Wednesday 2 October 2013

Nuku Hiva airport

Small. No signage. Well designed for cooling cross breezes. Unhappy Belgian because everything is wait, wait, wait and it is soooo expensive for us at 1000 euros a day. We can afford so little time here because of the cost, yet we must wait and wait. Aparently road from capital is tortuous and takes almost 2 hours to get to the airport by 4WD. Must figure that in for my flight out of the Marquisis. Loved the trip up north. Dozed. Watched the clouds with their territory marking shadows on the white topped sea. Saw other French Poly islands and endless coral reefs on a massive scale. Regrettably on wrongvside of plane as departed Tahiti and arrived at Nuku Hiva so saw little land. Nevertheless I can say it is very flat and almost treeless at this end of the island and perched atop a plateaued cliff something like Table Cape at Wynyard. Aircraft magazine explained they were not allowed to sell all seats to keep weight down - because the air strips are not long enough to land with extra weight. So we all had two seats and I guess this explains the high cost of the flight. And we used the entire length of the runway so I am glad the pilot did his job properly. Waiting for my delayed next plane to Hiva Oa. This will be a smaller plane and again, cant have every seat sold. All of this reminds me of a landing I did in central New Guinea where the pilot had to land on a short uphill strip that slowed the plane down naturally. Take off was downhill and suddenly you were off the cliff hoping the plane knew it was time to fly,

No comments: