The Myth of Paradise

 

A few days ago I tweeted " I love you Tahiti but I gotta say that coming back to a sunny Portland is no bummer." I instantly lost around 15 followers. I'm not too concerned about losing that many Twitter fans but this made me think about something that I've encountered since I chose to move from Tahiti to Portland, Oregon about three years ago: people want me to live in (or at least revere) "Paradise" because it helps them believe in a better place. 

The chance of any of these people ever packing up their lives and living on an island or even visiting that island on vacation is small at best, but when I say that I currently prefer a US city to their image of vacation land, it's like telling a child there's no such thing as Santa Claus. That tropical island is like Dr Seuss's Solla Saloo "where there never are troubles, at least very few," but like the place in that story, one set of troubles is only replaced by another. This is life, this is planet Earth and I hate to be the one to burst people's bubble but after the glow of first love fades nowhere is perfect unless you have personally achieved some kind of Nirvana.

Here's the thing: wherever you go you will probably have to work to survive and if you grew up in the US, Europe or anywhere else brimming with action it will be hard for you to slow down to the point where gazing at the sea (or road or palm trees in the wind) for a few hours will fulfill your activity needs. Not to say I don't love doing this in theory. Right now as I sit on my deck writing to deadline to the sound of traffic, hanging out and watching hermit crabs make trails in the sand sounds awfully nice but years of this with little else going on? Not at this period of my life, thanks. 

It takes approximately 3.5 hours to drive around Tahiti. Think about that for a minute. Nearly every inch is surrounded by a gorgeous, tepid lagoon and the mountains hold lush plantations of bananas and papayas, as well as tall cascades gushing into crystal clear pools. I love all these places and really I don't tire of them, but over the 15 years I lived there I have been just about everywhere, dozens of times. As much as I enjoy swimming and hiking I am too complicated a person to be able to be happy doing only that, in the same places, over and over again in my free moments in between work (because wherever you go you still need money to survive). Life here in Portland means pubs, restaurant, skiing, beaches, berry picking, varied live music any night of the week and, most importantly, the ability to drive for hours to get to a multitude of other places. Right now this is what I want. Maybe as I get older I'll tire of this and want to settle back down to slow island life but I'm not done with the continent-based lifestyle yet.

Also, your shit is your shit and no matter how balmy the temperatures or blue the lagoon, it will be with you, always. Other people have their shit too and you will have to deal with it anywhere there are other humans. 

Example: Last week I returned to my village, Teahupoo for the first time in 2.5 years. A few years before I left, one of the area's biggest families put up a gate blocking the area's other biggest family from being able to access their homes, land and fishing grounds without paying the first, road-owning family around $375 a piece for gate access. The whole town is in turmoil about this and guess what? After all the time I've been gone nothing has changed other than a few fists have swung. 

On a more personal level, half the village comes into my yard and steals my lemons, a "friend" went in my house when we were gone and stole my kid's bunk bed and a local woman threatened to go in my house and "break everything" because we fired her as a house cleaner when she began working hours we never asked her to and then demanded money from us. None of these things are a big deal on a grand scale but to me they equal out the lonely anonymity of city life. Island problems are more personal and they'll get to you if you don't adopt a very Zen state of mind. Are you ready for your house and property to be communal areas? Do you mind having things you do meld into conversations that get warped into gossip via the "coconut radio?" If so, go try living in Polynesia.

At the end of the day for me, I'm taking a break from both the intensity and calm of island life. It's something I'm not sure anyone who has never lived on an island can understand. Tahiti is a wonderful place that I love with all my heart but for now I need more. If that works against your faith in a perfect world I'm sorry, but I suggest you try meditation.

Happy Island Kids

It's Friday the 13th today so I thought I'd dig up some pictures from the depths of my (mostly unused) photo archives, of kids on islands frolicking, not worrying about bad luck and superstition and generally having a blast. I actually didn't take the first and second photos - these two were snapped by my husband Josh Humbert who is much more of a pro at this photography stuff than me. Both were taken on Bunaken Island off of Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. I love that in the second one these kids look like they're about to land on a bunch of rebar - don't worry, they didn't.


I took this next photo on Ko Phayam in Thailand in around 2008. I went back last year and this kid is now a great big tall man but I still recognized him. Unfortunately, I didn't see the dog. Hopefully the burying him in the sand thing didn't get out of hand. He told me at the time that the dog liked be buried because it kept him cool.

It was just me and these three kids hanging out on the wee island of Namu'a in Samoa for a few hours. We spent at least an hour of this taking silly pictures and after each one they'd shout "Wanna see! Wanna see!" I wore out my camera battery flipping through all of the pictures. It was really fun.


Here is my son gracefully leaping off the oyster platform at my family's pearl farm in Ahe, French Polynesia. Speaking of kids growing into big tall men, this was taken a little over a year ago and now he's my height.


You may remember this scene from another post a few weeks ago. These boys in American Samoa were leaping into this pit of spiky lava with a huge and powerful swell heaving in and out of it. Danger was everywhere but they couldn't have given a flying and of course no one got hurt.


And last, I love this boy. What a character and I hope you can tell from this photo. This is in Ovalau, Fiji. I stayed in a homestay and "Billy Boy," besides cracking jokes and constantly getting into trouble also knew how to drive the boat, fix the motor, cook, clean and sing loud and clear at church. He's a great kid. He's 12 years old.

Tuna Wrestling & Shark Frenzies in the Tuamotus

Here's a snippet of daily life I wrote over Christmas in the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia:

"Mama, Mama look what Papa caught!" my son pulls me out of my chair and outside.

Josh and Heiarii are just pulling up to the dock in the aluminum skiff. Looking into the boat I can see a three-foot glimmering dogtooth tuna laying atop a good sized black trevally and two lagoon fish. Josh is smiling huge and Heiarii who's driving the boat looks happily entranced.

It's a grey 5:45 in the afternoon and the trade winds are blowing hard creating long rolls of swell that jostle the little boat before crashing as waves onto the coral gravel shore. We're in a house perched on a coral head about 100m out from the beach and the drone of the boat's motor is nearly drowned out by the loud surf and the wind rushing over the tin roof. It's chilly in a tropical sort of way, a way that makes you think about putting a T-shirt on over your swimsuit.

As they haul the fish and spear guns up onto the dock, Josh tells me the story of the hunt:

"It was a team effort. I shot the tuna in the jaw then Heiarri saw it was going to get loose so shot it in the side then grabbed it with both arms while it was thrashing and swam it to the surface. There were raira [grey reef sharks] everywhere!" I can see the adrenalin still pumping through Josh's eyes. Heiarii, always humble has a hard time hiding his stoke as well.

"So I bet you really feel like men now eh?" I say with a smile.

"Oh yeah!" Josh and Heiarii laugh and pound their chests.

The dogtooth tuna is so fresh it's still changing colors, it's iridescent silver and light blue skin sullied only by a black trickle of a line I assume is its own blood. It's beautiful with its eyes shining under the grey clouds, a truly majestic animal.

The guys get busy cleaning it and making fillets that we'll make sashimi and poisson cru from for the next several days. Heiarii saves some of the bones to make jewelry. They throw the guts into the water then my son calls me over quickly to the dock.




There are 20 or more sharks in a frenzy just next to the dock - about three feet down from the edge where we're standing. Never in the 20 years I've been hanging out in Ahe have I seen so many sharks in one place. Not only that they're huge, some over six feet, grey reef and black tips hammering into each other and making the water boil with their thrashing tails as they try to nab bits of tuna. We throw the bones in, more sharks come over from out of nowhere and the frenzy intensifies. We're safe up where we are but it's still instinctually petrifying watching them. Not only that but this is where we swim every day. After about half an hour the tuna carcass is licked clean and the lagoon looks peaceful again.

We make sashimi and, with the same fervor as sharks devour our dinner procured by our own hunters of the sea. I'm glad in a way we got to share the bounty. This is a tuna who's life definitely didn't go to waste.

Masquerading as Americans: Post-Ex-pat Beginnings

I'm not sure how many of you are aware of this, but two weeks ago my family and I moved to Portland Oregon from Tahiti, French Polynesia. I've been living away from the US for 17 years, my husband Josh has been away for 18 years and my kids have never lived in the US.

The trouble is that while we look and sound American, we have all these weird ticks: my 14 year old daughter is afraid of escalators, my 12 year old son has to ask lots of language question like "what's a hippy?" Josh pretty much goes everywhere shirtless and shoeless (all of us feel confined and uncomfortable in shoes) and I stumble on credit card slide machines, keep trying to bag my own groceries and just generally feel lost.

The pleasant thing about Portland though is that it's OK to be weird. In most cases I just explain to people: "Hey, I'm sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing. I know I seem like an American but I've been living abroad for a long time and a lot has changed."

In most cases people just ask where I've been and then explain whatever it is that I'm lost about whether it's how public libraries work in the Internet age or what Netflicks is - then they ask why I look so cold when it's 75 degrees outside.

Papeete's Green Revolution - Watching Tahiti's Capital Become Beautiful Again

Papeete is Tahiti and French Polynesia's capital city and for years it's had a bad rap of being a polluted, grungy embarrassment to the rest of the stunningly beautiful country. This is changing. I live an hour and a half away from Papeete and go there about once or twice a month so I've had a real perspective on how vastly the city has changed over the last year or so.

The metamorphosis is almost entirely from new landscaping along the waterfront. Several years ago Papeete's lagoon-side road was nothing more than a traffic-clogged concrete strip with fading 1960s architecture on one side and a view of a polluted port on the other. The only saving graces were some graceful old trees that grew in the road divider and the sailboats that docked along the main drag. There were a few dark years during this decade when many of these trees were chopped down and the sailboats were told to dock elsewhere, but luckily this was followed by some brilliant urban planning that has completely changed the face of the city.

It all began with the building of To'ata Amphitheater right next to the lagoon ten or so years ago. A walking area with brick patio stones shaded by frangipani trees was built around this prime theater and a few good restaurants sprung up in the water-view pedestrian only area. A few years later the Vaiete Roullotte area at the other end of the waterfront got a facelift with a little gazebo for live bands, more paved areas, trees and some great public restrooms. This was followed by the building of a fancy new tourist office (with more great public restrooms - much needed in Papeete) and a little crafts market near the Moorea Ferry docks.

But the biggest changes have been recent. The area between To'ata and Vaiete has seen the return of some (but not all) of the docking sailboats and an ever-growing landscaped garden park that includes an enclosed child's play area as well as some lovely spots to sit and watch outrigger canoes glide in front of the setting sun. There are trees, winding grassy areas, paved areas for bikes, trees and flowers. As someone who's seen Papeete through it's worst years, it's hard for me to admit it, but the city is looking very pretty these days.

I hope that the new look will soon spread into the city's interior, which still is crammed with shabby architecture and peeling paint, but the waterfront is where the city's charm was always meant to lie. Now, for the first time in several decades, Papeete is living up to its exotic reputation.

Note: Photo courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme

Raimana's Big Happy Teahupoo Tube Ride

I rarely write about surfing - even though I happen to live in Teahupoo, home of one of the most famous and scary waves in the world - because honestly, I don't really know what I'm talking about. I leave the surf stuff to my husband Josh Humbert. Still, every now and then I get really impressed, like I did when Josh showed me this video footage his friend Gen took (with our camera) of local boy Raimana Van Bastolaer riding what could be the biggest and best wave of the season, nearly getting swallowed and then miraculously making it out. I love how it looks like he got eaten by tube then comes happily shooting back up over the top - I also love how humble and nice he is when he comes back to the boat. That's real Tahitian class. Raimana won the Billabong XXL 2010 Tube of the Year award for this ride! This whole sequence makes me happy. It was on March 17th 2010.



For more photos of that day check out Josh's slideshow.

Tahitian Dancing My Life Away

You may have noticed that for the last few weeks I've been blogging about older stories and general thoughts, not what I'm up to here on Tahiti. The reason for this is that I've been dancing - sometimes up to 20 hours a week - preparing for a huge show I'm going to perform in this Saturday, May 15th. This is my first year taking Tahitian dance classes but by a mix of circumstances I have now committed to dance in five acts of a huge show at To'ata Amphitheater, Tahiti's biggest and best venue; everyone from UB40 to the dancers at the massive Heiva I Tahiti festival perform here. I've been so wrapped up in wood percussion rhythms, graceful ukulele and making my five costumes out of leaves, shells and beautiful Tahitian fabrics, that I've hardly had time to eat.

The good news is that you'll all be able to catch up on the story soon. I have a three-part series that's going to be run by a venerable, soon-to-be-named travel site in the coming weeks and I'll make an announcement here when the first story is up. Till then, here's a video I filmed at last Saturday's all-day practice session. It's just a teaser. Enjoy!

Punu Pua'atoro: Spam of the Gods

Poisson Cru, a delicate and healthy raw fish salad, is the star of French Polynesian cuisine and most visitors think of it as the country's national dish. Tahitians do eat lots of poisson cru but beyond restaurant menus and within family kitchen walls, the most popular dish in the country is by far Punu Pua'atoro, canned corned beef and Tahiti's answer to Spam.

Chock full of fat and nitrites, Punu Pua'atoro is deliciously salty and addictively tasty. It's also very easy to prepare. At home most folks fry it up in a pan with onions and serve it with roast breadfruit. At picnics the Punu Pua'atoro tin is heated directly in the fire next to a charring breadfruit. In fact, the meat is so linked to breadfruit that I've heard stories of doctors who have told local diabetics and cholesterol sufferers to stop eating breadfruit - they know that if people don't eat breadfruit, they won't eat Punu Pua'atoro either. It sounds nicer to tell someone to stop eating their fruits and veggies than something meaty and yummy.

Punu Pua'atoro in the no-nonsense Tahitian language literally means "horned pig in metal." Even though most people are now aware that salty canned meat isn't really good for them, a near mystical, back-to-the-roots aura surrounds it as a distinctly Polynesian dish. If you eat Punu Pua'atoro you're a local; if you turn your nose up at it, you're kind of an asshole. It's the cool kid thing to bring along on picnics and everyone will nod in approval and take a little whether they like it for real or not. It's ironic that what has become a symbol of island cuisine is made from an animal that hardly exists in Polynesia, doesn't even have it's own real Tahitian name and makes so many people sick and overweight. But there you have it, like smoking cigarettes, sometimes being hip and sensory enjoyment takes priority of over reason.

I happen to love Punu Pu'atoro but eat it only a few times a year, mostly at picnics with my cool back-to-the-roots Tahitian buddies. Yeah, I admit, I care a little about my image but I also do love the salty, fatty taste when sopped up on a piece of hot, chestnut-like breadfruit. I don't buy Punu Pua'atoro and it makes me feel sick every time I do eat it, but I relish those moments around the fire pit, eating just cooked yummy food to the sound of ukulele.

The Bright Underbelly of Teahupoo's Monster Wave

My husband Josh Humbert has probably spent as much time below Teahupoo's infamously scary surf break has he has on top of it. Sometimes he brings home fish he's speared and other times he brings home stunning photos like this one. I love this different angle and otherworldly feel of what is one of the world's most photographed waves. Josh says he wanted to capture the beauty of all the cracks in the reef spreading from the break. This day (this Tuesday) the waves were good sized, the sea was glassy and the sun was in the perfect position to light it all up.

To see what the wave looks like from the surface check out my Lonely Planet video at www.lonelyplanet.tv.

Living With House Geckos - The Dark Side

With big, wide-set eyes, stubby little noses and adorable suctioned fingers, who wouldn't find the common house gecko insanely cute. In Tahiti they are omnipresent after dark, lingering on walls, munching pesky mosquitoes, stalking moths and making their soft monkey-with-hiccoughs calls. Many a tourist has become enamored of these seemingly peaceful critters and come home with a tattoo of one on their arm or derriere; ancient Polynesians included the small lizards in many legends.

But here's the truth: geckos have a dark side - a cavernous dark side. My love for them plummeted the moment I first saw a big gecko swallow a smaller one, the tail of the victim waving like a white flag until it disappeared down the bigger guy's gullet. I began to question my like for them when two fighting geckos fell on my face in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, scaring the living daylights out of me and smearing me with mushy battered lizard skin. Cleaning house I began to realize that the majority of the crud on the floor and windowsills is gecko poo. It's commonplace here to have gecko crap fall from the ceiling right into your drink or onto your forehead while watching a movie. Gecko pee pretty much sucks too - it's just a slight dribble that always lands on you as a surprise till you look up and see where it came from. I swear geckos get enjoyment out of their spectacular long-distance aim; I hear them laughing on the ceiling with their funny monkey chuckle.

The worst is what they do to appliances. Geckos have ruined several of my printers by climbing into them and dying. By the time they start to stink (and you'd be surprised how bad one little dead lizard can smell) the machine is jammed up beyond repair. Once a gecko climbed into our air-con unit and died, like geckos do, and we couldn't find the damned thing. We had to suffer stink in the office for a good two weeks. Luckily, the gecko eventually decomposed in the dry pumped out air and the air-con unit survived.

Sometimes I'll casually pull out a book from my bookshelf and a gecko springs out wildly into my lap. This wouldn't be so bad except that the friction of the book has usually removed most of the skin from the gecko's back, which makes him look like some raw, Golum-like beast. They get in the cereal, eat the tops off my ripe bananas and knock stuff over while we're sleeping and wake us up.

It sounds like I must hate geckos by now but really I don't. I admit to enjoying it more than I should when the cat catches them, but overall I think the guys have spunk. It's enthralling watching them hunt bugs (or each other), moving so slowly it's imperceptible except for their tails that swirl like a lion's on the prowl. I like that they can still throw off the cat with the 'ole eject-the-tail trick and I appreciate that they eat so many insects. Every now and then I find a tiny baby gecko and think he's so cute that I try to save him from the harsh gecko world by moving him to a spot in the house where I know the big guys, who would want to eat him, don't hang out. Yes, geckos are a pain but they are also a constant source of entertainment and give our household more depth of character. We have spent many an evening getting entertained by the cat trying to jump up the walls to catch them. My son has raised geckos in a giant fish tank, has incubated their eggs and it's become a nightime family sport to scamper around lightbulbs catching bugs for our reptilian pets.

To close, here's my favorite gecko love story via a Thai commercial for ceiling boards - you might need a hanky.



The opening gecko photo on this post is by my talented photographer friend Vincent Devert www.vincentdevert.com.

Photo of the Week: Ua Huka, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia

Dried coconut meat, also called copra, makes the world go round on nearly all of French Polynesia's outer islands. Coconuts are harvested off the ground in their ripest pre-germed stage, are cleaved in two with a machete then left out to dry in the sun. Next, the meat is extracted with a curved knife, called a pana in Tahitian, and the meat is dried again. This is the stage you see in this photo. Lastly, the coconut bits are stuffed in a sac, sold by weight to the local supply ships (known as "copra boats") and shipped to Papeete where the oil is extracted.

Ua Huka is one of the least visited islands in the Marquesas but it's my favorite. Lush valleys are concentrated with fruit trees (including over 20 species of mango) but the hills and coastal areas are open, grassy and decidedly wind-swept. I love that the locals let their copra dry out on the bare ground like this. On most islands people use elevated drying huts but everyone knows each other on Ua Huka and there's so much open space, why bother? There's a greater concentration of expert wood carvers on the island than anywhere else in the country, you can roam the hills on horse back looking for ancient pertoglyphs, fetch knotty tern eggs with the locals or search for the Marquesas-exclusive Ultramarine lorikeet, an electric blue beauty that's one of the world's rarest birds.

Jam Session at the Tahiti Immigration Office

This photo was taken by my friend Fletcher Irwin when he stopped by the Papeete Immigration office at noon on a Thursday. He got his visa and hung out and drank beer and played music with these guys for about four hours. Paradise.

Recipe: Easy French Chocolate Fondant

Ah the French, they do marvelous things with chocolate. And not just chocolate either - I have learned countless easy but flashy looking French cooking techniques since I've been here in Polynesia and I now devoutly kneel before the wisdom of French food savvy. Today is my daughter's 14th birthday (ouch!) and she's asked me to make one of her favorite cakes in my recipe arsenal, Chocolate Fondant, a rich gooey cake kind of like chocolate brownies but more sophisticated. This recipe was given to me by a Parisian friend and even manages to wow my French dinner guests. Keep it a secret that it's so ridiculously easy to make.

The trick to this cake is to not over-cook it and not to skimp on the butter.

Easy French Chocolate Fondant

• 50g (1/2 cup) plain flour
• 200g (7/8th cup) butter
• 200g (7/8th cup) sugar
• 200g (7 oz) dark chocolate
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla, strong coffee or orange zest (optional)

Preheat oven to 200 C (about 390 F or gas mark 7). With a whisk mix together the sugar and eggs. Add the flour and mix till smooth. Put the butter in a 9-inch round (or equivalent) pan and put it in the heating oven till the butter has just melted. Meanwhile melt the chocolate in a bain marie (a pot floating in a slightly bigger pot of boiling water). Make sure no water splashes into the chocolate. Take the melted butter in the pan out of the oven, add the melted chocolate to the butter in the pan, mix till smooth then add the egg, sugar and flour mixture. If you are adding vanilla, coffee or orange zest for a more complex flavor, add them now. Again, mix till smooth. Put the batter-filled the pan back in the oven and cook for 7-10 minutes. The center should look slightly uncooked - if it looks cooked you've left it in too long. The fondant is best eaten cold to slightly warm and is great with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Photo note: I'm not a professional food blogger so my photo isn't as flashy as you'll find on many food sites but, believe me, the recipe is just as good.

Cyclone Oli Hits Tahiti

Between 9pm Wednesday night and 10am Thursday morning Tahitian authorities banned driving on Tahiti and Moorea in anticipation of Cyclone Oli. Winds built up consistently throughout Wednesday but the storm hit us full force in the pitch black of night. It was terrifying. I had my kids in my bed with me in my room on the protected side of the house but none of us slept. Between the storm's noise, the stress and the heat, it was impossible. I found myself getting up several times to check on how the doors were holding and to check on my cats and dogs. The cats actually made a bigger mess and ruckus inside the house than the storm but the major damage to us was in the yard where several of my trees blew over.

The winds seemed just as strong by daylight but the news on RFO (Radio France Overseas)assured us the worse had passed. We went out and shot this video at around 8am.

Despite what a shambles French Polynesia's politics are in right now, the country was superbly organized when dealing with Cyclone Oli. RFO broadcasted 24 hours a day keeping everyone up to date, hotlines were installed and a few thousand people were evacuated from their homes. The worst news I heard was that some people on Tahiti's east coast were afraid to evacuate because a group of young people were going around and robbing people's vacated homes. How evil is that? But overall people helped each other out and there was an extremely strong sense of community during the crisis.

EDT (Electricite de Tahiti) were also heroes and spent over 10 hours into the middle of the night repairing the electric poles that had been taken down by trees in my small community of a few hundred people. There was still a lot of wind into the night last night (I had another tree get blown over - a 5m high soursop tree - after I shot this video) but now at 5am on Friday, it's dead calm. The storm hit the Austral Islands last night with estimated wind speeds of up to 250 km/hr and 9 meter ocean swell. My thoughts have been with them all night and I have not yet heard news of the dammage.



Once again iMovie is blocking me from adding subtitles so you'll have to make do with my translations below.

White pickup truck scene:
There are cops down there so you'll get a ticket if they catch you driving. [note: the fine was 16,100 CFP, about US$185]
And there's no store, it's closed so don't bother.

Interview with Lesta:
Lesta: No we didn't sleep, we stayed up. At about 3am I found my boat on top of my greenhouse, my vanilla greenhouse. It went up like that on to my greenhouse.

Cyclone Oli On It's Way to Teahupoo

At around 2pm today February 3rd, Tahiti was put on red alert for approaching Cyclone Oli. We've been on orange alert since yesterday and the weather has been degrading since early this morning so this is no surprise. The storm is supposed to pass about 200 to 250 km to the south of us and we are to expect winds around 110km or upward. I'm on the west side of Tahiti Iti where we are getting good gusts of west wind but are fortunately protected from the huge north swells that have flooded the Papeete waterfront and are causing damage on the east coast. Here is a video of the not-so-calm before the storm.



I can't figure out how to get subtitles on my movie program (sorry I'm in the middle of a cyclone!) so here is a short summary of what Finne (who I interview) says:
Finne:
Apparently the news says it's going to gain force later and tonight it'll be 150km/hr and at 150 km/hr everything is going to blow away.
Celeste: And here in Teahupoo do you think it will be bad?
Finne: Yeah. The wind is coming from the west so we're going to be right in the middle of it.

Wind blows.

Finne: It's the strongest when it comes from the valley.
Celeste: And is that gust coming from the valley?
Finne: Yes!

Traveling French Polynesia by Supply Ship Part 5

First thing in the morning we started unloading supplies in Manihi, an atoll I know well from the days we used to fly there before Ahe got an airport. Manihi's village is right at the very short but deep pass and is one of my least favorite villages in the archipelago. The dock area is pleasant, with a big ancient tree you can sit under for shade and a little store to get a cold drink, but the rest of the village is strangely over-run with concrete and everyone has big walls or fences enclosing their yards. The closed off yards make the village feel closed off and empty too since everyone is hidden behind their fences, watching TV or doing whatever it is they do.

Jasmine and I went to try and find an old dear friend, Mama Tepuku who is in her 70s and who spends about half her time in Manihi. I asked around and strangely no one knew who I was talking about. I guess it just seemed too weird for anyone to register that these two random white girls with accents would be asking for an old Paumotu lady who hardly spoke any French. Finally we found Tepuku's house and were greeted by a 20-something man who, looking at us only from the corner of his eye, yelled into the house that some white girls, "des dames blanches," were there. A pudgy local girl with a toddler came out and told us that no, Tepuku wasn't on Manihi right now but invited us in for a drink. Ends up she was Tepuku's niece and knew who I was and we had a nice chat. Afterwards we went back to the dock where we ran into a few other old friends so it was a pleasant stop.

A few hours later we were docking at Ahe, our final stop where we had a near hero's welcome from all our friend's in the village as well as my husband who came with the outboard to pick us up. An arrival after flying just doesn't compare - everyone knew we had spent days getting there and it was more like meeting long lost family after months on the Oregon trail than greeting someone after clearing customs.

In all, traveling by supply ship is the Polynesian equivalent of a US road trip, stopping in random towns, eating where you can and making friends along the way. You need time to travel this way but that's the beauty of it. By the end of the boat voyage my body had lost every ounce of stress, all sense of time and any notion of a pressure to get somewhere. Sitting and doing nothing besides staring at the sea now seemed normal and pleasant and in a sense this made me feel much, much more Polynesian.

Video: Liz Clark and the Voyage of Swell

This is a video about my friend Liz Clark who is solo sailing around the world on her boat Swell. Liz is an adventurer like no other, a fearless surfer, impressive diver, fisherwoman, eco-warrior and an inspiration to us all. I'm looking forward to seeing the full movie called "Dear & Yonder."

With all this in her favor, it might sound weird that what impresses me most about Liz is that she can climb a coconut tree. Seriously, it's really really hard to do. The first time I met her, she had been invited to a party on our Tuamotu pearl farm and, being that she was short on supplies but wanted to contribute, she brought over about twenty drinking coconuts she had collected herself. This, we all knew, must have taken hours of work climbing up tall trees like a monkey. At this moment all the guys on the farm fell irrevokably in love with her.

After months in the Tuamotus and other remote archipelagos Liz spent a few months here in Teahupoo, Tahiti - now she's in Raiatea repairing her boat. Wherever she's been with us, she's always added lots of life and been a great addition to the community.

Turning Coral Into Wine - Vin de Tahiti

I've visited the Vin de Tahiti vineyards on Rangiroa Atoll twice now: once for Lonely Planet and the second time to take photos for an Islands magazine article. It is one of the more surreal places I have ever been.

The crazy idea to start a vineyard and winery on a tropical atoll with no volcanic soil or stable fresh water source came from an extremely wealthy, wine-loving French businessman named Dominique Auroy. It's said that Auroy decided to create the vineyards because French Polynesia imports so many bottles of wine per year it seemed silly for the islands not to produce its own. Ironically, production has been geared almost entirely for tourism and export.

Still, visiting the vineyards is a must on Rangiroa (it's 8000 CFP - about US$100 - for a guided visiting plus tasting). All those struggling vines winding their way out of coral soil between the coconut trees is one of the country's strangest juxtapositions. It's hot, it's muggy and it's by no means organic. Vin de Tahiti's winemaker has assured me that the ground water on the vineyard's islet is perfectly sweet, but there is a testing station that the water is pumped through to check its salinity before it waters the vines (that are on a drip system). Having lived on an atoll for five years and knowing how unusual a fresh water table this immense is, I am a little skeptical of how long the fresh water will last and wonder if the vineyards are frivolously sapping the island of a very precious resource.

The next issue is the vast amounts of chemical fertilizers needed to turn what is essentially sand into rich, Mediterranean quality soil. Again, a whole station is set up for adding this cocktail of substances to the water before it makes its way to the vines. I am unsure if there have been studies about what the run off does to the fragile surrounding coral reefs but common sense tells me there must be a fairly large impact.

The surprise ending is the wine. Vin de Tahiti makes five types of wines: red, rose, dry white, coral white and mellow white. I am no wine expert but my father was a wine educator in California's Napa Valley and my husband's family is from Bordeaux - I have grown up with and love good wine (especially red) but I am not one to go headlong into complicated terminology and cryptic fruit and vegetable oriented remarks. Of Vin de Tahiti's wines, the sweet mellow white is by far my favorite mostly because it's syrupy sweet and is great ice cold - a real plus in the tropics. The Rose and other whites are drinkable but certainly not worth the $40 price tag - you are paying for novelty value here not taste. The red is so awful it can hardly be described as wine. I've had to write about it with phrases like "unlike any wine you've ever tasted," and "unique," but there you go, truth is I think it's terrible. But don't take my advice, on Rangiroa you can try all the wines at Vin de Tahiti's lovely, air-conditioned tasting room that requires an undisclosed amount of petrol to fuel the generator.

Yes, Vin de Tahiti isn't the most eco-friendly wine in the world, but it might be the most interesting. You can find out more about them at www.vindetahiti.pf.

Note: photos this blog by Celeste Brash

Traveling French Polynesia by Supply Ship Part 3

For some reason that we never figured out, the boat anchored somewhere (we were in our bunks by this time so I don't know where we were) and we didn't make it to Rangiroa till dawn. Jasmine and I climbed out of our bunks when we felt the movement of the boat change from an open ocean roll to the steadiness of an atoll entry and we were up at the bow as we glided through Avatoru pass into the atoll's immense lagoon (Rangiroa is the second biggest atoll in the world). I think that arrivals and departures are definitely the highlight of taking the supply ships. With the wind in your hair, the first morning light reflecting off perfect turquoise, the excitement of arrival and the complete silence besides the putter of your clunker's engine, it's the quintessential moment of a tropical adventure. Jasmine, at age 11, could feel this as well as me, and she radiated with appreciation of island magic.

The first stop was the Avatoru quay which had much of the same hustle and bustle that we saw in Tikeahau only on Rangiroa there were more flashy pick up trucks and less people at the dock. Rangiroa is the most developed and populated atoll of the Tuamotus, and it was obvious that the arrival of our cargo ship was less of an interesting event here than elsewhere in the archipelago. Someone in each family had the job of picking up all the stuff while everyone else had better things to do - on other atolls, there is very little else to do so everyone comes out to the boat!

This stop was going to be several hours (a big population means lots of stuff to unload) but luckily Jasmine and I had plans. I had just written an article on Rangiroa's bizarre vineyards and winery, Vin de Tahiti, for Islands magazine and I wanted to see if I could get some pictures to go with the article. I had organized this with Vin de Tahiti and sure enough, Mihiroa, a young smiling Tahitian guide for Vin de Tahiti was there at the dock to greet us. We had time to get some pastries, drinks and snacks from a little store before getting in Mihiroa's car to drive a few kilometers to another dock and Vin de Tahiti's boat.

Next: Our visit to Vin de Tahiti.

Note: photos this blog by Celeste Brash

Navigating the Tahitian Social Scene

From what I can tell so far, I think I'm the only expat non-French blogger in French Polynesia. I might be wrong about this but while all my Googling and digging has brought up some great blogs originating from Hawaii and a few tourist industry ones from Tahiti, no one else is writing about day to day life here and now. I guess this is normal considering that I personally know a total of (about) 20 English speaking ex-pats who live in this country and most of these are male surfers over 45 who married locals - nearly all these people also live very far from us.

So who do we hang out with?

Tahitians socialize mostly within their own very large families but if you do get close with them you are usually expected to behave as a family member. This means lending your car, bike, power tools, fishing equipment, boat and money to them and their other relatives you don't even know at various "emergencies" that spring up every week or so. Some stuff comes back and some stuff doesn't but no matter what, the tension created between people who have little concept of ownership and Westerners who have an overdeveloped sense of "hey I paid for that!" always ends in hard feelings. Tahitians expect that you ask stuff from them too and if you don't (and Westerners are often hesitant to ask people for favors) the relationship gets thrown off-balance and suddenly you are just the gullible patron.

This isn't to say we don't have Tahitian friends - we have lots of Tahitian friends but there are silent lines drawn from both sides after years of experience. These are people who stop by the house unannounced all the time but who would feel uncomfortable if we invited them over for dinner. They bring us bananas and sweet potatoes from their yards and we give them limes and pineapples from ours. Our kids play together and spend the nights at each other's houses, we'll drink a couple beers together from time to time and yeah, we do lend them the bike sometimes if they need it and they'll lend us their boat. Yet these relationships are kept casual and this makes it OK for either of us to say no. This also means they aren't available socially and we'd better have something else going on if we want a life.

So most of our core social group are like us, the mutts that don't really fit in. My best friend Amel is half Tahitian half Algerian and she's married to a Corsican guy who grew up on Tahiti; our friend Roy is a Kiwi, French and Tahitian mix and his wife is a Singaporean Indian. Ben is a Kiwi married to Valerie, a Chinese Tahitian mix and Terii who's half French half Tahitian is married to Annie who is pure Chinese descended from immigrants who arrived on Tahiti several generations ago. My husband is French and American and grew up partially on Tahiti so he's hardly considered and ex-pat. I, however give myself away as an outsider from the moment I open my mouth and speak my odd, Anglo, Tahitian French.

As Tahitian social lives go, I'm pretty happy with ours although I admit that what I miss the most about the States is my group of steadfast, fun, available and loving friends. Some weeks go by here where my social highlight is running into people at the grocery store. Nightlife is non-existent. Things pick up a lot during the Heiva (see my Heiva blogs) but other than that, dinner with friends over a bottle of wine is as wild as it gets.