Tahiti

A trip is a lot like a Treasure Hunt. You are either looking for the much-ballyhooed local wonder or hoping to stumble on a secret one that you alone have discovered. A recent trip to Tahiti found me entertaining this very idea.

As soon as I landed, I came to the immediate conclusion that the real treasure of Tahiti is Tahiti itself. The island is but the tip of a long extinct volcano, which rises up out of the azure sea like fingers on a giant’s glove. The mountains are so tall that they catch any wayward cloud, pushing it up, chilling the water vapor and causing a downpour. There is always a cloud or two pinned on each of the peaks, and as a result the rains come often but never for very long. So the island is a mass of green and glorious vegetation framed by rainbows and golden shafts of light. To be quite frank, it looks a little fake, like a movie set…leftover from the film SOUTH PACIFIC.

Of course, why I found myself in Tahiti in the first place is a story in itself. Very briefly: now that I have reached the stately age of seventy-something, I can no longer fly steerage, particularly on long trips. And because of my advanced age, I can also afford not to. So on a recent trip “Down Under” to visit an old friend in Melbourne, and coincidentally the last Grand Slam Tennis Championship on my list, I consulted with a travel agent to find a cheap first class flight. To my dismay, most of airlines offered fares coming in at a whopping 17 grand. Well, being Presbyterian and Scottish and a few other frugal things, I simply couldn’t justify the expense. Then out of the blue, the agent came up with a fare at half the price on something with the exotic name of AIR TAHITI NUI.

Although no one seems to have ever heard of the airline, I was assured it was a reputable organization, flying legitimate aircrafts, and not the pontoon on wings that I feared. The reduced price had one tiny caveat: the flight had to set down in Tahiti for an hour while they switched planes. Apparently, the airline has two planes. One flies from LA to Tahiti and then presumably exhausted from the effort collapses on the tarmac. At this point the second one is rolled out, and does the final leg from Tahiti to Sydney. But other than that one hiccough, the flight was lovely. The crew was Tahitian…straight out of a painting by Gauguin. They were clearly chosen for their exquisite beauty and elegant manners….both the men and the women. Though never usually a fan of airplane protocol, I couldn’t take my eyes off them while they explained the intricacies of the flotation device and oxygen mask! Since Tahiti is a French Colony, the crew spoke in a soft “island” French. (Tahitian is another thing all together. The language employs about 2 consonants, so everything comes out: “O’o eea, apaoa..tataoa ee.” I kept thinking, can I buy you people a consonant?)

First class on AIR TAHITI NUI was only one row, but oh what a row it was. I was separated from the nouveau riche in Business and the riff raff in Economy by a sturdy partition. But the beauty of the first class seat was that it fully reclined, so that with the aid of a small blue sleeping pill and several glasses of white wine, I was able to lie out, completely horizontal, and actually sleep. Another unfortunate discovery of my late age: I simply cannot sleep at an angle. So it was bliss to actually spend 8 hours “in the arms of Morpheus” on the 16-hour flight to Sydney Australia. As a result, I arrived there ready and eager to take the small hop on to Melbourne, where I was picked up by friends. And there began an excellent adventure in the land of the Kangaroo and Dingo! (Another story for another day.)

Fast forward to the trip back home. The travel agent persuaded me that since I was flying Air Tahiti, why not spend a few days in Tahiti itself? “To rest and recharge before returning to the US”, she volunteered as if she had had some premonition of the impending doom that lay ahead of me in the hectic morass that is Election Year USA coupled with the irksome Writer’s Strike. She also booked me into the Intercontinental Hotel in a room with “A Lagoon View”. Friends of mine who had stayed in Tahiti before, urged me to get away from the hell of a big hotel and get over to the paradise that was Morella or Bora Bora. But I discovered to my delight that the Intercontinental was simply gorgeous. Some of the suites were in charming little huts that floated above the water. I kept asking myself “Why would I be leaving this?” Granted it was an ersatz version of the real Tahiti, but truth to tell, I am as fond of the mock turtle soup as I am of the real McCoy. Plus the grounds of this hotel were spectacular…magnificent swimming pools floating above fish-stocked ponds, and below that the turquoise waters of the inner lagoon, then a white ring of waves crashing on a giant corral reef, and beyond that the shark-filled waters of the open ocean. And to top it all off, in the distant, looming out of the sea like a painted purple cutout, was the island of Morella, the Bali Hai of one’s dreams.

But, vistas aside, I was also on the hunt for island Treasure. I decided to take the hotel shuttle into the capitol town Papeete. For me, the real lure of any foreign town is its local market. Here merchants sold island produce, and handcrafted items from the sea and the surrounding jungles. There were necklaces made of long, thin seashells, bracelets of shiny brown beads, hand-printed sarongs and sun hats made of woven leaves. But fascinating as it was, there was no treasure for me in that market. So I ventured forth until I found a little shop, which called itself “Le Tresor de Tahiti.” (Did I mention this a French colony? Everything is fucking French). In the window of what turned out to be an up-market jewelry shop was a selection of “Le Tresor,” which turned out to be Tahitian black pearls. I spotted a necklace with a single pearl the size of a grape on a black plastic cord. I thought it sufficiently masculine to add to my burgeoning collection of jewelry: a Lance Armstrong yellow wristband and a recently acquired Hawaiian beaded bracelet.

With the devil-may-care attitude, that only an actor who has made a career out of playing stinking rich Republicans can muster, I sauntered in and asked to try it on…as if I had made a lifelong habit of buying pearls. The price, I was told, was 155, 000 francs. But francs in Tahiti are worth nothing I reasoned, and this little beauty could be no more that 19 or 20 bucks if my calculations were correct. Alas I was off by the tiniest of decimal points, and the salesgirl volunteered that it cost 193 US dollars. When she saw the blood drain from my face, she asked if I were sure I wanted to spend that much. And here’s where the Presbyterian thing kicked in again. I was too embarrassed to say, “Are you fucking kidding me? 193 bucks for that piece of shit?” Instead, I told her that of course I would take it, and whatsmore I would wear it. And I sashayed out into the bright Tropical sunlight with the Treasure of Tahiti clasped around my neck. I tried not to let it dampen my spirits that it cost more than my dear Mother’s real pearl necklace!

But treasures in Tahiti, like the gifts of the magi, came in threes. On the final day I found myself with nothing to do. A local election had shut down all businesses and prevented me from catching the Ferry to Morella. Granted, there are worse things than hanging out at the hotel pool with Mai Tai’s, snorkeling and kayaking as diversions. But I had done all that. And I wanted a great final adventure for my last day. So I went to the Concierge, who signed me up for an 8 hours trip in a 4X4 up into the interior of the island. “Huite heures, Monsieur,” she cooed. “Yeah. 8 hours stuck in a truck with some tourists from Toledo, and a native driver who can only communicate in vowels,” I grumbled. Ah well, “nothing ventured…”. So I waited in the hotel lobby for my pick up.

A scant fifteen minutes later, round the corner came the hottest hottie south of the Equator. Standing in front of me stood a guy, part Delon and part Belmondo, who spoke in the loveliest Maurice Chevalier accent: “Are you Meest-hair. Gray?” “You bet I am,” said I with rising enthusiasm. “Follow me” he continued. “To the ends of the earth,” I smiled, thinking, “Well this is going to be one fine Tahitian day.”

And thus began one of the most astonishing and hair-raising adventures of my life. A trip so frightening that at times I was convinced we wouldn’t make it. Five of us hopped on board an open jeep and hurtled along a path on a trip that would have made the escapades in INDIANA JONES seem like a cakewalk. The road was not only unpaved, but there were potholes the size of turkeys every five feet. We flew over rickety bridges spanning deep ravines. Sometimes the road, if you can call it that, ran right through a river. Other times it bored through a crumbling tunnel in the mountain. And while we bumped and banged our way up, we clung to two-inch pipes to keep from being thrown overboard.

At our guide’s suggestion, we skinny-dipped in a fast moving mountain stream, fed coconut bread to five foot long black eels in a fresh water pool, and searched for and discovered the elusive green pigeon. We counted the numerous hundred foot waterfalls that plummeted off the mountainsides, sometimes spotting as many as fifteen at a time.

Though an ex-French Marine, our Chauffeur had the delicatesse to encourage each of us to smell the fragrant flowers, and taste the wild fruit, even as he decried the invasion of foreign species that were destroying the natural flora. He took particular exception to a vine the GI’s brought in as camouflage during the war in the Pacific. I wanted to point out to him that if weren’t for the American Army, he’d be speaking Japanese right now. But as two of our passengers were Japanese I decided against it. Before the trip ended we had stumbled onto an Ancient Temple, had a free lunch at a now defunct mountain hostelry, and generally had the time of our lives. I felt like a kid again. This was far better than an E-Ticket ride at Disneyland. And a little Cole Porter melody danced through my brain:

“Riding so high with some guy to the sky,
On a volcano’s towering rim.
Yes, I got a kick out of him.”

So I ended my trip having stumbled on the final treasure of the tropics: a shirtless, French Marine with a wicked sense of humor and a botanist’s zeal for plants. When I left him, I headed back to the Intercontinental and packed Treasure number 2: the black pearl. Then hopped on Air Tahiti Nui, and exhausted but happy, and left behind the loveliest treasure of all: The Island of Tahiti.