Half Around The World In 80 Days

I depart Fiji on Sunday October 17th at 11pm and fly 2000 miles east to Tahiti. Due to the quirkiness of the International Date Line, I arrive in Papeete at 5am on Sunday October 17th and get to live the day of rest all over again. Arriving at this airport is a dramatic change from Fiji. French Polynesia is still a colony of France and it oozes Frenchness at every turn. The passengers milling around the airport all have a haughty air about them, everyone speaks French, they drive on the right, the cars are predominantly Renaults, Peogeots and Citroens, and the newsagents are stocked with Le Monde, Paris Match and the like. I could just as well have arrived in Marseilles as in the centre of the South Pacific. I also get to find out what the French think of Fijian hygiene standards; all of us who boarded the flight in Nadi have to wait an hour while our luggage is fumigated.

The capital city Papeete is not a very pretty sight being crowded, dirty and expensive. The cost of living here is very dear; the most expensive item I noted was a watermelon for an unbelievable IR£27 in the fruit market. Restaurant prices are similarly exorbitant. There is one reasonable place to eat in Papeete though. In the evening the harbour-front comes alive with 'Les Roulottes' which are mobile restaurants with counters and high stools arrayed around them. These serve delectable food from numerous ethnic cuisines and at reasonable prices. Thus you could get your starter from a Chinese roulotte, move on to a Thai for your main course and finish off with a cholesterol bomb pancake at a French creperie. The clientele is mainly locals, which is a good sign, along with a sprinkling of backpackers and Americans from the cruise liners moored in the harbour.

Map of Tahiti and Moorea, French Polynesia

The countryside itself in Tahiti is utterly magnificent. Dramatic dark green mountains rise sheer out of the ocean. Flooded volcano craters make for bays that look like they are from a fairy tale. Even the native people themselves are utterly beautiful; when the first Europeans sailed by in the 17th and 18th centuries they used be greeted by hordes of scantily clad native girls in their canoes. Unfortunately, visitors no longer get greeted in this way but the locals are still extremely beautiful and half the women and men seem to walk about with flowers in their hair.

I split my time in Polynesia between the islands of Tahiti and Moorea which are one hour ferry ride apart. If anything, Moorea is even more beautiful that Tahiti itself. The beautiful Opanahu Bay was the location for the movie 'The Bounty' in the 1980s with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins and it is a place where I would like to go to work every day. I meet some very interesting people in Moorea; on the 'Le Truck' bus there is a middle-aged couple from Canada who sold everything they owned in 1990 to but a yacht and sail around the world ever since along with their children who are now 13 and 10 years of age.

Opunohu Bay, Moorea

There was one sour note to my stay in Moorea. On Thursday October 21st I hired a motor-scooter to drive all around the island to admire the views. However, I soon discovered that this machine was a piece of junk. Every time I stopped to admire a panorama it would take five minutes of ferocious kicking to get the machine started again. Many attempts at adjusting the carburettor further failed to improve its performance. On one occasion I had been kicking the pedal for about 10 minutes when two young girls walked along the road and burst out laughing at my predicament. In broken French I asked if they wanted to try and start it up which they succeeded in doing on the first attempt. I did not make a big impression there, but at least it got me mobile again. Later I stopped for lunch on a deserted beach which must have been sponsored by Kodak, such was its beauty. But horror of horrors my camera was not to be found nor were my recently-purchased binoculars. Retracing my steps to the numerous stops failed to locate them. Even the police held out little hope of them ever turning up. Not only did this deprive me of my camera, but also of my entire photographic record of the lovely island. I did contemplate buying a disposable camera, but at IR£27 for 24 shots, it hardly seemed worthwhile. To soothe my spirits at the end of this day I go for a hike in the woods and manage to lose my sunglasses, maybe I should just have stayed in bed all day ?

Notwithstanding my unfortunate losses, I was left with a very positive image of Polynesia overall. Furthermore I had only scratched the surface of this archipelago as there are numerous other beautiful islands to see like Bora Bora, Huahine, etc. Perhaps I will see them in a future life, as they seem like paradise to me.