South Pacific Secrets: So What if Grandpa was a Rockefeller?

Yesterday my dear friend Katupu, granddaughter of Tepuku, the Paumotu woman who welcomed my husband's family to Ahe Atoll in the Tuamotus in 1973, came by for lunch. One of the things I love most about talking with friends from the outer islands is how many amazing stories they have. People in cities have nothing on folks who live out in the middle of nowhere when it comes to crazy tales, believe me. So here is one of my favorites from yesterday:

The subject of Tepuku came up and soon we were laughing about the old story of her two-month fling with a Mr Rockefeller (yes, of that particular family we've all heard of) when he came through on a boat back in the 50s or 60s; consequently she had his child. Soon after the baby was born, and once Rockefeller was long gone, Tepuku married a local man, Raumati and everyone pretty much forgot about the American who had sailed through. Tepuku never contacted the Rockefellers and as far as I know, the man was never aware that he fathered a daughter. This daughter was Katupu's mother, Taio. Taio is beautiful and obviously half Caucasian with fair skin and an elegant, very non-Polynesian, slightly hooked nose. Katupu, her daughter, has the same slim, aristocratic nose.

Katupu was raised mostly by her grandparents on Ahe and nowadays her main occupation is taking care of aging Tepuku. When asked about her family history, Katupu laughs ,"Who cares who he was? What did that guy ever do for us and why would we bother to contact him? Raumati was my grandfather, he was the one who raised us."

While most people would be groveling at the Rockefeller door, Katupu and her family couldn't imagine wanting to change anything about their life, and besides Raumati was a local legend who any Polynesian would be proud to call family. Soon she was telling us stories about her grandfather's skills, how he could sense the weather coming hours before it arrived and how he predicted the massively destructive 1983 cyclone that flattened Ahe, several hours before the storm started - this is in the days before there was any warning system in the Tuamotus. Instead of getting nervous and anxious, Raumati slowly and steadily began to prepare for the big wind and by the time it came everyone was safely closed up in the town hall. No one died even though it was the biggest cyclone to hit in anyone's memory. Raumati with his sixth sense essentially saved his atoll.

My husband who knew Raumati calls him "the God of fishing," stating that there was nothing the man didn't know about fish - and this is compared with all the other Paumotu people who came from generations of living with the sea. Raumati could hit a fish with a spear from so far away that you couldn't even remotely see the fish. Perhaps he could just tell where the fish were from surface agitation. How cool is that?

So I agree with Katupu: what good is some foreign guy no matter who he was compared to a man who could catch fish using the force? To me, listening to these stories from my island friends who are invariably straight-forward, very sharp, yet refreshingly uncomplicated, makes me feel grounded. I think we all share these same, pure values somewhere - perhaps some people keeping them deeper than others - and we just need to scrape off society's garbage to remember what is important to our everyday existence. At least in the Tuamotus, fish and intuition are much more important than being rich and famous.

A Paumotu Christmas

Every year my family and I head out to our old home in the remote Tuamotu Atolls for Christmas and New Years. I guess you could call this a 'blue Christmas' since in this land of flat coral spits and coconut palms, we are surrounded by electric turquoise sea and lagoon for the whole holiday season. There is no Internet, no plumbing, no cars and very little to do beyond swimming, reading, fishing, cooking and surfing. It's a little like camping and I love it.

Over the years we've developed our own holiday traditions. We now always pack a collection of indelible markers and nail polish and the kids begin our stay by collecting all the hermit crabs they can find. Then all of us spend hours decorating their shells with rainbows, stars, racing stripes and anything else that comes to mind. Over the next weeks the beaches look like a moving psychedelic army and soon we all know the crabs by name. "Hey I saw Triceratops all the way over by the boat hanger today! . . . Speed Larry 2 got in a fight and had his shell stolen! . . . Did you see Stars and Stripes eating that dead fish's eyeball?" This is all big news in the Tuamotus.

Time doesn't really matter in the atolls so for the last two years we have celebrated Christmas whenever we've felt like it. Last year it came late because the cargo ship with all our presents forgot to unload our boxes so we had to wait till nearly New Years to get all our food and gifts. This year Santa came and we celebrated a few days early simply because we wanted more time to enjoy our presents to each other. There are ironwood trees on the atoll that resemble real Christmas trees, but none near our place so we traditionally get a miki miki, a low lying hardy shrub with pretty small round green leaves. We stuff it in an old cabin biscuit tin filled with coral gravel then decorate it with coral pieces, old crab shells and homemade paper chains. Invariably the cats play with it and it looks pretty scraggly by its second day up but it does the holiday-cheer job for us.

Our Christmas feast depends on what we have. This year I baked a bunch of whole grain bread like I always do plus brownies (click here for my recipe), then we ate fried fish and spaghetti carbonara since we had to use up the bacon and cream before it went bad. My kids insisted we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus - we aren't Catholic but they both go to Catholic middle school and think this is really funny. Sometimes we have a bunch of people over but this year it was just my family, Laurent the pearl farm manager and Fletcher, a friend from the US.

Christmas is mellow but the real party is on New Years Eve when we have had up to 40 people come out and celebrate with us. But that's another story and another blog entry - coming soon!

Nothing Says 'Vacation' Like a Holiday Away From the Internet

So that's what I'm doing. I will be on a remote atoll far from the reaches of the cyber world and thus, will not be blogging, checking email or communicating in any way with the outside world for the next three weeks. To me this is bliss. I love writing and my job but replacing these things with fishing, baking bread and swimming half the day with my kids for a few weeks works like a giant cup coffee to kick-start my year.

All the best to you, all my wonderful readers and I hope you too are having a rejuvinating holiday season.

First Footfall on Pitcairn Island

Shortly after sunrise the rest of the passengers and crew came up on deck and we started to pack and bring our bags up from our bunks. Captain Matt radioed the island and within half an hour we got our first glimpse of Pitcairn culture: the longboat, filled with about a quarter of the island's population coming out to fetch us. We could see them from quite far away so it was suspenseful seeing the boat arrive, wondering how they'd accept me as the journalist and pondering what these infamous people of piracy, isolation and sex scandals would be like. My guess was they'd be pretty nice.

The boat arrived and pulled up alongside the Braveheart. Brenda Christian, a bronzed vivacious woman with broad bare feet was the first to hop on board the Braveheart and start to throw our bags and supplies into the longboat. Her 20-something son Andrew, with long hair and multiple hoop earrings, sat at the bow of the longboat and was in charge of hitching the two boats together through the light waves then untying when it was time to go.
Two older men, with obvious Pitcairn-browned skin and broad faces manned the motor and a few kids and random adults gazed happily at all of us new visitors while some helped pack up our luggage. I'd heard stories about how in high seas you have to literally leap off the side of your ship over big waves into the arms of some pirate-looking local in the longboat. Today however, the sea was calm so, even though it was still a little leap onto the boat and the locals did look like pirates, it wasn't very scary.

A bearded man with glasses who didn't really look like the rest of the locals came over to sit next to me in the boat and introduced himself as Simon; he told me I was going to stay at his and his wife's house. The boat chugged around the rocky outcrop where we had seen the sunrise and we got our first glimpse of Adamstown - or at least the several houses perched on the cliff near the miniscule settlement. Soon we reached Bounty Bay, a small marina (with a big boat shed) precariously jutting out from below the cliffs. As we jetted in I read the large sign stating "Welcome to Pitcairn Island" - unbelievable, I was here, the last remnants of the Bounty were scattered along the bottom somewhere in the vicinity. The air was cool, I felt like I was in a dream.

About another third of the population was there at the dock waiting for us on their quad bikes, the main means of transport on the island. Simon helped me get my bag on his quad and, before I had much of a chance to take in the rest of the scene or say hi to anyone, we were motoring up the Hill of Difficulty, which is as steep as the name entails. Then we went through Adamstown, which is made up of a few houses, a complex with a post office and town hall, a tiny store and a prison. The school I'd later find out was on the outskirts of town.

Simon and his wife, who are British and American respectively, run the small community store and are the only non-Pitcairners living on Pitcairn. Their house is on a lovely bluff with 180-degree views out to sea. My room turned out to be a whole house with a living room, kitchen, bedroom and a shower but the toilet was the most rudimentary pit toilet I have ever seen - cowboy-style wooden door and all. Not that I minded.


There was a lot to do at the store with all the new supplies coming in so Simon asked if I didn't mind if he left me for awhile. He'd come get me in an hour or so to show me around the island and introduce me to people. No problem, I said, I still felt the boat's motion, was tired and had a lot to take in.

Please click on 'Pitcairn Island' at the right of this page under 'labels' to read my two previous posts about my trip to Pitcairn: Trying to Get There and Voyage to Pitcairn. I'll keep continuing the story over the next few months.

The Winning Pearl

Voila. My husband was finally able to get a photo of the 10mm round "A" grade natural color Tahitian pearl worth $200 that Kamoka Pearls is giving away for Passports With Purpose. Proceeds go to build that now near-famous school in Cambodia plus the increasingly plentiful overflow funds will go to other good causes in the area. So here is the pearl in all it's glory. To me it says "pendant" but I'm sure it would be great as a ring too.

Amazing! One Week of Donations Brings in Enough Money to Build a Cambodian School

I'm really, really impressed. In one week Passports With Purpose has made over $13,000 from $10 bids on donated prizes including cameras, stays at top hotels and a beautiful Tahitian pearl from yours truly. This is way more interest than I think anyone had expected and is great news to start the week. Bidding is still open till December 21st and there's still a chance that new prizes will be added so please click over and help out!

Passports With Purpose: Help Build a School in Cambodia

Sometimes the universe hurdles us in a certain direction. One week ago I returned from an amazing but too short trip to Cambodia at the tail end of a Lonely Planet research gig through Thailand. I mostly did the tourist stuff on my short vacation - visited Angkor Wat and made a brief stop in Phnom Penh - but I was incredibly touched by unencumbered kindness of the people. Somehow the history of the country seems to resonate through them yet they're coming out of the dark ages and that fills the air with an inspiring positivity. It's intense, there's no other way to describe it. Cambodia is a much poorer country than Thailand and stray children, needy people and landmine victims are omni-present. In Phnom Penh I was lucky enough to spend an evening with a group of expats - every one of them involved in some sort of NGO or aid program. The experience made me want to pack up my life in Tahiti and do something more useful with my life. I was dreaming about how I could make it back to Cambodia the second I was on the plane - rarely has such a short visit charmed and haunted me so much.

Today I came across an opportunity not to go back to Cambodia but to at least give something back. The annual Passports With Purpose fundraiser is supporting American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC) this year with a goal to raise $13,000 to build a rural school. The AAfC has already built 400 schools throughout the country as well as other actions aimed at improving opportunities for the youth and rural poor in Cambodia.

This is how you can help: travel bloggers like me offer a prize and blog about the fundraiser to encourage people to bid on the many available prizes from myself and other bloggers. My prize is an A-grade round Tahitian pearl from Kamoka Pearl Farm worth $200 mailed to your doorstep anywhere in the world. By making a $10 donation you can bid on the pearl as well as all sorts of other great stuff from brand name travel packs and camcorders to stays at hotels in major American cities. One hundred percent of the donations go to the AAfC. You can bid from today to December 21st 2009.

So please, click over to the Passports With Purpose website and enter to win! There is really no way to loose on this.

I'll be posting a picture of the pearl as soon as I can - hopefully within the next week. In the meantime you can check out where it comes from at www.kamokapearls.com.

My Favorite Maa Tahiti

It's my first weekend back home after nearly a month in Southeast Asia so I decided to try and get back into the island groove with one of my favorite things in Tahiti: maa tahiti, traditional Polynesian food baked in an earth oven. Now not all earth-cooked meals are equal; in fact they can go terribly wrong if the fire isn't hot enough, the food is uncovered too early, the food isn't fresh to begin with or if the food packages were prepared too lazily. One of my biggest pet peeves is when my favorite dish, poulet fafa gets prepared with spinach instead of authentic taro leaves - it just doesn't taste the same.

Today I indulged in what I think is the best maa tahiti on Tahiti, served at the Botanical Gardens Restaurant right next to said gardens and the Musee Guaguin. This place, in what should be the heart of tourist land but never gets any tourists, is one of my favorite places to eat in my area. The food is always fantastic and it's a simple down-home Tahitian style place with gravel floors, plastic chairs and Tahitian fabrics stapled on to the ceiling for decoration. The restaurant is right on the lagoon against a low breakwater, so you sometimes get splashed if the waves are too big; on weekends there's often a synth band playing cheesy Tahitian dance hall hits. Today the place was packed with a large party of old Tahitian women dressed up in their best and most colorful dresses, strings of black pearls and flower crowns. They were living it up, laughing and drinking cheap red wine bottle after bottle. Not a tourist was in sight despite the tour bus parked at the entrance to the gardens.


But back to the food. My daughter and I decided to split the maa tahiti plate (about US$40; only available on Sundays), which is always huge, but when it arrived we all had to laugh because it could have comfortably fed three very hungry people. Every dish was perfect. I'm not a huge meat eater but the pork had a caramelized crispy layer on the fatty parts and tasted like candy. I had to restrain myself from eating too much of it. The poisson cru (raw fish salad - click here for my recipe) was fresh with a perfect lemon and coconut milk balance; the poulet fafa had plenty of fafa (taro leaves), which is time consuming to prepare so often places skimp on it; there was perfectly cooked taro, bananas and sweet potatoes; pua choux, a pork and cabbage stew; and last a whole separate plate of delicious poe banane, a baked banana pudding topped with coconut milk. Many restaurants make maa tahiti in conventional ovens but at the Botanical Gardens Restaurant you can faintly taste the wood smoke from their ahimaa (pit oven), which gives it a more complex flavor.

Now I feel home. We finished off the meal with a long walk in the gardens while the restaurant kept our copious leftovers in their fridge for us. I think I'm having pork for breakfast tomorrow morning.

PS Now I'm back home I'll be back to blogging more regularly again!

Top 10 Natural Ways to Stay Healthy in the Tropics

Aaah paradise: warm weather, beautiful turquoise water and lazy days. But then after a while your head starts to itch, your feet start to peel and your ears hurt. This happens to the best of us but seems to hit first-time visitors the hardest. Don't despair because there are some really basic, all-natural ways to get on with the good life.

1) Coral cuts - lemon juice (yes it hurts like hell) while they're still fresh then scrub the wound hard with soap and water. Keep the cuts clean and covered, stay out of the water and change the bandage after showering every day.

2) Swimmers' ear prevention - after swimming in salt water always rinse your ears out with fresh water then dry them out with a towel. This gets the salt off and it's the salt that keeps the ears moist and causes infection.

3) Stone fish stings and centipede bites - apply the hottest thing you can handle immediately to neutralize the poison. I know a guy who didn't have to go to the hospital after stepping on a stonefish because he put his lit cigarette out on the puncture. Better a scar than long-term pain and possible death.

4) Foot fungus - soak foot in hot water with a cap-full of vinegar in it for about an hour.

5) Staph infections on the feet - soak foot in the hottest water you can stand with a cap-full of bleach in it till the water turns cold. Then clean off all the goop, bandage and keep clean and dry. This works great on any infections that can be soaked.

6) To get rid of head lice - saturate your head with olive oil and leave it on about 5 hours. This works better than any commercial lice shampoo even though it's messy and a complete hassle. A few drops of lavender, citronella, thyme and/or eucalyptus essential oils in the olive oil help too.

7) Cockroach infestations - put out boric acid anywhere domestic animals can't reach it then put out 'beer traps' - about an inch of beer at the bottom of a slick bowl. The roaches climb in, get drunk, can't get out and drown - swear to God.

8) Sunburn - aloe is great but Tahitian Tamanu oil works wonders if you can find some.

9) To keep away mosquitoes and noseums at a picnic - build a smoky fire. This is pretty effective but you have to keep at least semi-inside the smoky part for it to work.

10) Getting laughed at by locals for being afflicted with any of the above problems - drink the rest of the beer you didn't give to the roaches and open cold fresh ones for the rest of the crew. Laugh and enjoy.

Note: I'm not a doctor but these tricks have worked for me. If you squirt lemon in your eye instead of your coral cut, accidentally pour beer in your ear instead of water or do anything else stupid (or not) because of this list, I am not responsible.

Also the above photo is of my son Tevai, lover of centipedes.

Voyage to Pitcairn: The Good Ship Braveheart & Our Arrival

On Tuesday September 23rd, 2008, the Pitcairn-bound Braveheart picked me up in Mangareva, French Polynesia. Captain Matt Jolly was a pirate/surfer-looking guy in his mid to late twenties with a constant smile and an assuring presence. Also on board were an optometrist (who was visiting for three days like me), Jacqui Christian (a pretty, confident Pitcairner in her mid-thirties), the rosy-cheeked Pitcairn school teacher coming back from vacation, an older woman from the Warren family (who was instantly wary of me - the journalist - and hardly said hello) and her teenage niece who was coming to visit family; all were arriving from New Zealand. Three more young and hip Kiwi surfer-types made up the rest of the Braveheart crew.

The boat was much more comfortable than I'd expected. It's a sturdy 39-meter steel ship, freshly swabbed and with several cozy air-con bunks below. We got a tour, chatted with each other then, just as we began motoring away from port, went to the dining area for an early dinner.

"Oh no not spaghetti again!" laughed the school teacher. "They serve this every time because they know it comes out your nose when you get sick." Everybody giggled knowingly.

Now I get really, really seasick but I was determined to flex my strongest sea leg muscles on this trip. I'd taken some good seasickness tablets and decided that no spaghetti was coming out of my nose, no way. Still, the motion of the ocean was already getting to me and just the thought of barfing noodles made me queasy so I didn't eat much.

The sun was setting and the lagoon was calm so I went up to the control room hoping to chat with the lively crew. Matt got out a picture album and showed me some of the other journeys the Braveheart has made: Antarctica, the southern Tuamotus, Kerguelen Island and more. The crew is into surfing, climbing, fishing and a slew of other adventurous activities and it looked like they were having a ball manning the ship even through mighty 16-meter swells in the Southern Ocean. Suddenly my life as a Lonely Planet writer seemed very boring. Just as suddenly, we left the lagoon and the sea got much rougher. Within about two minutes I knew that I'd better get to my bunk or I'd be spraying spaghetti all over my new super-cool friends.

And that was it. For 36 hours I lay comatose in the dark listening to my i-pod and feeling like hell. I threw up once in the conveniently placed bucket next to my bed (no spaghetti out of my nose I'm proud to say), ate a few dry crackers with jam brought in by the crew and just meditated. When finally I felt the boat stop and heard some commotion I got up.

Up on deck the sun was just rising from behind Pitcairn, the air was crisp but warm, the sea dark but calm. The feeling of this moment is hard to describe. All I could think of was how the Bounty mutineers must have felt when they first saw Pitcairn and I wondered if they too first glimpsed the island at sunrise. Only the optometrist and I were on deck and we just smiled knowingly in silence. There we were, watching the sun come up at one of the most remote destinations on earth.