Paradise found.... Heaven on Earth

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Do you remember the first time you experienced your first taste of Tahiti? Was it reading “Bali Hai”? Watching “Mutiny on the Bounty”? I remember my first sight like it was yesterday. Standing in the Chicago Art Institute, holding fast to my mother’s hand after a long, cold snowy walk from the train station. Gazing in absolute fascination at beautiful brown skinned ladies with long dark hair and liquid eyes with their arms filled with flowers. I still can feel the warmth that the picture embraced me with. Paul Gauguin, introduced me to Tahiti through his eyes and his colors. Beautiful, warm and serene; yes. But even Gauguin couldn’t paint the complete picture of this mystical place.

The 118 islands of French Polynesia were born from volcanoes about 20 million years ago. The land area of these 118 islands and atolls only adds up to about 1,365 square miles. However, they are sprinkled, like gems, over almost 2 MILLION square miles of ocean in the eastern South Pacific! The islands in the Society, Marquesas, Austral and Gambier Island groups remained high islands, while the islands of the Tuamotu Islands group became atolls. Atolls are formed as volcanoes die and become extinct.

As a volcano becomes extinct, the magma is no longer expelled through the vent. The lava on top collapses, forming a hug caldera basin, which eventually erodes and forms valleys. It is now an island which slowly sinks into the ocean. As is sinks, coral begins to grow on the underwater sides of the island. Over thousands of years, the corals polps build on top of each other, eventually forming barriers hundreds of feet deep that surround the island shore, forming a fringing reef. The old volcanic core still remains underneath the atoll, but all you see is the coral ring, which encircles the lagoon. The coral rim of the atoll indicates how big the island once was. A series of small coral islets, interspersed with submerged coral reefs, are rarely more than a quarter mile wide and only a few feet above the ocean’s surface. The lagoons inside these coral strips vary from the size of a pond to almost as large as an inland sea.

Polynesian origins are believed to be in the area of eastern Indonesia or the Phillipines about 4,000 years ago. The early Polynesians were master navigators and their migrations took them through Melanesia to the eastern edge of Polynesia, settling there between 1000 BC and 1000 AD. The very remoteness of the islands of Polynesia kept the people insulated from the rest of the world until Magellan first sighted the Pukapuka Atoll in the Tuamotus in 1521. The Spanish explorer Mendana discovered the Marquesas Islands in 1595. However, true contact between the Polynesians and European explorers did not begin until the discovery of Tahiti by the Englishman Wallis in 1767.

Captain William Bligh and the mutinous crew aboard the H.M.S. Bounty provided a colorful chapter in Tahiti’s history, following their arrival at Point Venus in 1788. The Mutiny on the Bounty saga is well known, as told by co-authors Hall and Nordhoff, two Americans who moved to Tahiti after fighting in World War I. Several Bounty movies have been made, with famous actors such as Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins all taking turns at being the evil Captain Bligh. The whole episode, of course, centered around the humble breadfruit tree. Bligh decided that the breadfruit, which was the staple diet of the strong, healthy Tahitians, would be a cheap and nourishing means of feeding the slaves used on plantations in the West Indies…and his wife’s uncle just happened to own several large plantation in Jamaica. The mutiny was the result of the harsh punishments meted out for his men and his insults to his officers. As you might remember, in the final analysis, Captain Bligh was cleared of any guilt for the mutiny and proceeded to sail back to Tahiti. He eventually collected over 2,000 breadfruit trees and took them back to the West Indies. The breadfruit seedlings were planted in St. Vincent and in Port Royal, Jamaica. When the trees grew and began to bear fruit, the Negro slaves refused to eat the starchy breadfruit because they didn’t like the taste.

Paul Gauguin immortalized the beauty of the islands and the women with his paintings. Born in Paris on June 7, 1848, he grew up in a liberal middle-class family. After a stint in the French merchant marine, he became a successful Parisian stockbroker, with a wife and five children. In 1874 he met the artist Camille Pissarro and viewed the first impressionist exhibit, after which he became a collector and amateur painter. By 1883 he had given up his secure existence to devote himself to painting, forcing his wife and children to return to her family in Denmark, as he sank deep into debt. In 1891, Gauguin sailed for the South Seas to escape European civilization and “everything that is artificial and conventional”. He lived in Tahiti until 1901 when he moved to the Marquesas Islands in search of a primitive culture and savage beauty, and died there in 1903. Buried in Calvary Cemetery on a hill behind Atuona village, a gnarled old frangipani tree stands guard over his grave, and a statue of Oviri, “the savage” stands at the head of the tombstone.

The history you can read, but the beauty must be seen and smelled and felt to fully understand and appreciate the siren call that the islands sing. With 118 islands to embrace, you will find that you must either return many times or move there! Since time is always too short when you are on a charter holiday, and space is also limited for writing an article, rather than a book, we will focus on only a few of the myriad of places that you will eventually want to experience. The first place you will see will surely be Tahiti, as Papeete is not only the capital of French Polynesia, it also happens to be where the airport is located. Papeete (Pah-pay-eh-tey) is located on Tahiti’s north coast, facing the island of Moorea across the Sea of Moons.

Time permitting, and if the inclination is there, a quick land excursion via a four-wheel drive vehicle will soon have you off the beaten path and up into the mountains and valleys of Tahiti. In a short time you will be going through tropical forests of giant ferns, centuries old Tahitian mape chestnut trees, wild mango and guava trees, and more waterfalls than you can count. One of the most magnificent of these is the Three Cascades of Fa’arumai in Tiarei. The Vaimahuta waterfall is easily reached in about five minutes by walking across the bridge over the Vaipuu river and following the well defined path under a dense canopy formed by mape and hutu trees. Countless waterfalls cascade in misty plumes and broken curtains down the mountainside, finally tumbling into a crisp, refreshing pool. This is a perfect place for a quick swim to cool off, but make sure you are well armed with mosquito repellent!

The Tuamotu Islands is your destination of choice for your adventure this time. Comprised of 77 atolls and one upraised island, the Tuamotu Archipelago are mere specks of land out in the heart of the trade winds, lost in the vastness of the deep blue of the Pacific. It is as if a careless giant has strewn gemstones across the sea. Covering 10 latitudes with a total length of 930 miles and a width of 310 miles, these are some of the most remote islands in the world. And are yours to explore and enjoy from the deck of your charter yacht.

This vast collection of coral islets conjures up castaway dreams on a tropical island, tiny green oases floating in the desert of the sea, with names as exotic as the trade winds and coconut trees. Windswept beaches with the sounds of the surf and sea birds for company. Fragrant miki miki shrubs blend perfumes with the aromas of the salt spray. The lagoons shimmer with a brilliance of light and color unsurpassed, and a submerged landscape of untouched magic and awesome beauty awaits beneath the sun-gilded waters tinged with turquoise.

The largest atoll of the Tuamotu Archipelago is Rangiroa, also called Rairoa, means “long sky” in the Paumotu dialect, the language of the Polynesian inhabitants. The coral ring encircling the pear-shaped atoll contains more than 240 motu islets, separated by at least 100 very shallow hoa channels and three passes, two of which are deep and wide enough for ships to enter the lagoon. A vast inland sea measuring approximately 47 miles long and 16 miles wide is surround by Rangiroa.

Cultivation pits and marae temples of coral stone are all that remains today of settlements that existed on Rangiroa during the 14th and 15th centuries. To protect themselves from the aggressive “Parata” warriors from the atoll of Anaa, the Rangiroa inhabitants took refuge on the soughwest side of the atoll, close to the Motu Taeo’o, known as the Blue Lagoon. This village was destroyed by a natural disaster, probably a tsunami, in 1560 and the entire population disappeared. Today the Blue Lagoon remains as one of the most beautiful places in the world. This lagoon within a lagoon is formed by a natural pool of aquamarine water on the edge of the reef. Your captain will bring you in as close as possible with the launch, but because of the many coral heads, you will need to jump off into the water and wade the rest of the way up to the beach…through a posse of reef sharks. Not to worry, you will soon get desensitized to their presence and will believing your captain when he tells you that they are just like puppy dogs…lots of puppy dogs! Heaven above water, there is something about the beauty of the water that makes you just have to jump in. More than 400 varieties of rainbow-hued fish glint like ornaments in the iridescent waters, flashing among the jewel-like colors of the hard and soft corals, and the softly waving sea fans. For those who desire the rush of a more active dive, “shooting the pass” of Tiputa is a favorite excursion, where hundreds of fish, moray eels and shark swim beside and below you, swept along by the strong currents. If you are really lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the rare black and white dolphins that live around the coast of Rangiora. But then again, you are floating in the limpid waters of the most beautiful place in the world, and isn’t that lucky enough?

Time now to say parahi ia (good-bye) and relive the dream until the next time you are able to visit this heaven on earth.