Please excuse me if this question has been asked and answered. In November we will be doing a Society-Marquesas B2B on the PG with a pre-cruise at hotel BB. Since we will be on the ship for 3 weeks and will be doing some diving, I'm sure that our luggage will exceed the 44 lb. limit for the BB flights. Since the same ground operator will be transporting us to and from the BB flights, is it possible to leave some excess luggage with them and pick it up prior to boarding? Has anyone done this successfully?

Are you flying out to BB the same day as your arrival, or are you overnighting in Papeete?

There is luggage storage at the main airport. Your flight to BB is there too, so if you can separate your pre-cruise luggage from the cruise-wear, you can store your luggage there for the three days.

There are details around about how to do this, let me know and I'll see if I can find them.

hrprof, we have the same problem. We plan to use the storage facility at the airport. My husband recently emailed them and was assured we could store our luggage there while we are at the Hotel Bora Bora post-cruise.

Thanks to both for advice - a very simple solution. Haven't decided how much of our dive gear we will bring, but I'm sure we'll be over 44 lbs.

Ted

I don't know a tweet about scuba gear but the good news is you won't need any formal wear, heavy coats or many shoes. We've experienced similar flying on a discount Swiss airline where we have to wear overcoats etc. to stay within our 44 lb. limitation, in winter! Now that is tough! I always take a large enough purse to put the curling iron, flat iron type things (anything heavy) in it. I've NEVER had my purse weighed. Maybe you can do something similar with some of your gear???

Marcie, I don't know about Ted but our problem is twofold. First, on Air Tahiti (the inter-island carrier) they even have limitations on carry-on and it's something on the order of 8 pounds. My fav carry-on bag weighs 5 pounds on its own! Yikes. The second problem is that we are cruising to the PG on the Navigator, which does have formal nights, and we are preceding the first cruise with a week in Arizona to attend a family wedding. Somehow we have to divest ourselves of a lot of stuff to make the 44 pound limit for the flight to Bora Bora. Should be interesting.

I'm not whining, this is a GREAT problem to have.

Marna Lou

You've gt that right - it is the cruise extensions that cause the problems. A unique luggage dilemma is faced by African travelers where small aircraft limit luggage to 20 lbs - My photo equipment alone exceeds that by a significant margin - only solution is private charters. Fortunately, dress requirements are minimal and laundry service is quick.

I appreciate the information on carry on limits - the ultimate degradation is having to step on to a scale yourself!

MarnaLou, what a great problem to have!

The pre- and post-cruise luggage dilemma is one that I try to deal with by planning some place to store the large suitcases full of cruisewear, clean or dirty! The luggage storage at Faa'a sounds like the perfect solution. Since I like to use cruises as "punctuation" to land trips, creativity is required, for sure, such as finding a hotel that will store luggage for you between stays, airport storage, etc. This has worked well in the past, we'll see how well I can arrange things next year on WAVE, where we intend to dump or luggage at Heathrow after the cruise, prior to our land trip.