Sitting in Papeete airport

It's 2am and I have the most awake baby known to man.

I look down at my baby crawling all over the airport floor and inspecting everything with his little fingers (and sometimes his mouth).

It’s 2 in the morning and I have the most awake baby known to man. His huge, excited eyes are looking around at the bright lights, the noises, the machines, the people. I would love for him to go back to sleep but that seems highly unlikely at this point in time.

Going to and from Australia is always a bit of a slog. The Air New Zealand flights are at ridiculous times (3am departure from Papeete, 1am arrival if you’re travelling from Australia to Tahiti) which means you either need to take a hotel for a few measly hours or camp in the very sparse airport.

And if you live on Mo’orea? You need to leave before the ferries stop in the evening. We leave on an afternoon ferry, dropped off by my parents in law, and sit on the sun deck where the wind whips our hair. Auguste doesn’t seem very sure about it but eventually tries to do some wobbly exploration.

We lug our bags to a little hostel we’ve booked for the few hours until we need to leave for the airport. We eat Indian for dinner (the only Indian restaurant I’ve ever seen in French Polynesia, and it’s surprisingly good). We try to get a few hours rest, but it’s hot in the room and Auguste is fussy and there are people chatting just outside and it’s not nice to sleep with the fan on and we’re all a little sick so I’m coughing and Martin is blowing his nose with great loud honks and Auguste is snuffling. We’re all already awake when the alarm goes off at midnight to pack back up our stuff and hop in the cab we’ve booked.

The airport presents another challenge. We’re travelling on Australian passports. Auguste doesn’t have his citizenship yet, so he’s travelling on a French passport. We’re waved to the front of the queue but are almost the last people to receive our boarding passes as the ladies have to call Auckland and sort everything out.

The long slog home was a lot easier before the introduction of a tiny baby (this one from 2022).

I’m freaking out that they might not let us on the plane. Meanwhile, Auguste is laughing, smiling, crawling around on the ground, singing. He’s having the time of his life.

Eventually we get given the ok, and passing through security Auguste is making friends and flirting with all the ladies. We dump the bags, I buy an overpriced sandwich because somehow I’m starving, and we wait for this baby to eventually admit defeat and fall asleep.

Missive from Melbourne - 1 week later

I’m writing this from dad’s house with the sun shining in the windows behind me. It’s the second day of summer and looks like it. We got the last week of spring, complete with torrential rain followed by incredible bouts of sunshine.

Painted in Royal Park, opposite dad’s place.

We’re taking advantage of the variety of fruit and vegetables easily found in Australia that we don’t get back home. Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, peaches, apricots, nectarines, kiwi fruits, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, peas, spinach. We’ll be eating our way through the summer!

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