French Polynesia

Lee Foster

To get to French Polynesia, you would probably fly into or out of Tahiti, so let us make the most of that. Possibly you would experience such a major outlying island as Bora Bora, so what is that like? Maybe you would wish to become enthralled with such a truly remote island as Mopelia, one among many, so let us also discuss remoteness.

Whatever you do in French Polynesia will benefit from some perspective and from insight into the likely places to visit.

FRENCH POLYNESIA PERSPECTIVES

The geography of this South Pacific region is stunning. Spacious seascapes with only occasional islands is the pattern. There are about 118 relatively small islands in this watery world of two-million square miles, equivalent to the size of Western Europe. The islands are grouped together in five clusters called the Marquesas, Tuaomotus, Society Islands, Australs and Gambiers.

The climate is subtropical in the southernmost part and tropical in the more northerly regions, with a warm and rainy period November to April and the rest of the year relatively dry.

The history of early French Polynesia is enticing. The ancient Polynesians had tremendous skills of seamanship. These voyagers had to know the locations and the rising/setting patterns of about 210 stars to make accurate navigational calculations. As people with well-trained memories fostered by an oral rather than written tradition, this was an easy task. The original Hawaiians probably set sail from the Marquesas around 250AD.

As clever observers of nature, these skilled Polynesian navigators were able to make one of the most remarkable jumps in human history, 2,000 miles north to Hawaii. They had some certainty that land would be up there...somewhere. They watched as a land bird, the golden plover, came south to “winter” in French Polynesia. They watched again as the bird departed north for the “summer.” The golden plover did not breed or lay eggs in this Southern environment, so it must do so in the North. The land bird could only alight on land, so land must exist to the North. The French Polynesians did not know, of course, that the golden plover flew all the way north to Alaska, some 6,000 miles.

Most of the anthropological evidence of migration in the so-called Polynesian Triangle, with the triangle ends at New Zealand, Easter Island and Hawaii, suggests that the migration came West to East, then to the North, Hawaii. Carbon dating of artifacts keeps pushing the time frame backwards.

Many aspects of the story are yet to be definitively answered. For these people, yesterday and today, the coconut was considered the tree of life. If you nurtured it for seven years, as it started to grow, it would feed you for the next fifty years. Coconuts can be eaten at various stages of ripeness, when they would yield either milk, soft pulp or a harder pulp.

The leaves were used for thatch weavings in housing and in such domestic products as plates.

Into the world of the Polynesians came the European explorers. The first to arrive, in 1767, was an English captain named Samuel Wallis. He noted that “the women in general are very handsome.” The most famous European explorer was Captain James Cook, the great circumnavigator who stopped here in 1769. A French naval vessel anchored in 1836 to exert enduring Gaulic control over these far-flung islands. After the explorers came the major French artist, Paul Gaugin, in 1891. His story is best told when considering Tahiti, the major island of French Polynesia, because there is a Gaugin Museum a visitor will want to see.

TAHITI

Tahiti and its capital of Papeete is the gateway to French Polynesia. The island has many luxury seaside lodgings. The main pleasure of downtown Papeete is the wrought-iron double-deck Public Market, which sells all the fish and flowers a Tahitian might desire-and all the crafts that a tourist might want to take home, especially fabrics and shell jewelry. The high-end memento from this region is black- pearl jewelry. And, indeed, the prices for the best black pearls are high, as all prices here are high. Tourism is the #1 industry in French Polynesia. Selling black pearls is sometimes said to be #2.

The Archbishop’s Palace is an excellent example of French Colonial architecture. The City Hall ranks as another modern legacy of striking, tile-roof French Polynesian architecture.

As you make an island tour of Tahiti, there are two critical stops. The first is the Museum of Tahiti, a major cultural entity, ranking with the Bishop Museum in Honolulu if you want to see an ethnographic display of South Pacific people. Whether the subject is fishhook design or canoe construction, the range of deities or the social structure, the Museum of Tahiti covers the subject with precision and thoroughness.

The Museum has sections devoted to the natural milieu (flora, fauna, geology), traditional Polynesian culture (social life, religion) and the post-European Contact Era (keeping track of all the various navigators, from Cook to Wallis). This Museum is your best single opportunity for an immersion in the culture of French Polynesia.

The second stop is the Botanical Gardens and Paul Gaugin Museum, which honors this French artist’s encounter with the sensuality of the South Pacific. Gaugin, who sought to escape what he perceived as the corrupting influence of civilization, found that even Papeete was too civilized for his taste, so he journeyed around French Polynesia to find a more-isolated milieu. Gaugin was influenced by the French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that humans were naturally good but had been corrupted by civilization. The museum shows little original Gaugin work, only some graphics, but has ample and interesting documentation on his life here. In truth, Gaugin’s life was a fairly miserable existence, as this emissary of European culture met South Pacific primitiveness, but he did have the solace of his 14-year-old native wife, the subject of many of his paintings. Few places on Earth have been so thoroughly defined in the imagination of later visitors by a single artist.

The horticultural legacy of noted botanist and plant propagator Harrison Smith can be enjoyed throughout the gardens. There is also a six-foot-high tiki, or statue sculpture, that happens to be from Raivavae in the Austral Islands group. Tikis are a wood or stone image of a Polynesian supernatural power.

BORA BORA

If you seek a more remote location than Tahiti, beautiful Bora Bora would be the logical choice for interliners. Bora Bora will require a further plane flight, a sailing/yacht trip or a cruise-ship segment to make the 165-mile trip northwest from Tahiti. The trip is well worth it: the scenery is striking. The island has two high volcanic peaks, a kind of crab-claw appearance, one of the stunning land forms in French Polynesia, especially because the fecund green landscape is offset by the deep blue of a lagoon at the base of the mountains.

The Bora Bora landscape shows an intense, opulent cultivation of flowers. Hibiscus, frangipani and bougainvillea of many shades teem.

As on many of these islands, the remnants of World War II are also apparent, mainly as discarded coastal defense guns and airfields that subsequently made mobility for these people much easier.

Snorkeling along the reef around Bora Bora is superb. Besides snorkeling with the tropical fish, you can also swim with rays and sharks at specific location.

Take the island tour of Bora Bora to see the sights. One amusing aspect of Bora Bora is the long “mailbox” in front of homes, visible frequently as you tour the island. Bora Bora is in “French” Polynesia, of course, and the “mailbox” is to cover your daily delivery of a baguette of French bread, primarily baked, ironically, by Chinese vendors.

The favorite sport in French Polynesia is canoe racing. It seems as if everyone is part of a racing team preparing for the annual July tournaments. The canoe became the sacred carrier of life for these people, born of the wind and waves. Life is seen as a canoe voyage into the unknown: humankind’s fragile muscle power before the elements becomes a statement of the Sisyphean personal quest. The physical poetry and dance of canoe movement before an all-natural environment becomes a metaphor for the passion of life.

Cooperation among the canoe paddlers becomes paramount for the group success.

MOPELIA

If you want a truly remote experience in French Polynesia, consider Mopelia. There are actually many possible Mopelias.

To get there, you would leave Bora Bora on a chartered boat, float plane or cruise ship to make the journey farther West. Mopelia is a relatively uninhabited coral atoll, except for a few itinerant people harvesting copra (coconut meat) from trees or cultivating black pearl oysters in a lagoon. Whereas Bora Bora is a high volcanic island with its strutting peaks, Mopelia is a ring of reefs around a lagoon. The lagoon is a sunken volcanic crater, which is what high volcanic islands sometimes evolve to become.

Mopelia is a symphony of bird life. Sooty terns, frigate birds and boobies dominate the many other species. The sky becomes aflight with birds. Noise levels in the rookeries are deafening. At this remote atoll, no humans are harvesting eggs or otherwise disturbing the birds. Such a paradise for birds is rare, even in French Polynesia. As they colonized islands, birds brought their food supplies, carrying in their intestines the seeds of their favorite food plants. The excreted seeds germinated to reproduce the desired food plants on the new island. The tropicbird mating dance- dancing stationary or moving backwards in the sky-is said to inspire some Polynesian dance.

CRUISING FRENCH POLYNESIA

One paradox of French Polynesia travel is that the most exotic locales may be served by the most comfortable providers, modern cruise ships.

For example, the World Explorer is an expedition-style ship, something appreciated by its fans, although it is not for every cruiser. This ship is small and intimate, with 138 passengers; it has been covering French Polynesia for some time. With that small size and its fleet of swift, rubberized Zodiac boats, the ship can go anywhere and land you wet or dry at the remotest sites. The anthropologist staff is outstanding.

Passengers looking for large, opulent rooms or the latest in stabilizer-steadied sailing should seek out other ships such as Club Med and Wind Star. Princess has entered the French Polynesia market with its Tahitian Princess. It is safe to say that the Tahitian Princess goes to some of the remotest cruising islands on Earth when it stops at the Marquesas Islands of Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva, as well as Rangiroa in the Tuamotu Islands group.

THE FRENCH POLYNESIA MYSTIQUE

However you get to French Polynesia, and whatever you experience there, no doubt you will come away with a sense that the word “exotic” has new meaning. Maybe it will be simply the cluster of flower petals found on your bed and in your bath at an upscale lodging.

Maybe it will be the canoe racers that you see streaking across the horizon at sunset, as you enjoy a good bottle of wine (probably French). It is likely you will concur with Gaugin that there is something special in the sensuality of the environment, in the light, in the tropical air, in the fecund vegetation, and maybe even in the people you meet.

Lee Foster’s extensive travel writing/photography on 200 destinations can be seen at http://www.fostertravel.com. His most recent guidebook is Northern California History Weekends (Globe Pequot).