Oct 26 2007

Our Week In Tahiti

To our favorite travel agent, Julie from All-Travel.com; to my Friday lunch group; to our family who were on our tour of Tahiti; to our friends who were with us last October on our cruise around Africa and to our longtime friends. We would like to share with you some reminiscences about our recent trip to Tahiti.

Julie- Approaching Papeete, Tahiti on our Airbus A-340, the shimmering lights are dancing in the wet, moist night like a hot, steamy bath, “Oh no”, I thought, “not another Honolulu”. But I soon forgot that, as we were on the bus approaching Pier 101 and our cruise ship for a week, the ‘Paul Gauguin’ ready to sail to the paradise isle of Raiatea. No big cities in the 4 outer islands we visited! Tahiti is about 2700 miles from Hawaii, and when we were there, the temperature got up to 85 degrees with 90% humidity. Kind of warm, like the cat on the hot tin roof.

There were many fun and varied activities on each of the 4 islands we visited; we went hiking, off-roading into the deep jungles, catamaran sailing, snorkeling numerous times with all the sea-life, kayaking, paragliding, and SCUBA diving with the ever friendly Blacktip Reef sharks. Now SCUBA swimming with the little 4 foot sharks at a depth of 45 feet is OK as long as they are sliding by you from a few feet away, but when they open their mouths showing their sharp fangs and tusks and come at you straight on like a missile, it gets a little dicey. Fortunately they veer off to search for another, smaller target.

Julie, you could guess that a boat ride would be at the top of our ‘want to do’ list and you’d be right. The highlight was our 4 1/2 hour boat tour around the island of Bora Bora in an ancient outrigger canoe. There were 2 boatmen to take us, the outboard motorman and the inboard singer and 8-string ukulele player. We stopped at one place on the coral atoll to snorkel among the sharks and stingrays. At another small tropical island we stopped at a narrow beach and went snorkeling again in very warm water. After circumnavigating the entire beautiful island, with its huge mountain peaks, we stopped again at a ‘coral garden’. To snorkel! The whole experience was so surreal as we felt like we were real natives in that small but seaworthy canoe.
Betty, you can imagine how really pleased we were when we got on our luxurious French cruise ship. It carried 330 delighted passengers and was so clean and sparkling and had such excellent service that we felt like nobility in Paris’ Palace of Versailles. There were 3 restaurants, 3 bars, a pool, a stern-end platform for launching kayaks and our medium sized stateroom that had a huge veranda where we could sit outside and watch the so charismatic sunsets. For dinner, usually about 7:30, we would have French cuisine like- the entrée: Thon Jaune en Carpaccio, Mesclun d’herbes, Fleur de Sel et huile d’olive au Gingembre; for the main dish: Cotelette d’Agneau grillee, Mousseline de choux fleur et choux vert braisse, jus de cuissson; and for dessert: Craquant aux fraises, crème a la vanille et coulis de fraises. In English, the entrée: Yellow fin tuna Carpaccio, herb Mesclun, salt flower and ginger infused olive oil; the main dish: grilled lamb chop with a puree of cauliflower and braised cabbage and for dessert: strawberry Napoleon with vanilla ice cream and strawberries. The food was so good and I think we all gained a little weight in spite of the heat baking it off like a melting ice cube.

While driving on a tour our guide told us about a local custom that I thought was very French: If you put a flower in your right ear, you are married; a flower in your left ear says you are looking; a flower in both ears means you are married but still looking!

Betty, we were so glad we went on an enchanting cruise rather than flying from island to island and battling the maddening crowds in all the airports. And on every island the hotels are truly magnificent. There are cottages- with wooden siding and thatched roofs- situated on piers that extend out over the water in a beautiful bay or lagoon. One can stay in these hotel rooms for as little as $400 per night. Some even cost $1500 for one night.

Bill, history we both like and the history of Tahiti, whom Captain James Cook, the excellent English navigator, called the Society Islands, is many centuries old, but the modern Tahiti probably began with his first landing there in 1769. He stopped at Tahiti on 2 more voyages and every time some of his crew got tattoos on themselves and began a tradition among sailors that is still alive today. Cook was later killed in Hawaii on his 3rd voyage in 1779 when he became the 1st European to arrive on the Hawaiian coast.

Tahiti was first populated around 300 BC- Hawaii was populated about 400 AD- settled by ‘Polynesians’ whose name means ‘many islands’. They came from New Guinea, and were peoples who began their eastward expansion about 1600- 1200 BC. Coming from the west, the settlement of Polynesia had been the result of luck, random searching and drifting in their 80 person canoes with their dogs, pigs and chickens, rather than organized voyages of colonization. Even Cook had encountered a group of Tahitians who were blown off course by a storm were 100 miles away on a faraway island. The Norwegian, Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki fame proposed that the Polynesians had migrated from South America on balsa-log boats but that theory has been discredited. Although the British were in Tahiti in the late 1700’s, by 1840 the French had taken over by convincing the Tahitian queen to accept a French protectorate.

Ron, seeing these islands is a real thrill: much like going back in time and watching a silent movie because it seems like time has stood still for the Tahitians. The islands are so gorgeous and so exquisite. It seems that the sun is always bright and shining and the air so pristine: it’s like an era eons ago of zero pollution. There are high peaks, lush, verdant tropical forests of palm trees, fruit trees, ferns, flowers ablaze with color, bushes, and even a few pine trees. The striking and majestic mountains extend right down to the shallow, sandy beaches flush with Hibiscus flowers and coconut palms and lots of land crabs. No wonder the Tahitians love their leisurely life.

Each island, except for Tahiti itself, is sparsely populated with only about 5,000 people so we didn’t see hoards of men, women or children racing forth and back in an attempt to stay busy. There were always cars on the little road that circled each island but certainly not enough to cause any stop and go congestion.

The best and most beautiful island is Bora Bora, because there is a 360 degree coral atoll that surrounds it and the waves strike these barriers regularly and with some ferocity. It’s really spectacular. So the inner bay is essentially a lagoon or giant pond, about a mile wide and many parts of it are only 3 or 4 feet deep.

Most of the Tahitians are big, massive, muscular guys who probably got that way from dozens and dozens of generations of strenuous canoe paddling. They are very friendly and smile and laugh all the time. Many of them have tattoos on their arms or body, which was in the olden days a form of tribal identification. As recently as 100 years ago, the ancient customs of death and burial were still in existence. The skulls of high chiefs were by tribal law removed and conveyed secretly away. This was done to prevent them from falling into the hands of enemies, for the head was to them the sacred part of the body. These valued relics were usually hidden in a mountain cave, entrusted to a caretaker for time immemorial.

We had a special treat watching Tahitian dancers and musicians perform. The girls, full of earthy-vigor, wore just a minimal amount of clothing and were phenomenal because they could swing their hips so fast, at a beat of about 10 to 12 swivels and swerves per second. All to the very loud and rapid beat of drums. It was truly amazing to see.

Stan, one fabulous surprise was the marvelous jazz band that was on board. From Los Angeles it included a couple of guys we had seen before when we traveled to jazz festivals throughout California. And the singer with them was from the “Blue Street Jazz Band’ from Fresno. She was just outstanding, singing old favorites from years ago as well as modern show tunes. Susan and I enjoyed their music every night.

Phil- No visit to Tahiti would be really complete without some knowledge of the ‘Bounty” mutiny in 1789. Three films have portrayed this most infamous but remarkable event, the last in 1984. All have been very entertaining and the first, in 1935, won an Oscar.

The small Bounty, a Royal Navy ship, was chartered to collect breadfruit plants in the South Pacific and after rounding Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, spent 8 months in Tahiti. The mutiny occurred after the crew left Tahiti and was because of the disagreements between Captain William Bligh and his First Mate, Fletcher Christian and because the crew did not want to sail back around Africa which was a much longer journey back to England. The conflicts between Bligh and Christian were only a small part of the explosive situation and most of the 44 member crew did not want to become a part of the mutiny; when Bligh was forcibly put into a launch, 18 men joined him. He sailed this miniature Bounty for 47 days until he reached Java (Timor, today), and caught a ship back to England. This mutiny was unusual in that most of these incidents occurred in port over pay and wage disputes, not on the open seas about which direction to return home.

Christian went back to Tahiti, put 16 men ashore, gathered some Tahitians, and then sailed away from Tahiti on the Bounty, intent on eluding the incipient ships of the British Navy. On board were 9 mutineers, 12 Tahitian girls, and 6 Tahitian boys.

The Bounty mutineers finally reached Pitcairn Island, a desolate, unpopulated and very small land mass southeast of Tahiti that was mistakenly mis-located on the charts of the British Navy.

Ben, I think that Pitcairn might not be the place to live. It is an island almost directly south from San Francisco, below the equator, and about 1300 miles southeast of Tahiti. It is 2 miles long and 1 mile wide, with rugged cliffs on all sides descending down to the sea. After much drunkenness, many fights and the treatment of the Tahitian boys as slaves, the boys killed 5 white men including Fletcher Christian. The refugees lived together in peace for a short while but eventually the skimpy population was reduced to only 4 white sailors and 2 Tahitian girls and finally discovered after 17 years. The last mutineer lived on Pitcairn for 40 years after the mutiny. Today, 217 years later, there are still 44 people living on Pitcairn, all real descendent's of the original 9 Bounty crew and the 12 Tahitian girls.

Pitcairn Island does not, even now, have an air or sea port; there is one boat every several months and the island is supplied every few weeks by air drops from New Zealand. How much longer can this British possession last?

As Saint Thomas Aquinas stated ”travel is like reading a book, if you don’t travel, you are still stuck on the first page”. We are very fortunate to be able to travel as we do and enjoyed this voyage very much. Thank the Lord.

Rick Evans

About Julie Northington

I am a designated accredited travel consultant (CTC) with over 25 years of industry experience. My true passion is helping clients realize their life-long vacation dreams. Tahiti is one of my specialties, and I just recently became a Paul Gauguin PEARLS Agent, which coupled with 10 years as an accredited Tahiti Tiare Specialist, affords me many resources and experience to make your South Pacific travel plans seamless and very memorable. Education is very important to me. I have completed several comprehensive destination training courses on preferred cruise lines and tour companies, in addition cruising on and visiting many popular worldwide vacation spots. Please call me—I am eager to assist you in planning your next vacation whether by sea or land!