If this is Tuesday, it must be Rangiroa. No wait, Papeete. Anyway, we're in the Tahitian Islands, and while it's hard to imagine being disenchanted with them... there are definitely other places we'd rather go for a beach holiday. Maldives, for example.

Although few in North America think much about it, the South Pacific is full of thousands of islands, most of them small and insignificant; many yet uninhabited. Lots of little countries that you vaguely knew exist, but couldn't exactly say where -- Tonga, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, etc. Well, we're going to see quite a number of them on this trip.

The archetypal South Pacific island is, of course, Tahiti, and several relaxing sea days after leaving Pitcairn Island, we began a whirlwind tour of French Polynesia, of which Tahiti is the main island.

French Polynesia covers a vast area, with 35 islands and 85 atolls. It's a French protectorate of some sort, which means France subsidizes various projects and other costs – sort of payback from the 60's when they moved in here full force (30,000 people) to do nuclear testing. The major islands are volcanic, with dramatic sheer mountains throughout the interior, ringed by a small coastal area where everyone lives. A surrounding barrier reef calms the waves; inside the reef is a calm and often shallow lagoon.

Our first stop was the exotic-sounding Bora Bora, the island inspiration for the musical “South Pacific”:

Reality Check

It is, in fact, a magnificent island and lagoon—but overbuilt and overfished, crowded with cheek-by-jowl overwater bungalows. We did a circle-island tour along the coast (since the interiors can be visited only with a 4WD). Rather crowded, not particularly picturesque, the beaches eroding away. Probably not the best introduction to the charms of the South Pacific.

But we did get the classic photo op of Bora Bora:

The next day, we stopped at Tahiti – the very stereotype of tropical paradise, for generations of seafarers: sensuous, bare-breasted women, abundant food, overrun with flowers, perfect weather. Captain Cook returned here again and again during this journeys. The Bounty mutineers were in part driven by their desire to return to Tahiti and the “wives” they had found there. Well, Joanie Mitchell might have been talking about Tahiti when she sang:

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone... They paved paradise and put up a parkin' lot

Suburban neighborhood	Built-up shoreline

Tahiti today is not unlike Oahu in Hawaii – an administrative and military center, completely developed. If that isn't enough to discourage you, prices in Tahiti are astronomical – a combination of the high value of the Euro (to which the Polynesian franc is pegged) and extremely high import taxes. We looked at replenishing Scott's gin supply... US$50 for what costs us $20 in the US. (We managed to get limes though... only 40c each).

We did a circle-island tour in a van here, too. Almost totally built-up – houses, buildings, hotels -- one after another around the 70km circumference road around the island. There were still a few reminders of what it must have been like – but not many.

Off the Beaten Path

Off the main road, things were a little more laidback. A highlight was our stop at the Gaugin museum – it gives an overview of his life and art, though it contains only reproductions of his work. Among other things, he took a series of very young (like 13 years old) mistresses while living here, leaving his wife and four children in Europe.

So, our first two days in French Polynesia weren't impressive, but fortunately things improved significantly after that.

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