We had a great ‘Private Jet Around the World’ trip planned for the Millennium. It was a time when all travel companies wanted to find something good and we hit the jackpot. We were to become real time travelers
Around December 26, 1999, I set off on the long and I mean really long, flog to get myself to Samoa, in the South Pacific before they did. This involved flying to Los Angeles and then to Auckland, New Zealand, where I managed a few hours in bed and then BACK to Samoa, which I had practically flown over about 15 hours before. So I had crossed the dateline and jumped ahead a day and now I had gone back across it, so got the day back. The dateline is one of those fictitious things which is on the other side of the world from the Greenwich Meridien. You have to have somewhere where today becomes tomorrow, 12 hours away. So, going from the USA towards the orient, you will lose a day. Leave Samoa Tuesday and four hour later, arrive in Auckland where it is suddenly Wednesday. Reverse that, leave Auckland on Tuesday evening and arrive in Samoa after a four hour flight and you are at the start of that same Tuesday all over again. There are some people I have talked to and who never get it, so I hope you do.
Anyway, our masterly coup was that we would have our aircraft arrive in Samoa on Dec 30th, 1999. It was coming from Easter island and flying west with the time, meant they left there at 10am and after a 9 hours flight, still arrived in Samoa at 3pm. They would do some sightseeing in the afternoon. Most important of which was the last home of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish writer, who ended up there, as the damp Scottish climate was killing him. He became a much-loved local celebrity and had a beautiful large and terraced house called Valima, which could be visited and you are guided around, all in bare feet, by young Samoan girls, wearing long kilts. It is really surreal !
So next morning the punters would board our aircraft, it being Dec 31st 1999 and fly west, across the date line and arrive in Nuku’alofa, the sleepy capital of Tonga, one hour later and magically they had arrived in 2000. I had already been there a couple of years ahead, to do what we called scouting. In other words, go look and see what there is and can we do it and what should we do (or not do). You walk every route, look under every stone, count the steps, eat the food, sleep in the beds, try to make whoever will be involved understand: This a a gang of very spoiled babies, who have given us an enormous amount of money and we shall work together to make sure they have the most wonderful time. Can you do that ? To this end, I had endured a couple of days in a really 100% nowhere place. All very sultry South Pacific warm, but slower than mud and with precious little that would have made a stop worthwhile, apart from being one hour away from yesterday. And now not just a day or a year, but a century.
My coup turned out to be a royal audience. I saw their version of Buckingham Palace, which was a large clapboard building that had been imported as a sort of early Ikea kit, from New Zealand. I knew about the royal family, as did anyone alive in the UK for the Coronation Day of Queen Elizabeth on June 2nd 1953. Sadly it was a very wet day, so the grand procession of horse drawn carriages that followed QE11 from Westminster Abbey all had their tops up. Apart from one. Queen Salote of Tonga, a very large lady with a huge beaming smile, kept hers open and despite weather that must have frozen her to the bone, she waved very happily, though sopping wet and that day Tonga moved on to the UK map. We all loved her. (I discovered many years after that there was some Tongan style protocol, which would have made it appear that she was disrespectful to the Queen by putting the top up).
So here I was in Tonga and her grandson was now king and I mentioned what I have just written to my guides and they said, well would we be interested in having an audience with the King ? Would we ? Of course we would. I had not thought about even suggesting it, but it seems here, with a discreet exchange of folding money, His Majesty the King would be at home. His Majesty agreed.
Flying across the Dateline, even for an experienced flight deck crew from Air 2000, a UK airline, which operated our flights, was an excitement and we had a countdown over the p.a. and they took it off the autopilot and we had a little ‘bump’ to prove we were in the new century. Everything worked fine, to begin with and the King was home and everybody, who had been told to bring some smart looking gear, lined up and shook hands with his royal highness. He had inherited his grandmother’s size. Several of the ladies even managed some proper debutante curtsies. Unasked for by us, they had much in the way of food and drink waiting, even at 10am, which was unfortunate, as we were off to a very very expensive beach barbeque. But my gang does like to consume and we could not be rude and just rush off, so our schedule started to derail.
You have to understand, these trips are planned down to the last minute. The person doing the scouting takes much in the way of notes and asks many questions: like, which is the best day of the week to be here and is the traffic always the same? We check out public holidays in countries years ahead of when the locals there will know they are happening, national days, anniversaries of the Great Defeat and always lived in dread of some royal visit suddenly happening or a major strike or some civil insurrection. Some you can plan for and some you cannot. We knew that with Tonga, do NOT be there on a Sunday, when the whole place goes in to a religious lockdown.
Having escaped the palace, we went on a tour of the island, looking at flying foxes (or bats) hanging upside down and asleep in the trees. They are nocturnal, so not really much to get excited about. We saw some blow-holes in the rocks on one part of the beach, where the sea rushes in and forces water up, so that it comes down all prettily. It was not knock out, but there really was an awful lot of nothing there.
Eventually we reached the beach barbecue, about 45 mins after we had been scheduled to arrive. This was not something I had fixed up on my scouting trip two years earlier, so all I had was a copy of the emails and invoices that had happened between them and our office in Seattle.
The woman running the place had managed to charge us the most astronomical sum, per head, but had promised this would be the beach barbeque to end all beach barbeques. Sadly I was not aware of the figures until too late, as they were grossly out of line. Both she and her staff were clearly exhausted. The Millennium had stretched them all way beyond their normal work schedule and they had been doing it all for a week, with cruise liners, the lot, so when we arrived, all excited, they were on their last legs. The meal was just the basic beach barbeque and lacked all the fancy stuff like lobsters and crab galore and exotic dishes and champagne and fine wine up the yazoo. It really was very poor. Even the dancing girls no-showed.
The payment for it had been made via a series of wire transfers, our bank to her bank, but of course, being an awful long way away in glacially slow Tonga, only two of the three had arrived. Madame was less than happy when I told her what a disappointment this all had been. We had been royally ripped off. Her counter to that was it was WE who were taking advantage of her, by being there and still owing her a lot of money. Fortunately, I was armed with copies of the bank transfers, so could show her how the last one had been actioned in Seattle on December 15th, a full two weeks ago. Normally that would have been in the receiver’s bank within a day or two, but of course in slow, slow Tonga, it still was not showing up. She demanded FULL PAYMENT NOW or you cannot leave.
Well that was about USD8,000. Of course, we did not carry quite as much with us in cash. She was adamant. Pay or I call the police. I am normally fairly cool when things derail, but this was so blatant, we went practically into a slanging match across the bar, with me telling her what a rip off this was etc etc. When the cork is out of my bottle, it is OUT.
Meanwhile the punters were being rounded up so that we could return to the airport and go back to Samoa and 1999. Micheline, who was the Expedition Manager practically had to force us apart, but there was no way out. In the end, I said you can have my credit card, which was bumped up always to be able to pay for something when things went wrong and I knew that I could be in touch with Seattle and they could contact my bank and make sure I did not get the bill. Those were the good old days of the credit card being put in to the machine and the sales slip being impressed and it took no less than three different pieces of paper and we were released. God, I was so pissed off.
But we escaped and one hour later, we crossed the dateline again and were back in 1999, our little space trip to the future had been completed.
And just to add a little excitement later on, back in Samoa, where we were to have another bash that night and be the LAST people on the globe in 1999, the captain of our aircraft, a rather dour Scot, came to Micheline and me and said that he had been looking at where they were going tomorrow, Papua New Guinea, and he could see it was not safe for him and his crew, so he could not go there. Well, tra la.
Mich and I had been there many times and we knew a lot more about it then he did. I told him that the hilltop hotel he and his crew would be staying in was 100% safe. I had stayed there, they did not have to leave the premises, (there was really nowhere to go anyway), the food was good, the pool was great and they would be FINE. He did not think so. This trip had been planned for over two years and now a small man (he was, thus the big ego and an airline Captain too, a very bad combination),). So I said ‘OKAY, if you won’t go there, please contact your operations and sales department in London Gatwick and have them make all the arrangements, all the overflying permissions and you find us hotel accommodation and sightseeing and guides and then we will go wherever. Where are you thinking of taking us? And don’t forget, it cannot be somewhere that we need visas’.
I’d much rather have lopped his head off. Mich looked at me and I said let’s go for a walk. We went around the gardens at the celebrated Aggie Grey’s Hotel and kicked the palm trees and quietly had hysterics, knowing full well that he had no option but to take us to PNG and he did. Just another day in sleepy Samoa.
timothyvalentinestravels 