In 1965, Sophie’s dad, Yves, landed on the small volcanic island of Taha’a after a 55-day voyage on a cargo ship from France. As part of his military service, he would spend the next three years here teaching in a small village. At this time, the island had no electricity, few roads or cars, and most people lived off the bountiful fish from the lagoon and fruits from the trees. It was paradise for him, and Sophie and I wanted to discover this place that made such a big impression on him as a young man.
French Polynesia is a group of five archipelagos (the Society Islands, which is the largest, the Tuamotu, the Gambier, the Australes and the Marquesas) in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between South America and Australia. While its land area is only about 1600 square miles (118 islands), it covers a surface area nearly as large as Europe. It is the largest country in the South Pacific Ocean in terms of land area. The most famous islands are in the Society Islands where we visited Tahiti, Taha’a and Bora Bora.
We flew from Auckland, New Zealand to the capital Papeete, Tahiti. Our flight left at 7:15pm and arrived at 1:15am the same day! Crossing the dateline was a hard concept to get our minds around. It was particularly tricky reserving a hotel room for the night in Papeete as I had to actually reserve for the day prior. There is only one hotel near the airport, which required a steep climb up stairs and a hill. Sophie and I made it there well after 2am for a few hours of sleep before our flight to Taha’a the next morning.
Flying around the islands on Air Tahiti is pretty fun. They operate small turbo prop planes and the airports are very simple. No security to go through, your luggage is loaded directly on luggage carts waiting behind check in, there are no assigned seats, and you enter the plane up steps from the tarmac. Each island has just one short runway. When the plane lands, it does a u-turn at the end and taxis back to the airport hut on the same strip. Our 45-minute flight from Papeete actually landed on the northern tip of the island of Raiatea, which is a sister island to Taha’a. They share the same lagoon that encircles the two islands.
We were met at the airport by boat to bring us to our small resort on the north side of Taha’a (opposite of where we landed). The boat was literally steps away from the airport. It was just the two of us and our captain on a small boat that skimmed across the amazingly clear waters of the lagoon. The colors of the water and the sky were the most amazing blues and greens! We stopped on the way to watch some blacktip sharks and even saw a sting ray swimming by.
Our resort had just five bungalows, and during our stay only one other one was occupied. We were met at the dock by the owner, a chatty French transplant, who had lived an interesting life – including being awarded the French legion of honor for heroics as a helicopter pilot in the Iraq war. He showed us around his small resort and our bungalow, which was right on our own private beach. The views from the bungalow and beach over the lagoon were pretty. The bungalow had a covered porch in the front with a bar and seating areas. The bedroom was behind the porch and was the only room fully enclosed with windows and air conditioning. There was an open-air bathroom and closet along one side and back of the bedroom, with shoji screens providing access from the bedroom, and a separate access from the porch. We also had an outdoor shower and jacuzzi at our service.
The island of Bora Bora is close to Taha’a. In fact, we could see it to our left from our bungalow. We took lots of pictures of its mysterious mountains, including several at sunset from the dock at our resort.
Taha’a is still not very developed. While there is electricity and a paved road around the island, there isn’t much in terms of restaurants or stores. For this reason, we had our breakfasts and dinners at the resort. The staff was friendly and we got to know the chef and some of the helpers. One of them took us on a tour by car completely around the island one day so we could visit the island and see where we believe Sophie’s dad taught.
The road on our car tour hugged the edge of the island, which included many bays, inlets and spectacular views of the mountains and lagoon. The mountains were steep and jungly, and largely uninhabited. Most people lived close to the shore.
Our first stop on our tour was a pearl farm. Tahitian black pearls are one of the most sought-after gemstones in the world. They are known for their beautiful iridescent sheen and their deep, rich color. Taha’a is the largest pearl producer in Tahiti. The farm we visited was a native family-run operation situated on a dock over the lagoon, with most of their oysters housed on a motu (island at the outer edge of the lagoon). Early each morning they hauled hundreds of oysters from the motu for processing on the dock. The process of creating cultured pearls is somewhat surprising and actually starts in the Mississippi River! There is a certain mollusk that grows in the Mississippi that makes the perfect nucleus for cultured pearls. These mollusks are harvested from the river, then shipped to China. There, their pearly shells are transformed into perfectly round balls. These are then shipped to Taha’a to form the nucleus of the black pearls. The next step of the process is harvesting the DNA from the native oysters in Tahiti. Workers open up the shells and carefully scrape the area of the inner shell that have the most interesting colors. The most expensive Tahitian pearls have iridescent greens and blues, which come from this DNA source. A host oyster (the black lipped Pinctada Margaritifera) is then carefully pried open a small amount where a worker precisely places the DNA and nucleus and closes the shell back up. The oysters have small holes drilled in them so they can be tied to a rope. They need to stay in water most of the time, so the operations on the dock happen quickly. It takes 18 months for the pearl to form. The exterior of the oyster shells need to be cleaned (scraped) every few weeks so they can breathe better. Once the oysters are ready, the pearls are removed, sized and sorted by color quality. A new nucleus of the exact same size as the one that came out is reinserted along with another DNA sample. This will produce another, bigger pearl. This process is repeated up to four times before the oyster is at the end of its pearl-producing life. A very small part of these oysters is then eaten, the rest is sold to feed the shrimps farmed nearby. I tried some on the dock and it was amazing. It didn’t taste as fishy, salty or slimy as any other oysters I’ve eaten. The flesh was firm and more meaty. At the end of our tour, we were of course offered the chance to buy pearl jewelry in their little boutique.
The next stop on our tour was where we believe the school Sophie’s dad taught at was. When he was at our house for the holidays, I installed google earth on his iPad and we spent time trying to figure out where he lived. There were no maps or overhead views when he was there, so he tried to remember where the boats arrived and the paths he would walk on to get to his village. We are pretty sure we found the right one. We took lots of pictures that will hopefully be familiar to him. While some of the buildings and road may have changed, the lagoon and island views should not have.
Most of the island and all the motus are owned by the native Polynesians. Unlike Bora Bora, they have mostly resisted the temptation of selling or leasing land to developers. The owner of our resort told us an interesting story about Hilton offering one million dollars to one of the native families for a motu. He was helping translate the negotiations. The Hilton representative could not understand why they were refusing the generous offer. The native said he couldn’t part with the land that had been his ancestors’ and that he had no use for that much money. On the island, there is no need for fancy cars. In fact, there is no place that could even repair one. There is no need for fancy homes as they live mostly outdoors. There is no need for fancy clothes – they would only get moldy from the humidity. There is no need for expensive foods, as most of what they eat is free. And, he wasn’t interested in traveling, as he felt he was already living in paradise. The offer of one million dollars was useless for him and his family and they ultimately refused.
On one of our stops, we talked to a “mamie” who was fishing off a small pier. All the natives call older women “mamie” which means grandma in French. She was very friendly and chatty. She said it was too hot in the house at this time in the morning, so she was out fishing where there was some breeze off the lagoon. Her fishing tackle consisted of a reel of line and a hook at the end with some live bait. She fished regularly and never had a problem catching her lunch or supper.
There was such a huge variety of trees, flowers and plants growing wild on the island. Our guide knew them all and knew what they were used for. Of course, there were coconuts literally everywhere. And fruits like mangos, papayas, bananas, bread fruits, avocados, grapefruits, star fruits, rambutan and more. Some of the mango trees along the road were huge. One along a curve was notorious, in fact, for raining heavy mangos the size of footballs down on top of passing cars. And others were different healing plants or spices including the famous Tahitian vanilla. At one stop along the road I noticed a tree that had small chili peppers growing on it. I was surprised to find it was indeed a wild chili pepper plant that had grown so large it was a tree. They said over 60% of what the island produces goes to waste as there are not enough people to harvest or consume everything.
Coconuts and vanilla, though, were two things that were actively harvested on the island. The coconuts were collected and dried to make coconut oil. And vanilla was a very lucrative, but labor intense crop. Vanilla, which belongs to the orchid family, is not native to Tahiti (it is native to Mexico), but the tropical environment and volcanic soil gives it a world-renowned flavor. Because it is not native, there are no bees or insects that naturally pollinate the plant. So, this is all done by hand – and must be done each morning when the flower briefly blooms. The plants require just the right amount of sun and shade, so they are planted on hills next to small trees they climb to reach an easy height to work with. Whole vanilla beans were very expensive to buy. A small package of 6 to 10 pods went for $70.
There were four small towns on the island. Our resort was near the largest town of Patio, which was still tiny. It did have a small grocery store, police station, a church and a post office, though. We rode bikes there to mail some postcards. I thought it was funny that the kilometer markers (in the typical French shape) started outside Patio with the number 1. Speaking of French, it seemed so out of place to hear these Polynesians speaking French on the other side of the world! Their accent was very different, though, and they mixed a lot of Polynesian words into their sentences so Sophie sometimes had a hard time following everything they were saying.
We really enjoyed our secluded bungalow on this quiet island, but missed not having more freedom to walk to restaurants or sightsee on our own. While we were sad to say good bye, we were looking forward to seeing our next stop: the celebrated island of Bora Bora!
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