I have arrived

I am now, finally, on Moorea after a day and a half of traveling. I flew to LA on Friday night and was picked up by Dan Grin, who drove me to Canter's, a 24-hour deli where we got some soup to eat and then headed home, too tired to do anything else. The next morning we saw yuccas out the window on the drive to the airport, which I considered a good omen, but Murphy's Law reigned after that. Check-in for Air Tahiti Nui was excruciatingly slow, and they had to open up an extra line at the security checkpoint to get us all through and on to our flight (we still left half an hour late). I had problems at Immigration on Tahiti because I didn't have a return ticket. My bags were too heavy for them all to go on the tiny puddle-jumping flight from Tahiti to Moorea, so I had to wait half an hour for them to arrive on the next flight. And finally, the ride I was expecting at the Moorea airport never materialized, so I shelled out $20 to take a tourist bus to the Gump Station. Finally, after lugging all my bags upstairs, I ran into a UCSB student I knew from last summer, who was kind enough to give me some baguettes, cheese, and luncheon meat and mix me some Gatorade and chat with me a while. Half an hour later, we discovered that the people who were supposed to pick me up indeed went to the airport, but at 9 pm instead of 8 pm, because they were given incorrect information. I was exhausted. I went to bed. Anyway, today is Sunday, so everything is closed, so I am taking the day off, more or less. I have to get signed in and stuff before I can use the vehicles, so I might go for a swim.