Tahiti

At last a place that everyone has heard of. Island of Captain Cook, Paul Gauguin, pearls, tattoos, and dances with wiggling hips and grass skirts. Well Papeete, the main town, has all of those, and it also has 4-lane highways, sprawling suburbia, and a huge Carrefour supermarket with 100 types of French cheeses, Dutch UHT milk, US cake mixes, and lots of New Zealand meat. The choice is overwhelming and so are the prices - who buys the local watermelons for 25 euros ($40 dollars)each?? To some extent we shut our eyes and just buy what we want, knowing that soon we won't have the choice when we move on to more remote spots. (No, we haven't had watermelon). Why are locally grown bananas (to be seen in every garden) more expensive than imported ones in the UK? And mangoes and papaya ......However, baguette is cheap, fresh, delicious, and available everywhere.

Pearls are certainly big business, and it has been interesting to see just how cultured pearls are produced. First oysters are grown for 3 years, then they are 'seeded' with a small bead of mother-of-pearl and some epithelial cells from a donar oyster. The positioning of the seed is very precise work, and the seeders work at tables a bit like a watch maker with strong lights and delicate instruments. In French Polynesia a species of oyster is used which produces black pearls. The seeded pearls are hung in strings of net bags in the clean water of lagoons, and have to be checked and cleaned regularly. It takes another 3 years to produce a pearl of the size required - or longer for larger ones. What surprised us was that only 10% of the pearls are A-grade, and only 1% perfect, no wonder they can be very expensive. Black is a bit of a generalisation, as the colour can be aubergine, greenish, bluish or gray, not actually black. We will be looking at pearls with much more awareness now - the white ones are mainly Japanese.

Tattoos are seen on the majority of Polynesian men, beautiful traditional swirling patterns over shoulders back and chest. The patterns are also seen on 'tapa' (bark cloth) paintings, and on some of the intricate wood carvings. When missionaries arrived in French Polynesia in the 1820's they banned tattooing (ie they banned uncovered bodies!) as well as traditional dances and singing. It was only in the 1980's that it was re-introduced as an art form - and now it is purely decorative whereas before it was a religious rite, a sign of wealth and social position, and a mark of tribal identification.

As for the dancing, we have certainly come here at the right time of year. In July, leading up to Bastille Day (a public holiday, but not really celebrated), there is a festival of song, dance and sports in all the Society Islands. The biggest of course is in Taihiti. The sports include things like climbing coconut palms, carrying fruit, tossing poles, and the very popular outrigger canoe races - a sort of tropical Highland Games. We spent an evening watching part of the dancing competition. Wonderful costumes which have to be made of natural materials, so leaves, flowers, feathers, and 'tapa'. The hip swaying is something that they grow up learning, a 5-yr old child was standing in the aisle next to us dancing with the music too. The accompanying music was mainly drums of various types, with ukele and nasal flute. And the singing is very harmonious - church services are a 'concert' in their own right.

Taihiti itself has very few beaches, though it does have world renowned surfing spots (as I write we are at Teahupoo, one of the best known, but there's no wind today so the surf looks very benign). All the Society Islands, of which Taihiti is the main one (and Bora Bora the only other well known one) are mountainous with a surrounding reef. So there is calm lagoon water around the coast, with surf battering the reef a short way away. This is the main difference between these islands and the Marquesas which have no reef around them. Reefs filter sea water giving clear clear lagoons whereas the sea around the Marquesas tends to be cloudy. The next island along, Moorea, is where the tourists and locals go for sea, sand, and waving palm trees. We spent a very happy week there before coming here, and were able to have our folding bikes out to explore the one road that runs around the island. Inland on both islands it is extremely steep and mountainous and fairly inaccessible. These days nearly all the population is around the coast, but the original inhabitants - pre 1500 - lived inland up valleys to protect themselves from other tribes. Ancient 'maraes' or sacred platforms are found well inland in many places.

Today the men of Teahupoo village are out on the reef collecting crown of thorns starfish which are threatening the coral. On the dock near us the women are preparing lunch for them, quite a community effort. We had to go and see the mayor for permission to anchor off the village - a very attractive and elegant lady with a smart Mercedes. Most mayors have other jobs too, so not sure what other hats this lady wears!