A Little Thing Called 'Date Line'

During the two weeks I have been traveling around New Zealand, Charlie was traveling around Brisbane looking for good surf and mostly being rained out. We reunited in Auckland in order to move on together to Tahiti. We flew out from Auckland at about 2 pm on Friday, March 12, 2010 and were set to arrive at 9 pm. I had made reservations at a hotel in Tahiti starting on March 12. Makes sense, right? How wrong I was... Imagine my surprise when Charlie and I realized that we had traveled over the international date line and miraculously arrived at 9 pm, Thursday, March 11.

And so we found ourselves at 10 pm at night in Papeete, Tahiti on March 11 without a hotel reservation. Our hotel was fully booked, and the tourist information desk had closed for the night. We managed to find an outrageously priced room in a highly sketchy area of downtown Papeete without either air conditioning, mosquito netting on the windows, reliably hot water, or particularly clean sheets.

It is my impression that there is high unemployment in Tahiti and this leads to street crime. The hotel manager warned us not to walk on certain streets in the area because they are unlit and, the implication was that, if we did walk there, we most certainly would be knifed. As Charlie and I walked into town late that night for a quick bite and a drink, most of the homes we passed had guard dogs - as in, ferocious, pit bull type dogs that were not on leashes and ran out after us from the dark corners of their yards as we passed by. I had an unfortunate incident with a Doberman when I was about 3 years old and have lived in mortal fear of most dogs ever since, so the walk to and from town was unbelievably harrowing for my phobic self. I am sorry to say that every time a dog lunged at us with fangs bared, I offered Charlie up in sacrifice.