Pitufa.at

Travelling in times of Covid is complicated, requires lots of organisation, paperwork and gave us one adrenaline rush after the other… First we had to beg the Haute Commissariat to accept our reasons to travel (we only got the okay for the return flight when we were already in Austria–quite exciting…), then there’s a form for the folks from quarantine (non-vaccinated travellers need a special transport to the place where they will spend 10 days of quarantine–luckily we’ve got our two shots already…), then there’s ETIS (application to enter French Polynesia and tracking once in Polynesia) and with all that we nearly forgot that Christian needed a new ETA (Canadian transit visa) for his new passport. We applied for it on the morning of our flight from Vienna, assuming that it would only take minutes (as it usually does), but it was still not approved when we reached the counter in Vienna, so the girl could only check us through to Paris–not yet to Papeete. A frantic search and phones calls to the Canadian embassy made us realise that there is NO way you can contact Canadian authorities about visa status–you run against walls and only get redirected to the same internet site over and over again…

Luckily the visa was granted while we were in Paris, so we could tackle the next queue at the airport in Paris. Again all out paperwork was scrutinised and only THEN we were sure that we would really be allowed to fly back home to our Pitufa! We left Paris at 11 in the morning on Saturday and arrived in Vancouver at 11 in the morning on Saturday after 9 hours of flight–quite mind-boggling… 2 hours later we boarded our plane again and were surprised to find that most other passengers had only booked to Vancouver–the flight to Papeete was almost empty, everybody could comfortable stretch out on a row of seats

We arrived in Papeete still on Saturday, just before 8 p.m. and were informed that the passengers of the flight that had landed just before us were still queueing for health and quarantine inspections… Only after they had finished we were allowed to get off the plane, led through several mazes to a Covid test, on to paperwork inspection (passed!!!), on to await the negative result of our Covid tests and only then we were allowed to leave the airport at 9.30…

A huge team works at the airport to make all that testing possible, everybody’s friendly and helpful and even though it’s tiring to wait in endless queues after a long journey it’s great to see how well Tahitian authorities deal with the Covid situation!

Going through pictures of Leeloo and all those happy memories I thought that Leeloo’s many fans around the world would probably like to see more about the unusual 21 years our beloved kitty accompanied us on our travels. “On velvet paws towards the horizon” will soon be available on Amazon–I’m working on it!

Watch it online:

Thanks guys for all the good reviews! It’s great for me as an author to know that people are enjoying my stories… No complaints so far

Richtung Horizont — Available as paperback and e-book on Amazon.
You can order it here.

Our radio interview from Sunday can be found on the ORF webpage for one week:
Linzer Torte with Birgit Hackl, Christian Feldbauer, Otmar Schrott, 23.5, Radio Oberösterreich

The TV report about us that was broadcast on Saturday in Austria can be found on the ORF website for one week: Oberösterreich heute, 22.5.2021, Segelnde Auswanderer

Here is the link to the article that was published in todays’ issue of the Austrian newspaper OÖNachrichten:

https://www.nachrichten.at/meine-welt/reisen/segel-setzen-richtung-freiheit;art119,3401730

In order to promote our book I wrote to some TV and radio stations in Austria, not expecting much–and was veeeery surprised when quite a few were interested. Pitufa’s crew will be on ‘Oberösterreich heute’ on Saturday at 7 pm and talking for half an hour in the ‘Linzer Torte’ (Radio Oberösterreich) on Sunday at 9 am. I’ll post internet links once we get them! There’s also an article about us in the OÖ Nachrichten magazine in the Saturday edition, travel section.

Today we are driving from Upper Austria to Graz. Drinking lots of water is generally healthy, but not a great idea when you’re on a highway… Finally a service station, by now it’s a full emergency, I grab a mask, run to the entrance –and get stopped by a smiling lady in a dirndl dress. No negative covid test, no entry, she informs us friendly, but firmly. I briefly consider peeing my pants, but Christian waves our vaccination passports and we’re granted entry. Just in time.
The new reality hits again.

Our travel book has started selling on Amazon, now we need some reviews to encourage other buyers… If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it (which I hope ) please leave a friendly review on Amazon!

Now also the e-book version is available on Amazon.
You can order it here.

French Polynesia’s borders were closed for a while, now they have opened up, but only for American tourists – funny, as the US handling of the Covid situation did not seem exactly like a success story, maybe the colour of the dollar gives heightened immunity?
All other travellers must still apply for a special permission to travel and present important motives. Christian’s passport expires in May, we could not manage to get a new one remotely, so we had to tackle tons of paperwork and applications to get to Austria before the expiry date… The permission of the Haute Commisariat to fly, Covid tests, forms for each transit country–quite nerve wrecking to be standing in queue after queue, each time hoping that the person behind the counter will accept the pile of paperwork.
We flew with Air France via Vancouver, Paris and Munich (our flight was cancelled, rebooked and changed 6 times…) and it was quite full–surprising when you consider the complications involved…

Anyway, we made it safe and sound to Austria and are now enjoying a couple of weeks with friends and family. Austria in springtime is lovely with fresh greens and blossoms everywhere, but still waaaay too cold for our delicate tropical bodies

We’ve just published a little account of our travels on Pitufa (in German) that’s now available on Amazon!
Available at Amazon (Paperback and e-book)

Yesterday I had some appointments in town and did my runs between different locations by thumb – hitchhiking works really well in French Polynesia, especially when you hold up a sign where you want to go.
I got chatting with a very nice Polynesian woman who picked me up, we talked about the Tuamotus, how we cruisers are blamed for pollution, harming nature and then I mentioned how few motu with endemic vegetation and birds are left and what a pity it is that the locals just burn the motu down for copra.

There were a few moments of silence and then she said: “I’ve just come back from Rangiroa and that’s what we did there for a week. With the raising of the subsidies for copra the families are fighting who gets to work which motu…”

She agreed that it would be good and important to protect a few little spots of nature, but the money’s just too good. The government claims that raising the prices for copra is a measure to help people during the covid crisis, but why don’t they give out funding for other projects? If the speed of destruction picks up there will be no nature left in French Polynesia within a short period of time.

It’s not even an argument to protect wild nature for the sake of tourism, because tourists expect coral rubble and rows of palmtrees. That’s the image of the South Sea that we have and not fertile islands with trees and soil…