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Windows on the world
Pacific Journal French Polynesia
4.
Easter Island to Papeete
,
LAN-Chile
Flight LA833. Flying time 6 hours.
Distance 4,000 km
Monday 26 February
We
land at 2.00 am local time, 7.00 am by our body clocks.
The time difference is almost the same as the flying time from
Intercontinental Tahiti Resort, Faa’a,
Location:
17:50S; 149:40W
(GMT – 10 hours) 1.80
francs = £1
We wake again about 7.00 am (lunch-time?) and see the view for the first time.
It is breath-taking. We look
out over manicured lawns, palm trees, swimming pool, to the bay, a view we have
seen on many tropical islands, but two or three miles away is the
Breakfast is high-quality buffet. The
boss-woman might be Bloody Mary, and our waitress might be a man.
Back at the room we sort out laundry and then venture out.
We bump into Richard, who is also impressed.
He tells us he is never going to leave this place.
We look for shade and find it under palm trees near a shallow swimming
pool scooped out of sand. The pool
is on the
edge of the grounds, and in our field of vision it merges with the sea beyond,
and, unbelievably beautiful, the mysterious clouded peaks of Moorea.
Outrigger canoes ply back and forth, the paddlers working hard, in
unison. The boats speed through the
water, perhaps in preparation for races. Out
of the shade, though, it is hot. Richard
has taken the Truck (the local open-sided bus) into
There are tour operator desks in the lobby, but so far I haven’t seen a Tahiti
Nui Travel rep (the Kuoni agents on the island).
Before dinner I tell the concierge that I want to book two tours.
By now, the offices have closed but she tells me has the mobile phone
number for Marama Tours. This is
obviously a rival, but I don’t have too much time so I say yes please, the
round the island tour tomorrow, and the boat trip to Moorea the following day.
The concierge fixes it and tells me to sort out the paperwork with
Nicole, who will be at the Marama desk at 7.00 next morning.
There are several variations on the Moorea tour, and I don’t know which
I have committed to. There is no
ATM, and so to be prepared for anything I put some US$20 bills into a
cash-changing machine in the lobby. I
don’t seem to get many French Polynesian francs for my investment.
We have dinner in the main restaurant, a shrimp dish from Moorea.
The food is delicious, but even though the room is open to the elements
on one side, the ceiling fans don’t prevent it from being uncomfortably hot.
Afterwards, we go to the air-conditioned business centre to cool down and
catch up with emails.
Tuesday 27 February
I wake around 3.00 am and don’t really get back to sleep.
The time difference has finally caught up with me, but the sun is up by
6.30 and
As we set off Angelle launches into a bizarre commentary, and it becomes obvious
that she is another Bloody Mary character. Either
Michener captured the essence of middle-aged Tahitian women, or they have all
seen the movie and adopted BM as a role model.
There is another woman at the front of the bus, who Angelle introduces as
Margot. Or Margaret. Or
Maggie. Or whatever we want to call
her. I assume she is part of the
team, but she never says a word. It
transpires that she lives on the other side of the island and Angelle is giving
her a lift home. The commentary is
informative and/or interesting. She
tells us about the language, that every letter is pronounced.
Most of them seem to be vowels, and the effect is quite musical as they
glide into each other. The hotel is
situated at Faa’a, so we have to say Fa-a-a.
The
We make several photo stops: Lookout Point at One Tree Hill; Stevenson’s
lighthouse at Venus Point near a black sand beach; the Blow Hole (also known as
the car wash ~ we hear it, but it
doesn’t wash the coach); the waterfall at Faarumai, which involves a
pleasantly cool walk through the woods. At
one stop Angelle buys a branch of lychees from an enterprising vendor at the
side of the road and we eat the sweet, juicy flesh as we travel on.
When we get to the isthmus between Tahiti Nui (Big Tahiti) and Tahiti Iti
(Little Tahiti) we make a slight detour and Margot gets off, taking the
remaining lychees with her. Then we
stop at the
Lunch is nearby, at the Gaugin restaurant. Many
years ago an Englishman was on a yacht which ran onto rocks in the bay and the
party had to swim ashore. They were
there several days whilst the boat was being repaired, during which time the
Englishman met and fell in love with a Chinese girl.
She was only 15, and not being Gaugin, the Englishman waited three years
before marrying her. He bought some
land in the bay and started the restaurant to make the wait easier, and the
couple still manage the restaurant today. The
Englishman must have picked up some Polynesian ways as well as the girl, because
the service is very slow. “Go with
the flow” Angelle tells us, but I resent having to wait half an hour for a
baguette. When we have all finished,
Angelle take it upon herself to feed the fish.
The restaurant is on the bay, and on either side of a pontoon are large
fish pens. Angelle comes out
of the kitchens bearing a huge bucket of unsavoury-looking fish scraps, which
she scoops out into the pens. The
fish seethe. Not nature at her
prettiest.
The last stop is the Fern Grotto at Maroa, and I realise that we have gone
almost all round the island without really seeing the mountains of the interior.
We complete our circuit and arrive back at the hotel at Faa’a, and I am
disappointed. Faa’a is also home
to the international airport, and also (coincidentally) home for the main
character of the novel I am now reading: “Frangipani” by the Tahitian writer
Celestine Hitiura Vaite. I am not
solely reliant on Angelle for my glimpses into current Tahitian life.
I meet Sue by the infinity pool and have time for a swim.
We swim up to the bar which, thankfully, is in the shade, and sit on bar
stools in the water. The bar
specialises in cocktails but we only want a fruit juice.
The barman can’t manage fresh fruit, and we have to settle for it out
of a carton.
At dinner we are intrigued by two things. The
first is a waiter in tight black trousers, a white flowered shirt, and a bunch
of flowers on the back of his head that wouldn’t have looked out of place on
Carmen Miranda. He escorts a diner
to his table with more mince than Sainsburys, to mis-quote Chas & Dave.
He doesn’t take the diner directly to his table, but promenades his
catch by taking a slight detour. The
diner is a middle-aged American, who makes himself comfortable by unbuttoning
his shirt to the waist. He beckons
his waiter back. We hazard a guess
that they speak the same language.
The second thing that catches our attention is a blue streak in the sky.
The sun has gone down but it is not yet dark.
A pale blue stripe appears from behind one of the mountains on Moorea
four miles away and stretches across the sky, straight as a die, over the hotel.
We see the waiters (well, all but one) looking at the phenomenon (or
noumenon?) and some of them take pictures with their cell phones.
We ask what it is. They have
no idea, never seen anything like it before.
“Perhaps it’s the end of the world” says one.
Wednesday 28 February
I wake early again, a pattern I remember from my business trips to
We exchange vouchers for ferry tickets, and then hang around for the 9.00 boat,
which proves to be a fast catamaran. I
don’t see any way to get outside and the windows are too dirty for photos.
Arnaud is there to meet us, and we discover there are several other
couples in the party. He piles us
into his 9-seater mini-bus and seems surprised that he can’t get everyone in.
“No problem,” he says, “I will send my friend for you.
Just wait here for 20 minutes,” and he drives off, leaving me and one
couple wondering whether this is going to work.
As promised, though, Linda arrives 20 minutes later, driving another
mini-bus, and the couple (from
The road round Moorea provides much better views of the mountains than the road
round 
a small party we feel conspicuous when we don’t buy any, although I buy a
shirt, subdued by local standards, flamboyant by mine.
One road takes us up into the hills, to Belvedere, where there are
splendid views back over the jungle to the two main bays of the islands,
Cook’s and Opunohu. Along the way,
Linda points out one mountain which has a small hole near the top.
She tells us that helicopters and small planes can fly through it.
We catch up with the rest of the party at the
When we have eaten we are loaded into a canoe, which comprises two hulls
strapped together with bamboo like a catamaran.
I haven’t heard why we are doing this, but we paddle out into the
lagoon about 100 metres to see a pearl farm.
We pass two over-water huts, with no linking walkways, and on the thatch
roof I am pleased to see solar panels. Then
we paddle back to look round the shop at the polished black pearls (black,
because the oysters are black-lipped). They are beautiful and expensive.
Although the whole process takes up to 15 years for a good-sized pearl,
there is no need for much human intervention and I wonder why the pearls are so
expensive. The skilful part takes
place when the young oyster is taken out of the water and prised open
sufficiently for the nucleus (in this case, a river mussel graft from the
Mississippi in Tennessee) to be inserted. The
oyster is then put back in the lagoon with other oysters in a net tied to a
bamboo frame, and left for the pearl to form.
Mistakenly, I think that we are being rounded up to return to the mini-buses, so
I make my way back to the shop at the
entrance, but I am the only one to do so.
The rest of the party emerges almost an hour later, presumably having
been given more craft demonstrations. I
don’t mind missing out (being partially deaf I am used to it) and I sit in the
shade with a bottle of water.
This is the last stop, and we complete the circuit of the island and
arrive back at the harbour half an hour before the ferry is due to leave.
This time I realise that you can go out into the open on the top deck,
and I take photos of Moorea with the sun low in the sky behind the island.
The wind is so strong because of our speed that it is difficult to stand
without support, and moving about is a hazardous occupation.
There is a mini-bus waiting for us in
Thursday 1 March
Sue has had a bad night, waking at 3.00am with sinus problems again.
I feel as though I am coming down with a cold.
Sue takes a homeopathic remedy and starts to feel better after breakfast.
We check at the Tahiti Nui Travel desk and find out that we will be
collected at 4.10pm. We gain a day
on Tahiti and lose a day on
Next
leg:
5.