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:: Island Girl
June 18, 2000
Island Girl
Bora Bora and Huahine, French Polynesia
"Stay in Tahiti!" kicked off my travel agent's faxed instructions outlining a comprehensive New Zealand tour scheduled to start five days later in Auckland.
Now I had time for Bora Bora. And I bought a one-way $50 freighter ticket to get there. But forty days on a cruise ship and four days at the Sheraton left me ill prepared for the dock scene at Vaeanu.
It was, well, a freighter. Until then, the closest I'd come to hopping one was in travel guides. But my new world tour was no longer all-inclusive. I had to make the money last.
A wide open metal deck painted green with hovering cranes, swarmed with passengers along the railing as I stepped out of the cab, a frazzled sweaty mess. I'd spent the last frantic hour before boarding time in my hotel room divesting myself of accumulations including my bottle of Madeira wine, the travel iron I bought in Spain and an entire suitcase.
All eyes were on me hauling a large duffel bag, knapsack and a computer bag. I dragged them one at a time up the wooden ramp. No cabin steward, hotel manager or cruise director to lend a hand.
A large surly woman in a brown muumuu with big white flowers spoke to me in French.
I said, "Pardon Madame. Je ne parle pas francais."
Rolling her eyes and gesturing toward my luggage she asked, "Is that it?"
I nodded.
She handed my ticket to another woman her same size wearing the same dress. They traded words in spirited French, then pointed to me, my bags and the dock.
Uh oh.
Finally the second woman faced me and said, "Office." Once there I happily paid the 500 francs required for my second bag.
The next morning I awoke in Taha'a, one of four Leeward Society Islands and the last stop before Bora Bora. The Vaeanu freighter was a virtual ghost town, depopulated by stops to Raietea and Huahine. Sailing on deck remained a teenage girl, sitting cross-legged in a tie-dyed pareo and maroon T-shirt, and a thin woman with a long black braid, shooting a video camera and wearing black Capri pants, wedge sandals and a red tailored shirt. Just opposite me smiled an elderly woman nursing a nosebleed. Her adolescent companion napped with his torso at a 90-degree angle to his legs on a stuffed white bag and occasionally leaned on his elbow to tear a bite from a baguette.
Two hours later I pointed to the cloud-shrouded peaks of the magnificent green mass I had seen at a distance from Taha'a. I asked a passing crewmember, "Bora Bora?"
"Oui. Arrive'."
After settling into Village Pauline, I strolled down the road to Bloody Mary's, the hipsters' haven of French Polynesia. Two huge hanging wood signs listed the names of more than 150 luminaries who had graced the restaurant with their presence, including Vanessa Williams, Phil Donahue, Gerard Depardieu, Nelson Rockefeller and Denzel Washington.
After my bloody mary mai tai, I capped off the afternoon with a two hour nap at Matira beach along the southern tip of the island, considered to be Bora Bora's most beautiful, and a 20-minute walk from Pauline's.
The next day I swam with the sharks without being eaten alive. Bora Bora's lagoon is three times the size of its land mass and is home to nearly 700 species of tropical fish. The shark feed and lagoon tour are the island's prized attractions.
From our boat, the captain sectioned off the lagoon with a rope. On one side, tourists in snorkel gear floated steady. On the other side, the crew fed chum to rays and black tip reef shark. Afterward, we swam a quarter-mile through the Coral Garden, an amazing natural underwater park teeming with gorgeous sea life.
Back at Pauline's I chatted with the manager about surviving the shark swim and about the moai at Easter Island. Originally from Israel, he is an 11-year Bora Bora resident, a self-described "refugee from reality" and a Polynesia aficionado.
That evening, in Pauline's shared kitchen, I sliced open a fresh papaya and offered sections to folks around the table. One gentleman, an engineer originally from Germany who has lived in French Polynesia for the past 20 years, pushed a can of cashews in front of me and said, "We will make an exchange, yes?"
He spiced the can of Coke he bought me with remains from his bottle of Tahitian rum. We talked of expatriation, dreaming in French and how much we both loved cashews. He reminisced about surviving four cyclones and I about a cruise gone bad. He offered to drive me to the airport ferry the next morning for my flight to Huahine, and I accepted.
I arrived at Huahine, the locally nicknamed "Savage Island," on a comfy 10-minute Air Tahiti flight. Huahine is a lush jungle Shangri-La untouched by mass tourism and strikingly contrasts the hectic over development of Tahiti.
Actually two islands attached by a bridge over a channel connecting two bays, Huahine covers 29 square miles and has eight villages populated by 5,600 people who live an essentially rural life.
In four leisurely hours I circled the island on a rented scooter. There's plenty to see - the vanilla plantation, the archaeological sites at Maeva, the black pearl farm, and many small isolated beaches. But I'd grown weary of the sightseeing putt-putt of stop, look, go and stop again. Instead I wanted a more fluid, visceral experience: Wind-yielding green. White and turquoise breakers. Speed. Sun. Rhythms.
With the thrust of the accelerator and the curve of each bend, the landscape turned more diverse and remarkable. Nothing resembled what had gone before it. Warm and cool all at once, the open road was the only place I had to be, on a bike on an island for a day.
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