Here is the final installment of our trip to Tahiti…. ( Part I , Part II)

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On our second to last day in Tahiti, we flew back to Papeete where we rented a car and drove south on Tahiti Nui. Tahiti is beautiful and surprisingly undeveloped, this is especially true when you compare it to the tourist infrastructure that exists on Oahu. We visited Point Venus where Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and The Bounty first visited this idyllic land. Driving further south we were surprised by the lack of signage for what in Hawai’i would have been major tourist stops. As a result, we missed the leper colony and decided we would rather continue driving than stop at the Nordhoff and Hall museum. We stopped and made sandwiches while watching local kids catch waves and then continued South to Teaheapoo, Tahiti’s most famous surf town. We thought we had lucked out when we found a small cottage for rent next to a scenic pier. We went to get groceries and when we returned found that the manager had made a mistake and already rented it to someone else before we had arrived. He arranged for us to stay at Punatea Village on the East shore of Tahiti Iti. The smaller islet connected to Tahiti Nui by a narrow isthmus of land. We arrived a Punatea shortly before sunset and enjoyed an ice cold Hinano on the porch of a modest bungalow room. For the first time since we had arrived, it rained. It had, we later found out, been raining in Hawai’i the entire time we had been gone.

After a restful nights sleep, we ate a decent breakfast and decided to continue our circuit of Tahiti. The rain of the night before had created incredible waterfalls that seemed to fall into the midst of simple villages. The rainbows that burst from the sides of steep pali seemed to clothe crumbling huts in vivid pastel colors. Needless to say, we were entranced. I think we both felt that we had never been anywhere quite so beautiful as Tahiti Iti after a night of pouring rain.

The rest of our circuit was a mad dash to see what little roadside attractions exist in Tahiti. The Gauguin Museum was difficult to find as graffiti had completely obfuscated the sign pointing to it. No one had bothered to repair it. The dismal Lagoonarium connected to Captain Bligh’s restaurant smelled of stale urine and was made of hopeful 1970′s plaster of paris ferro concrete and dirty sand. It was a bit like visiting one of those horrible zoos that you find in third world countries. Tahiti’s best value, or maybe not. The Museum of Tahiti and her Islands had also seemingly been constructed in a wave of tourist optimism combined with French nuclear guilt in the 1970′s and then abandoned. The strangest part of all these ‘tourist attractions’ was that we seemed to be the only tourists to visit them. They were more vacant than the eyes of a junkie. Keep in mind, while these were somewhat dismal attractions, they were the ONLY attractions, per se. So it was quite a surprise to find no one but us willing to visit them.

Along the road we stopped for Chaud Mace (boiled chestnuts), rambutans, and pickled mango (we think). We opted to not buy any of the tons of fish which vendors lazily hawked to passersby. Our trip ended with a lovely dinner at the International Resort and some surreptitious views of the Captain Bligh Musical Review that was being performed there. We were fortunate enough to be able to catch the accidental sinking of the canoes that came out to welcome The Bounty. I’m guessing the ancient Tahitians were better seamen.

Tahiti Trip Part II

During our stay at Pension Vaihonu, we took a tour of Huahine Nui and Huahine Iti. It is worthwhile to note that Huahine means variously ‘pregnant woman’ and ‘penis woman’ from the Tahitian words Hua (penis) and (wa)hine (woman). You can see the reason for this in these pictures. First a pregnant woman lying down (head to the left)

and then the hua that got her pregnant (head at the top)

On the tour we learned about one of Huahine’s major exports, Vanilla. I had no idea how complex the growing, propagation, and preperation of it was. On the flight back to Hawaii there was an excellent article about it in Hawaiian Airlines in flight magazine Hana Hou.
Also on the tour we visited some still in use ancient fish traps, a stream filled with sacred blue eyed eels that the locals say purify the water so that it is fresh and clean. A local girl and her dogs volunteered to get in the water and played with the eels while we were there.

Huahine in beautiful and not really developed. We were staying close to the village of Fare and used bicycles to get back and forth from there to Chez Vaihonu. In Fare we used the internet one day and noticed that the locals like to hang out on the balconey and watch the peole go by. We joined them. There were several excellent food trucks in Fare and we enjoyed crepes and the favorite local dish Poisson Croux, a delicious marinated fish. One evening we met a couple of local guys and sat with them in the bar where they both broke into tears while telling us about their relative who had joined the US Marines and gone to Iraq. Strange to see grown men weeping. Mink gave one of them a kleenex and he wasn’t sure what to do with it for a while. The older of the two men lives on an unclaimed sandbar between Huahine Iti and Huahine Nui. They were friendly, if somewhat too exuberant and effusive. After three nights near Fare we woved to Huahine Iti for our final night in Huahine at Pension Mauarii .

This was a wonderful little oasis filled with hibiscus flowers, gardens, a great restaurant (complete with huas on the bannister) and kayaks. We kayaked in the beautiful bay, had a delicious meal, and slept in a huge bed under a very nice mosquito net.

more to come…

Okay…I want to get some of this out here to you guys while it is still fresh…This will be a bit of a nutshell. I’ll probably edit it with details and photos from Mink. In the meantime…

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Saturday before last Mink Hippie and I boarded a Hawaiian Airline flight and flew to Tahiti, the largest island in French Polynesia. Tahiti lies in the South Pacific. Our flight arrived at 11pm and we called and were picked up by the German proprietor of Chez Myrna, Mr. Walter Dammeyer ( B P 790 – 98 713 Papeete TAHITI Tel. / Fax. 42 64 11 dammeyer.family@mail.pf Papeete ). Chez Myrna was clean, had nice baguettes and coffee (instant) for breakfast, and served as a perfect launch pad for us to wake up and go to the Sunday farmers market in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. This was one of the vendors

We laughed at him. A real creep. The next morning, Walter took us to the airport and we caught a flight to Huahine. Huahine lies 175 km. (110 miles) northwest of Tahiti in the Leeward Society islands.

We had an excellent coffee at the airport and met a woman named Dorothy and an apparently unproductive conversation with a Pension we wanted to stay in. Unproductive as the connection was worse than both of our French and the man she said would come get us never did. The woman in the coffee shop said that he was a real ‘flintstone’. We never saw him. Instead we called Pension Vaihonu (Tél: 68.87.33 Fax: 68.77.57) and were quickly picked up by a lovely woman named Jocelyn who told us about how when she was a schoolgirl she had been present when the Hawai’ian voyaging canoe Hokulea arrived in the bay at Fare.

More to come later…..