My lifetime “to do list” isn’t shrinking, even though I seem to be scratching out items every couple of years.  I guess with each accomplished objective, a new one pops in to take its place.  Oh well – that’s what makes life so fun.

To look at the list today, one would see a very satisfied line through “visit Bora Bora.”  Mission accomplished. 

If only there were bonus points– because I managed to scratch off “visit Huahine" and “visit Moorea” on the same trip.  And it went something like this.

It was eleven p.m. when Suzie and I finally settled in to the naugahide chairs at LAX.  I was completely exhausted from the week-long pre-traveling drill (killing myself at the office, running around picking up supplies and tickets and documents, packing, forgetting stuff, running to the store…).  But I was happy to be here. The French AOM flight from Paris was delayed coming in, so our departure time was bumped to 2 a.m.  Didn’t care. 

When we did finally board, it would have been useful to carry a shoe-horn so that we could force ourselves into the tiny seats between the groggy French who had already been on the damn plane for 13 hours.  But again, with Polynesia only seven short hours away – I could handle just about anything (including the odor emanating from the Frenchman next to me who cleverly decided to forego a shower before boarding the plane in Paris).  Then came the wine, then the Tylenol PM and then sunrise over Papeetee, Tahiti.

There’s nothing like that first breath of warm, heavy island air.  It literally washes away a whole bunch of everything that sucks back home.

The scene was set as we walked to the open-air terminal with Suzie pointing out the first rays of sunshine lighting the rich, jagged mountains of Moorea.

As we moved off the tarmac, a couple of beautifully bronzed maidens distributed flowers to the wide-eyed foreigners to the accompaniment of a gentle Polynesia string band.  Man.

With minimal effort we were soon comfortably clipped in to the small propeller plane and on the way to destination number one – Huahine.  The flight was short, maybe 35 minutes or so, and before we knew it we touched down on the very picturesque, very undeveloped island of Huahine.  Waiting for us in the “airport” (teeny one-room building) was a very large, generously tattooed gentleman named Chotee.

Suzie was eager to try out her new mask and snorkel, so we spent the next few hours examining the palette of colorful fish and coral right of the resort's beach.

We spent the rest of the day sitting in comfortable beach chairs listening to the silence of the South Pacific and sipping cool water (*wink) from baby green coconuts.  Ok.