Island hopping in French Polynesia with a friend, Andrew Harris ...

french polynesiaHearing of our travel plans, a couple of friendsjoked that me and my buddy Dave should fly to Tahiti on apackage honeymoon. But as anyone who’s been to FrenchPolynesia will know, there’s far more to it to than canoodlingcouples sipping cocktails under nodding palms, and takingoccasional breathers to shop for black pearl earrings.And besides, my ears aren’t pierced.Tahiti is an anachronism wrapped in a culture clash, envelopedin a Polynesian Eden, tens of thousands of kilometres from itsinfatuated coloniser. It’s said that French Polynesia, a nominallyautonomous overseas dependency of France, costs the FrenchGovernment a billion euros a year. It has no natural resources,little obvious strategic advantage, and a growing independencemovement, but the French just can’t let it go – it’s just too achinglybeautiful. Meanwhile, the locals couldn’t really live without theFrench: zero income tax for anyone who’s not self-employed;outstanding healthcare, education and infrastructure; andgovernment-mandated minimum prices for crops such as copra thatare well above the regional average. All of this manifests in ethnicTahitians gadding about with baguettes; the ready availability ofwaterfalls, ribboning down the mountainous spine of the miniisland,disappearing into the density of treetops behind roadsidevillages. We pull over. And stare. Imagine a thundering waterfallin your backyard.Around 300,000 lucky people call the 130 or so islandsof French Polynesia home. Well over half live on the islandof Tahiti, the overwhelming majority of whom (about 120,000)live in and around the sprawl of the capital, Papeete.The populace is ethnically stratified into resident French,native Tahitians, a significant and long-term diasporic Chinesepopulation, and the demi, as they call themselves, who are mixedrace.That said, everyone is such a melange with mixed heritagethat in many cases these distinctions don’t apply. And as a resultof all the intermingling, racism seems virtually non-existent.Barely a take off and landing away from Tahiti, Raiatea is anisland with very different energy – it’s said this is the spiritualground zero for Polynesians, where all souls must pass throughto get to heaven. And from where all souls come in the firstplace. Some of the rarest plants in the world grow here. There’ssomething special, odd, in the air. Maybe that’s why the eels“The next day we find ourselves on an isolated promontory of Huahine in the villageof Haapu. Here, we find a clutch of petanque players, and after a few passes on thescooters, we climb delinquent-like through a hole in a chain-link fence to join them.heart-stopping French pastries; and hulking, tattooed youngmen playing Sunday afternoon petanque – European lawn bowls.In the balmy light of our first morning on Tahiti, from thebalcony of our room we’re greeted by Bora Bora, hazy in thedistance. We walk outside to a compressed staircase of foldedgreen mountains, rising high into Tahiti’s deep interior, wherethere’s a two-day hike to the summit of the highest peak.We’re in French Polynesia for ten days, island hopping aroundthe Society Islands group, of which Tahiti is principal, to seewhat makes the region tick. The first thing I want to do is acircumnavigation by road (117 kilometres in this case). What iscommonly known as ‘Tahiti’ is actually two islands – Tahiti Nui(Big Tahiti) and Tahiti Iti (Little Tahiti) – joined like a lopsidedbarbell by a narrow strip. Despite the presence of that four-lanehighway on Nui (of which many of the locals are immenselyproud), at the other end of the two-island complex there’s no roadat all. If you want to keep going it’s a precarious predicament ofpicking your way over rocks, and defending yourself against straydogs as mad as hellspawn. It’s like driving from the backblocksof Paris to the edge of the earth in about half an hour.Some way along Iti, we’re struck by a string of high-strungPaddling the warmwaters inside thereef of Huahine.”are so big. We’re snorkelling off the side of a private speedboat,maybe a kilometre or so offshore when I take a deep drag of airand dive to the sandy bottom. I’m met with schools of brightlycoloured fish, the occasional coral crop, and a ray in the distance.Just near a drop-off, a monstrously long moray eel nips in andout of its hide. Almost in greeting; almost in reproach. And then Isee another. Even bigger. Probably two metres long, if it felt likerevealing its entire self.I could be imagining things, but when I surface and remove mymask, I can smell vanilla. It’s wafting from the plantations on thenearby island of Taha’a, only a few kilometres away, and in plainview. Later on, when we do get to Taha’a, you really can smellvanilla in the air, well before we reach the plantation, where I buy abundle of 20 pods for about A$30. They’re the finest in the world,with a perfect moisture content; sun-dried by hand, shifted andturned to face the rays, for at least a year. You’d struggle to findthem in Australia, and if you did, they’d cost almost that much each.The other great culinary highlight of French Polynesia is thelocal tuna. Kilo upon kilo of the freshest, most supple fish I’veever experienced. In an all-night supermarket, alongside a rangeof baked sweets, we find fresh tuna in all its glory – great biginky hunks of it: sushi, sashimi and all the rest. Beats Doritosfor a snack. At every lunch stop along the way, poisson cru (thelocal raw tuna salad) is the star dish, alongside melt-in-the mouthcarpaccio de thon – paper-thin slices of fish drizzled with vanillainfusedolive oil. And if you like your tuna cooked, you’ll find itsmothered in rich vanilla sauce. Given half a chance, I wouldhave sat around eating various forms of tuna for the entire trip.Local specialities aside, France ensures that all the denizensof its national mistress are fed and watered with the finest theworld can offer. Here, New Zealand beef is streaks better than thebest of what the Kiwis eat. Every French cheese known to manis available in the hangar-sized Carrefour supermarket near theairport in Faaa, Tahiti – a nice bottle of Bordeaux with the eveningmeal seems a constitutional right.A 20-minute hop from Raiatea is the marvellous tangle ofmountains, inlets and lagoon known in Tahitian as Huahine.For better or worse, this translates most directly as ‘vagina’.#40 get lost ISSUE #27 get in the know Tahiti’s highest point is Mount Orohena at 2241m, located roughly in the centre of the island.get in the know When referring to the scenery, rupe (roo-peh) is ‘beautiful’ in Tahitian, but to describe a woman ‘beautiful’ is nehe nehe (ne-hi ne-hi).All the colours of thefishy rainbow, freshlycaught in Huahine.ISSUE #27 get lost #41