workers on duty with barely anything to do. Many of them were just standing around. Upon presenting our BP’s to the TSA worker, she immediately congratulated us. I asked how she knew we were on our honeymoon, and she said that almost everyone that flies TN is.
I hit up the duty free and bought a bunch of grey goose. The prices were amazing compared to what the stuff costs in Canada. I was in heaven! Especially because I knew how much drinks were going to cost in Bora Bora.
After waiting at the gate for quite some time, boarding commenced (late). I had noticed that there were not that many passengers, and thought that we would be flying with a relatively light load this trip. I was wrong, however, as the gate agent had announced that assigned seating had to be followed as there would also be connecting passengers boarding who were in the process of deplaning from their incoming CDG flight. I couldn’t imagine flying from CDG-LAX-PPT in one day..It would be a very long flight.
Upon entering the plane, the first thing I noticed was the very bright blue and green colour of the interior. Waiting for us on our seats was a pillow, a blanket and an amenity kit. The kit contained an eye shade, socks, earphones and earplugs. It was nice to have all of the provided.
Boarding took a long time. This was definitely the largest plane that I had been on to date. There was going to be 300 and something passengers on board the flight.
Take-off eventually happened without a hitch. One thing I was surprised about was how long it took the A340 to actually build up enough speed to take off. It took a very long time to actually get up to speed. I guess the trade-off is that the engines are very quiet in flight.
Soon after take-off, the flight attendants changed their uniforms from a more conservative green uniform to an island-inspired orange uniform. Following this, they came by with delightful smelling fresh flowers to put behind our ears.
One thing I noticed about this particular aircraft is that the seats are narrow and do not have a lot of pitch. The padding is also very thin and makes for an uncomfortable ride (I would pay business class in the future just to avoid the economy seats!). Adding to this, we were in the middle aisle, which had four abreast seating. The French-man (a member of the gendarmerie) in front of me went ahead and took the liberty of reclining his seat to the maximum for the entire trip!
I should also mention the seatback video is not on demand. There are multiple channels that run programming on a cycle. The only up-to-date movies they had on offer were Captain American and Larry Crowne. I didn’t have much interest in either.
The attendants soon came by to offer a beverage service. Anything you can think of was on offer- from Tahitian-brewed Hinano beer to champagne (of the cheaper variety). They made it a point to let everyone know that, since it was a “night flight” (which it wasn’t), they would be doing only one more beverage service, that being with dinner. They then said that we could serve ourselves in the galley area at any point during the flight (it wasn’t really self-service as a crew member actually had to pour the beverage for you).
I went with a Hinano. It’s a bitter, hoppy brew, which I actually quite liked. For dinner I chose the beef tenderloin served with wine. It was a good quality meal, especially for economy.
Shortly after dinner (around 6:30pm), the lights dimmed and almost everyone began to go to sleep. Only 2.5 hours in, I was very uncomfortable due to the seat. I turned on the map feature on the AVOD, at which point I realized how far we were from any form of land at all. Feeling that isolated is a bit of a strange feeling.
I tried to get some sleep. For the next few hours, I went in and out of my slumber. Waking up would usually coincide with the pain that the seat was causing me.
Approximately two hours before we arrived in Tahiti, the lights came on. The attendants wished us a good morning, which was weird considering it was 9pm. The flight attendants then decided to run another food service! It was a bit quicker this time. We were offered some odd kind of cold pasta salad with ham and tomatoes in it. It was a bit odd and definitely not to my wife’s taste. I didn’t mind it too much.
The flight attendants then handed out the customs and immigration cards for French Polynesia. I must admit, for such a small country, they sure do want to know an awful lot about the people that are visiting. This took me quite some time to fill out. Looking at the AVOD map, we were almost in Tahiti!
Soon after, the captain announced our descent in Tahitian, English and French. Landing in PPT late at night is certainly an interesting experience. You really don’t see any lights or land at all until you are about to land. The landing at Faaa airport was quite rough. Perhaps their main runway needs to be re-paved?
At this point, we were incredibly tired. At least we had arrived though! We were certainly glad that we had a hotel room in Tahiti before our flight the next morning to Bora Bora. The original plan had actually been to try to sleep in the airport for a few hours, but after reading about theft there online, I had decided otherwise.
Faaa doesn’t have jetways. You can really feel the humidity when you leave the aircraft and descend the stairs down onto the tarmac. To tell you the truth, the first thing I experienced upon exiting the aircraft was extreme humidity coupled with the smell of hot, rotting garbage. Tahiti at its finest I suppose!!!
The tarmac was lined with guys who looked like your average North American security guard. I figured out pretty quickly that they were indeed police, however. They ushered everyone towards the immigration hallway.
There was a group of individuals playing the guitar in immigration. It was quite a nice touch, especially at midnight. Luckily, our plane had mostly been French nationals and Europeans, so our line (which was for everyone other than FP nationals or EU citizens) went quite fast. A quick stamp of our passports and we were officially in country. Better yet, our luggage had actually arrived!
We would next experience the low point of our trip. For anyone considering a trip to FP, I would highly suggest not staying at the Tahiti Airport Motel. The place is a dump and is not convenient at all. To get there, we had to cross the airport parking lot, then cross a busy street. After that, you have to go up an incredibly sketchy gravel alley, which is uphill (keep in mind the hills in Tahiti make San Francisco look tame). To make matters worse, the alley was full of aggressive stray dogs!! At this point, the oversize wheels on my samsonite definitely came in handy,
After you get past the dogs, it’s just a quick walk past the stinky septic tank of the hotel, and up a flight of stairs. We were then given a room on the 3rd floor. The hotel, unfortunately, doesn’t have elevators.
After lugging both of our luggage up to the 3rd floor, I was understandably tired. After getting to the 3rd floor, we noticed that the hotel did not keep lights on in the hallway. We had to use my cell phone as a flashlight to try to find our room. Not a pleasant experience at all, but we arrived.
The rooms themselves weren’t bad. I walked back down to the airport to get us some bottled water (At 400 francs a piece!!!). Once I got back to the hotel, it was a quick shower and then bed. We had an early flight on Air Tahiti to catch the next day.
Our flight on Air Tahiti to Bora Bora plus our stay in an overwater bungalow at the Sofitel Motu Private Island will be posted in the coming days. Stay tuned.
