CHAPTER THE FOURTH -- MAUI TO FRENCH POLYNESIA

CHAPTER THE FOURTH -- MAUI TO FRENCH POLYNESIA

by Foulweather Jake 20 October

In which the reader is cautioned that the Pacific Ocean may be larger than it appears.

Monday, 28 September, 2026 — Thursday, 8 October, 2026.
A short (twenty-five-minute!) flight from Kahului later, and we were standing in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. Since this was just going to be an overnight stay (and since Shannon and I, along with our daughter, Autumn, had been here before), we skipped all of the normal “rent a car, drive around the island, and visit the Dole plantation” stuff in favor of just getting a Lyft to the Waikiki Circle Hotel.*
The view from our balcony in Waikiki. 'Twas nice.
We enjoyed some shave ice (of course), ate dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise , and then had a delightful sunset swim at Waikiki Beach, which was, not accidentally, just across the street from the hotel.
(Later we returned to Cheeseburger in Paradise because the Author managed to leave his credit card there, which, to be sure, isn’t the most useful habit to develop at the outset of global travel.*)
If the Reader is intently interested in our packing list, we did purchase a couple of items in Honolulu to add to our inventory: the Author got an additional shirt and replaced his slides (which were not only very old, but in fact literally fell completely apart while the Author was wearing them from beach to hotel), and Shannon picked up some flip-flops.
The next day, after a pleasant breakfast at Eggs ‘n Things ** next to the hotel, we got a Lyft to the cruise terminal, where the next part of our adventure beckoned, in the form of a massive, skyline-dominating ship named the Celebrity Solstice.
It seems reasonable to take the Reader aside for a moment to clarify that neither Shannon nor the Author had ever before set foot aboard a cruise ship, so our expectations were vague at best. During the trip-planning process, however, the Author had run across the concept of discounted “repositioning cruises”, where the ship is moving from the part of the world where it does summer sailings to another part of the world where it does… well, also summer sailings, but it’s a different summer because the ship is now in a different hemisphere. So we decided that even though we don’t really consider ourselves to be within the traditional target audience of the cruise industry (we don’t really drink, we don’t gamble, and we aren’t interested in buying expensive designer luxury goods), we are in no particular hurry, cruise ships seemed likely to provide a heck of a lot more legroom than even first-class air travel, this trip would take us in the right direction, and it would even give us the chance to see Tahiti and Fiji, which we might otherwise never see. So that’s how we ended up aboard. Anyway, back to the narrative.
Shannon and the Author boarded the Solstice with scopolamine patches firmly affixed behind our right ears. (We weren’t certain that we’d suffer seasickness, but why risk it?)
Our old friend Hurricane Nolo hung around for a while, threatening to veer our way while trying to make up its mind as to whether it wanted to slacken to tropical storm status or crank all the way up into a Category 4 hurricane (and ruffling the surface of the ocean in a way that ended up providing an excellent early test of the scopolamine *), but eventually lost interest in us and wandered off to the northwest.
The cruise ship experience really deserves its own chapter, so that will be provided a bit later on. Suffice it to say that, what with one thing and another, we found ourselves, about a week later, disembarking from the ship in the city of Papeete, on the island of Tahiti, in the semi-sort-of-but-not-really-in-a-technical-sense nation of French Polynesia. We first circled the cathedral in the center of Papeete (if you’ve been to European cathedrals, this one is rather less impressive than you might be imagining), and then found a big market building not far from the port that featured lots of individual tables selling various sorts of souvenirs, handicrafts, garments, and the ever-present black pearls which are Tahiti’s trademark Thing. Luckily, they also sold cold beverages, because it was quite a toasty day.
The Reader should note that the people of French Polynesia, surprisingly enough, speak a lot of French. Luckily, we were quite well prepared with vigorous arm waving and creatively pronounced phrases like “par-doan miss-yer” and “parly voo een-glace?” We so impressed the locals with our mastery of French, in fact, that they immediately switched to English for us!
We also strolled along the waterfront, taking in the former Place Jacques Chirac (now Tahua Tu-Marama) and the Paofai Gardens (as an aside, Tahiti has some fantastic play structures for the young’uns). The Author also visited an attraction called the “Toilette Publique Parc Paofai”, but it didn’t hold his interest for long. Eventually, it was back to the ship.
The next day was the island of Moorea (still in French Polynesia). The island apparently didn’t have any port with deep enough water for the ship, so we went ashore via the ship’s “tenders”. We hadn’t signed up for any particular excursion, so we decided to find somewhere for lunch. We soon found that the nearest open place was a questionably long hike down the shoulder of a highway, so we hiked down the shoulder of the highway. We ate some raw fish with coconut milk (better than it sounds) and then walked back. That was about it for Moorea.
The Author walking along a highway on Moorea. Very dapper, and not at all sweaty, let us pretend.

The final day in French Polynesia was scheduled for the island of Raiatea, and we had booked an excursion for the day. We’d opted to go drift snorkeling along the barrier reef surrounding the smaller nearby island of Taha’a, and it was going to be absolutely great.
And it was canceled due to weather (high winds and strong currents, apparently). So instead, we went to the local post office to get stamps for a couple of postcards we’d purchased for the kids *** back on Tahiti. Once again, our French mastery (with the traditional Gallic “pointing at the spot on the postcard where a stamp should go”) served us well; we’ll see if the postcards arrive in the US before or after we do.
At that point it was back to the ship for the trip to Fiji.
RETIREMENT TAKEAWAY: The islands of French Polynesia are staggeringly beautiful and very much worth visiting. Based on our admittedly brief exposure, though, we suspect that living on small islands this remote without eventually going stir-crazy would be beyond our particular talents.
* It’s an older hotel, but it checks out well-named; the elevators form the core of a cylindrical building with rooms around the circumference. This gives each room an interesting topography, with far fewer right angles than one might normally expect.
Extremely touristy but well worth dining at anyhow.
* The Reader is exhorted to remember that that sort of thing is exactly the sort of thing to remember not to do.
** The Eggs were all well and good, but it was the Things that were the real stars of the show.
* It passed the test with the proverbial flying colors. The Author actually stopped using the patches after the first one. Shannon continues wearing them because her sense of equilibrium gives way to something that isn’t exactly dizziness, but could be described as “dizziness-adjacent” in pretty much any but the calmest of seas.
Despite the name, these are not deep-fried chicken pieces. If the Reader remembers the old Battlestar Galactica from the late ‘70s, tenders are the equivalent of the Galactica’s Colonial Shuttles. If the Reader doesn’t remember the old Battlestar Galactica from the late ‘70s, well… tenders are still the equivalent of the Galactica’s Colonial Shuttles.
*** The Author will almost certainly continue labeling his offspring as “the kids” even though they’re both fully adults. This is because the Author is old and set in his ways and still thinks “ten years ago” refers to the 1990s.

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