Border crossings are generally not one of the most enchanting activities one gets involved in, but at times it is a necessity. Length of time that might take varies from border to border, country to country and of course the time of day. Statuary holidays are generally not great days for a quick crossing. I have crossed the Canada U.S. border in less than five minutes, but I had also once the pleasure of a five-hour delay. Longest crossing for me was from Uganda into Zaire which took the better part of 48 hours. But that was a long time ago and I’d like to think they have sped up their process since.
And then one arrives in Tahiti. Not my first time mind you, I kind of knew what was coming. But still a head scratcher nevertheless.
We sailed into the marina at Papeete just before midnight on Friday evening. We picked a berth, slept like babies and presented ourselves to the office in the morning. Office opens at ten and indeed at ten thirty-five somebody showed up. Now, we learned that we could not check in as we were not cleared by immigration as of yet. Also, one cannot arrive in the evening and clear the next day as arriving and clearing needs to be done on the same day. That immigration is closed in the evening and at night is just a minor inconvenience that in no way or form should affect that ritual. Seriously? Should I be the one to tell them?
So how are we going to do all this? Well, you have to go to the airport and see an immigration officer. That’s step one, from there he will take you through the rest of the process. Off we go. We hail a taxi and for the equivalent of US $18, it’ll take us to the F’a’ā International Airport. Try that for pronunciation. When we get there it is lunch time and immigration and customs are closed. But there is a buzzer on the wall with a speaker and a microphone. We buzz, they talk French we talk English, both parties oblivious of what the other is saying. But the door opens and we walk into the international baggage claim area, completely deserted, but with access to the immigration office.
Dan and I were seated in a small office and within seconds a big Polynesian immigration officer shows up wanting to see our passports, boat registration papers and individual travel insurance. The officer sat down behind the desk picked up my passport, looked at it, picked up Dan’s passport, looked at it and then picked mine up again. He repeated that process a few more times, big yawn, bit of a stretch of the shoulders. “Problem”, he said. “Big problem.” Well, there is a good start I thought and what exactly is the problem, or the oh so big problem. Turns out the problem is it is Saturday. Who knew? Somehow immigration is run differently on Saturdays and Sundays. We needed a broker, no way around it. The big man made some phone calls, beckoned to follow us out of the office, through the international baggage claim area, out of the building to the arrival pick up area. “You sit here”, pointing at some tables and chairs where people were lunching on their McDonalds takeouts, “Corinne will pick you up in about ten minutes.” And off he was, leaving us with the notion that we had to see a broker to register in this country and that Corinne, to our knowledge not connected to any broker whatsoever so far, was going to pick us up and take us somewhere.
Forty-five minutes later Corinne showed up. Island time people, island time. A very nice lady, in her sixties, whose ancestors had come to Tahiti from Cape Breton, San Francisco and some places in Europe, Denmark comes to mind, in the mid eighteen hundreds. Been here all her life. She is taking us to Hirani, a friend of hers, who happens to be the broker. Five kilometers down the road from the airport we drive into Marina Taina where the office is located. A tiny little office, we barely fit in, but amazingly cold air coming out of the air conditioning ducts. The captain’s job is to fill in multiple documents, mostly in triplicate and handover a cool two hundred bucks, I, on the other hand, don’t need to do anything. I happen to be good at that, I just had to be there. After the formalities, about an hour of filling in forms, sending emails, and making photocopies we all pile in Hirania’s car and drive back to the airport. Back to the international baggage claim hall and to the office of the immigration officer. Lots of conversation between Hirani and the immigration officer eventually crowned by the stamping of our passports.
We said goodbye to Hirani who tells us to come back to the office on Thursday for check out procedures. Oh boy, looking forward to that. She also said that Corrine was going to pick us up in twenty minutes to take us back to downtown. And so it happened. And we now could register in the marina
On Thursday we went back to the office where Dan once again filled in all those by now familiar documents, still in triplicate and still lots of them, but now marked ‘exit’. Hirani was home with the flu, Julian, a broker in training, was our man of the day. He would deal with immigration for exit stamps. However, Dan and I had to come back the next day to pick up those stamped documents, which we would need to show to the airport immigration on our day of departure. What? We have to go back to the airport? Apparently so. Julian drove us back to downtown before he went to work on those exit stamps. A saving of a $23 taxi ride.
This morning we took a taxi out to the marina Taina and picked up our exit documents. Much to our surprise, Corinne was there to shuttle us back to downtown Papeete. A nice gesture. I picked up her business card from the floor of her car between her grandkids toys: Corinne Mateata Mc Kittrick, Ph.D. Polynesian Cultural Anthropology. She dropped us at a restaurant downtown, ensuring us that that was the place to be for lunch, locals go there.
Tomorrow to the airport, back to the boat and out of here. On to Hawaii. We are almost gone.
