“Then
we plow’d the South Ocean, such land to discover
As amongst
other nations has made such a pother.
We found it,
my boys, and with joy be it told,
For beauty
such islands you ne’er did behold.”
Dolphiner’s Song of Tahiti,
1768
The voyage across the Sea of the Moon took an hour, and another quarter
century. The last Mo'orea ferry I boarded had been half the speed and size of
this one. Through the only blazing jewel break in the reef towards the landing
at Vaiare, the Aremiti crossed from
the fresh flaming sapphire tumbling open ocean to the molten emerald glow of
the lagoon basin. My eyes rose to tall angular volcanic
peaks spiring eight thousand feet up into the violet sky, splitting the sun
into dark shadows and pearl light. Sharp steep skeletal slopes slid off black
escarpments into hard narrow hollows, where cadaveric crags set loose sparkling
waterfalls over the ridgelines. Enormous greenfire palm plumes swayed in the
warmth of the trades, far above the aching blinding surf spray, the cloud
powder salted starch of the white sand beaches, and flamboyant trees ablaze
with vermilion flowers, spilling their own cataracts of flame through the
surrounding thick green foliage. Does any
dim grey North dweller really know what light and colour are? It was as if the mountains were trying
to escape from the paradise below them.
The disembarking chaos of soft French
and softer Tahitian vowels flowed into a few round voitures, one long rectangular Le
Truck, with big open wooden windows and a village of primary colors painted
on its side panels, and silence. Ten minutes after we made our Vaiare landing,
it was deserted again. And Robyn and I had the wind on our faces, running
counterclockwise around Mo'orea’s heart-shaped coastal road, past Teavaro,
Temae, and Maharepa, to Cook’s Bay, where Vaita’s prophecy had been
fulfilled. ‘The glorious children of
Tetumu will come... Their body is different, our body is different... And this
land will be taken by them... The old rules will be destroyed and sacred birds
of the land and sea... will come and lament over that which this lopped tree
has to teach. They are coming on a canoe without an outrigger.’
Cook had observed that Polynesia
had been settled from west to east, but Robyn and I were committed contrarians.
Streams of sunlight fell over the mountains onto our arrival at the old Hotel
Kaveka. There were stingrays below our deck that night, and refuge from the
heartwrenching beauty and the French verbs that surrounded us, next morning.
It was a Sunday, and Robyn and I
decided to walk down and around the bay, past sailboats and cages full of Gaz de Tahiti butane tanks, a shop
selling pareus, a Nestlé rebar
man sculpture outside vending ‘citrons,’ an old fishing boat, a fishmonger
tattooed in the same blue and white as his Rava’ai
marlin mural, and a wall made of abalone shells, before passing through the
sleeping town and near empty Chinese supermarché
of Pau Pau at the bottom of the blue invagination. We turned north again, past
the Salle Omnisports de Pau Pau and
wild red ginger and small yellow roadside flowers, under jagged mountain cliffs
and towering coconut palms. Mangos and an empty honesty box covered a green and
white floral pareu-covered table. A red version further along was piled with
small orange pineapples, each with a 5 CFA price tag. A tall papaya tree
reached above the diminutive church of St. Joseph, whitewashed with pink trim,
enclosed by a rock wall, between two broad flame trees, under the prominence
Mount Tearai. Masks of bald wooden Tahitian faces with poignant expression of
pain, carved from seemingly random planks, lined the road further north, of the
same trees with the buttressed roots that tried to trip us, as we took refuge
from the sun on the shore. Our four-masted horizon ghost windjammer, Polynesia, sailed by, just as Robyn
found a red hibiscus to place behind her left ear, put a forefinger in her
right dimple, and assumed her saucy French girl pose under the flowering red
mimosa. It was midday hot, and we were headed for the tropical beverages at the
Jus de Fruits de Moorea. Our throats
were parched when we arrived, and the ‘ouvert’ sign, outside the gates of the
processing plant, was reassuring.
Until we encountered two problems. The first was that, there were no
fruit juices available in what should have been a tropical torrent of fruit
juice. Instead, there were fruit juice liqueurs to sample, as many as we
wanted. Liqueurs and dehydration were a bad marriage. Our head divorced the
rest of our bodies just before the tour buses arrived. When they did, those who
descended the stairs were New Zealanders, blue collar Kiwi Maoris from
Auckland, who were reveling in their Polynesian relationship with their
obviously more erudite French-influenced Tahitian cousins, and the opportunity
to drink as much high alcohol dessert libations as was possible in the half an
hour of off-road adventure that their tour allowed. George Forster, who had
travelled with Cook on his second
Endeavour expedition, the unofficial account of which he published as A Voyage Round the World
in 1777, had expressed a confidence in the ability of his Tahitian navigator
and translator, Tupaia, to ‘raise the New Zeelanders
to a state of civilization similar to that of his own islands...’ The
differential calculus of fruit liqueur volume disappearing down Maori throats
in a time-dependent fashion, was not supportive of this conviction. Robyn and I
struggled back to the Hotel Kaveka for water, and the burgers and freedom
fries, which tasted very French.
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