The checkin process was very simple and easy. No long waits. No drama. Of course, we hired an agent through the Pacific Puddle Jump registration and paid $200+ so if it hadn’t had been easy, that would have been a waste of money. The best part about the agent fee was getting an exemption from the bond requirement. You see, immigration is very tightly controlled in French Polynesia. Non-EU citizens are only allowed to stay for 3 months out of 6 months, so unlike Mexico where all you had to do was leave the country and re-enter, in French Polynesia you have to leave for a longer period of time. There are ways to get exceptions and extensions, but they involve either a lot of leg work ahead of time (with 2 visits to the French Embassy in your home country) or some sort of health or boat issue when you’re here. Anyway, I think the tight immigration is actually a good thing for French Polynesia in that it is probably preserving the Polynesian culture rather than opening it up to a bunch of rich western immigrants who want to get away and settle here.
Back to the bond requirement… when you arrive in French Polynesia you either have to have a return airline ticket already booked or if, like us, you are arriving via your own boat, you need to post a bond equal to the amount of an airline ticket back to your home country. Then when you clear out of the country, you get your money back (getting hit by an unfavorable exchange rate twice, presumably). So, by hiring this agent they arrange an exemption to the bond requirement. They also had a representative in Hiva Oa take us to the Gendarmerie and help us get checked in and arrange our duty-free fuel paperwork. The Hiva Oa rep’s name was Sandra, and she was immensely helpful in many ways. Sandra is the one we called when the tsunami sirens were going off.
When she took us to the Gendarmerie, we rode in the back of her pickup truck, which was covered, but it was stiflingly hot back there. We rode with another boat full of people, so we crowded in, and all cleared into the country together. At the Gendarmerie there was just one form to fill out, which included a section to declare all of your tobacco, firearms, medicines, and alcohol. I remembered one of the blogs I read said you could just write something like, “that which is needed for the household,” or something like that, but when I asked Sandra, she said I should simply write down exactly what we brought. Without my spreadsheet in hand there was no way I would be able to write exactly, but I took my best shot, and overall, I way underestimated our alcohol inventory.
Gresham Family Exodus 