FIFTEEN
TAHITI
‘WE … ANCHORED IN nine fathoms of water, within half a mile of the shore. The land appeared as uneven as a piece of crumpled paper, being divided irregularly into hills and valleys; but a beautiful verdure covered both, even to the tops of the highest peaks.’
So wrote Sydney Parkinson aboard James Cook’s Endeavour, in Matavai Bay, Tahiti, on 13 April 1769. Parkinson was a twenty-two-year-old artist from Edinburgh, a Quaker and a brilliant botanical illustrator. While he busied himself drawing the myriad plants of Tahiti, his shipmates fell under the spell of the island’s women. The Endeavour was the third European ship to arrive at Tahiti, following Samuel Wallis’s Dolphin in 1767 and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s Boudeusee in 1768, so already the Tahitians were well aware of what the crews on the European sailing ships were seeking.
Cook’s men must have thought they had arrived in paradise without the inconvenience of dying. The Tahitians had no inhibitions about sex, and any constraints the Englishmen might have harboured quickly disappeared. The commonest price for sex, a nail, proved mutually satisfactory, until the supply of nails dwindled and the very structure of the Endeavour was threatened.
In downtown Papeete at nine in the morning, late-model Citroens, Peugeots and Renaults are zipping along the fourlane waterfront carriageway, Boulevard Pomare. Somewhere in the distance a klaxon wails. A smell of fresh coffee, croissants, jasmine and tiare Tahiti – the fragrant national flower – is in the air. Tethered to the doorstep of the town are luxury yachts from all over the world, their masts rocking like metronomes as they sway in the harbour swell. On the pavements, people of all hues mingle and greet each other. Bonjour, bonjour. Ça va? Très bien, merci. Many are families, typically consisting of a French father, a Tahitian, Chinese or mixed-race mother and a pair of beautiful, caramel-skinned children. The 235-year-old love affair between the races goes on.
Already the sun’s heat is fierce, the sky a high-gloss blue. Behind Papeete, rising steeply in ridges to verdant, sawtooth mountains whose peaks are wrapped in cloud, is the mysterious core of Tahiti, the ‘crumpled paper’ of Sydney Parkinson’s journal. La coeur de Tahiti. It is a heart I have never seen, but have long been curious about. What is in there? Lakes? Rivers? Villages? Nearly all visitors to Tahiti bypass the heart, barely pausing in Papeete before heading straight out to the enticing islands of the Society Group: Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora. All I know is that in 1791, two years after the mutiny on HMS Bounty, six of the mutineers – John Sumner, John Millward, Thomas Burkitt, William Muspratt, Thomas McIntosh and Henry Hillbrant – fled up one of the valleys of Tahiti in an attempt to escape the vengeance of the pursuing Royal Navy, an expedition led by the merciless Captain Edward Edwards of HMS Pandora. The six runaways made it into the interior, but the Tahitians, knowing full well on which side their breadfruit was buttered, betrayed them. The mutineers were captured, and returned to the coast and eventually to England to stand trial.
A four-wheel-drive Toyota utility swings into the lay-by on Boulevard Pomare. A tall, mahogany-brown young man jumps out, shakes my hand, grins widely. ‘Bonjour M’sieur. Je m’appelle Poken.’ He hefts my bag on to the back of the ute. His long hair hangs down his back, and he wears a baseball cap, blue singlet and dark blue shorts. The circular-patterned tattoos of the Marquesas Islands adorn his sinewy arms and legs.
As we swoop through the traffic of downtown Papeete and head out east of the town, Poken tells me that his mother is Marquesan, his father Tahitian. He honks and waves at people everywhere: road workers, gendarmes, taxi drivers, bus drivers. He explains that he is well known through his cultural group performances. He plays guitar, ukelele and drums; has toured Europe, America and Australasia. He also tells me proudly that he has two children: a boy called Teanuanua, which means rainbow, and a girl called Orama, which means shooting star. Poken is also a cross-island guide, one of several who take people like me into the interior of Tahiti.
On the open road now, we speed past Matavai Bay, where Cook anchored and Parkinson wrote of the mountain view, alongside the lagoon, now still and shiny in the morning sun, past outrigger canoes in which fishermen sit idly, past black-sand beaches and surfers pivoting and twisting in the glassy waves, and come to the village of Papenoo. There Poken swings the ute inland.
I see from the map on my knee that the valley of the Papenoo River cuts wide and deep into the centre of Tahiti. It’s the dry season, and the river runs gently over stones and between boulders. The road beside it is unsealed, as rocky as the river bed. To our right and left the sides of the valley rise abruptly to sharp, sinuous ridges hundreds of metres high. Bush extends from the valley floor to the skyline. From time to time we come across men operating earthmoving machinery, taming the river with front-end loaders, bulldozers, excavators, making it tractable by digging trenches, laying culverts, and building dams, steel bridges and small hydroelectric power stations. The Papenoo is a source of power and fresh water for the people of coastal Tahiti. Forty percent of the island’s electricity comes from hydroelectric schemes.
In the wet season, from November to March, the in-spate river must be formidable, but the going now is surprisingly easy. Poken’s ute eases us over bumps and boulders, climbing steadily alongside the watercourse. Studying the map again, I notice a recurring French word I have never seen before. Gué. There is a number beside it and the other gués: Gué 4, Gué 5, and so on. ‘What is gué?’ I ask. Poken twists the wheel to avoid a boulder, tries to explain in his halting English. ‘It is … when … there is no bridge, but we still must cross. Go through the river in the truck.’
‘Oh, a ford.’
Poken’s frown deepens. ‘No. A Toyota.’
‘No. Gué, a ford.’
‘Toyota.’ He points to the vehicle’s name on the gear change. Before I’m able to explain, we come to another gué. Here the river is wide and swift, and Poken drives straight into it. The truck becomes a kind of submarine and the water comes up to then over the bonnet. The engine is unaffected. As we emerge on to the shingle on the far side, I say to Poken, ‘That was some gué. En Anglais, a ford.’
‘Ah,’ he replies, finally understanding. But he shakes his head in confusion, obviously struck by the irrationality of English. Why name a vehicle after a place in the river that you drive through?
The river flows passively as we continue to climb alongside it. Opposite Gué 5 a waterfall, Cascade Vaiharuru, spills vertically into a pool, its backdrop a wall of bush-covered rock. We pass another hydroelectric station, a tidy modern building built over the river. I’m struck by the total absence of power lines or pylons. The fully automated stations have been designed by French engineers to blend as much as possible with the valley environment. Transmission lines are all underground, so that apart from the small rectangular buildings and the low hum of the turbines within them, the valley is undisturbed by the power-generating developments.
Climbing more steeply, we round a tight bend and pull over to the roadside for a fruit drink and a biscuit. Now I can see the head of the Papenoo valley. It is an enormous basin eight kilometres wide, enclosed by ramparts of rock and serrated peaks, the remnants of a huge volcanic crater which collapsed a million years ago. What strikes me is the scale and steepness of the mountains. One which looks unclimbable lies directly in front of us, blocking the head of the valley like a massive battlement. This is Mt Tetufera, 1,800 metres high and Tahiti’s third highest mountain. Tetufera is not a peak but a sheer green wall several kilometres across, its rock face grooved from top to bottom by cascading water. Its summit ridges stand dramatically against the pure blue sky.
‘In the wet season,’ says Poken, ‘many cascades on Tetufera. Very beautiful.’ It’s not hard to imagine the merging waterfalls forming a silver veil over the face of the mountain.
We pass a larger dam, climb a rough, zigzagging road and emerge on to a flat-topped bluff, on which there’s a complex of one-storey buildings. This is Relais de la Maroto, the only inland hotel in Tahiti.
When the hydroelectric schemes began, a place was needed to accommodate the workers so that they could avoid the long, lumpy drive to Papeete and back every day. An accommodation block and dining area were built here, high in the catchment zone. When the dams and powerhouses on the upper reaches of the Papenoo river were completed, the hostel was converted to a hotel. Relais is one of those French words which is not quite translatable into English. It means a wayside inn which has a reputation for serving fine food.
The director of Relais de la Maroto is a young Tahitian-born Frenchwoman, Christina Auroy, whose father, Dominique, a wine-lover, built the complex. Poken goes off for a smoke with a mate, and Christina shows me the view from the hotel deck. Only now do I realise that the relais is built on the edge of a sheer cliff. From the deck we look down to where the river tumbles through the bush and over basalt boulders, its course punctuated with pools of mountain-fed water. The air is still and scorchingly hot, the only noise that of gushing water, and big dragonflies hover about the railing like miniature helicopters. And talking of helicopters, at the front of the hotel there’s a helipad. For a few hundred dollars you can be whisked from Tahiti’s Fa’a Airport up and over the great mountains, across the valley and drop in for lunch at Maroto. Not only that, you can get to look down on Tahiti’s highest peak, Mt Orohena, 2,240 metres high and just over a ridge to the west of the Papenoo valley.
My room is on the top floor of the dormitory block. Walking along the gallery, I notice that instead of numbers the rooms have the names of French wines on the door: ‘Nuits Saint Georges’, ‘Château Lafite Rothschild’, ‘Châteauneuf du Pape’ and so on. To my disappointment, I’m shown into ‘Pétrus’. I’ve not heard of Pétrus. I’d rather be next door in ‘Château Lafite Rothschild’, which I know is a fine wine. Still, ‘Pétrus’ is clean, fresh and comfortable, and from the balcony there’s a splendid view up the valley.
Poken heads off in his truck, after agreeing to pick me up on his way through later in the week. After a siesta – the sun is still ferocious – I head up to the bar for a Hinano beer, and there meet the maitre d’hôtel, Noel. Like the majority of people on the island, he is part-Tahitian, part-French: in the local parlance, a demi. Noel is an affable young man, in spite of his right hand and lower arm being heavily strapped and bandaged – the result, he tells me, of a fall in the mountains which gashed his wrist.
As we sit and chat, I notice that an unusual number of the men coming and going about the hotel are, like Noel, nursing injuries. Here a bandaged knee, there a strapped ankle; here a patched eye, there a dressed ear. The pharmaceutical business in Tahiti must be booming. When these walking wounded meet, they greet each other with a handshake in the French manner, then refer to each other’s injuries, proudly, as if comparing chest sizes. One man with a heavily bandaged leg limps up to Noel, grips his (left) hand, points to Noel’s afflicted wrist, then at his own wound, and speculates as to which of them will be more handicapped sexually. Being French, neither man concedes that there is a serious problem. ‘It’s my hand that’s strapped, not my cock,’ Noel laughs. As for this propensity to injury, a friend later explains that many Tahitians are reckless to the point of lunacy. They seem to believe they are immortal. Later, back in Papeete, I witness two adults and two children crammed on to a Vespa scooter and weaving through the rush-hour traffic, a barefoot girl on a bike hanging on to the tray of a speeding truck, and helmetless Vespa riders racing three abreast down the motorway.
The Relais de la Maroto remains a watering hole for everyone who works in the mountains. At lunchtime gangs of sweaty men, many wearing bandages, come trooping in for a beer and a meal, mixing readily with the well-dressed visitors who are passing through on a day excursion. As always in French-derived society, meal times are sacrosanct. The tables on the deck are filled with visitors: a mélange of brown-skinned Tahitians, dusky New Caledonians, chic French, slender Chinese, and their offspring, children straight from the melting pot who will grow up without racial prejudice because they carry the genes of three regions – Europe, Asia and Polynesia.
One thing puzzles me about these visitors, though. When they arrive Noel takes them first not to the bar, or the restaurant, or even the toilets. Instead they go off with him down some steps beside Christina’s office. When they return about half an hour later, they go out to the deck to dine. After seeing this happen several times, I ask Noel where he takes the guests.
‘Oh, à la cave,’ he replies.
‘La cave?’
‘Oui. Would you like to see it?’
We go down three flights of concrete steps to the bottom of the dormitory block. There Noel unlocks a door and switches on a light to reveal a long, cool room whose concrete, windowless walls are lined with wooden shelves filled with bottles of wine. French wine. Very good French wine. At one end of the cellar are tables and chairs, racks of glasses and, on the walls, detailed maps of French wine districts colour-coded with different vintages. Côte de Beaune, Bordeaux, Côtes du Rhône. Noel explains that Christina’s father came originally from the Beaune district of the Bourgogne, one of France’s leading wine-growing regions. After he arrived he had a cellar built, then shipped over 3,000 bottles of French wine and cellared them here in air-conditioned comfort, at 16 degrees Celsius. A wine club down in Papeete regularly helicopters up here for tastings; casual visitors to Maroto also call in. So dedicated is Dominique Auroy to cultivating wine that he’s even started a vineyard on Rangiroa atoll, in the middle of the Tuamotu archipelago, 355 kilometres north-west of Tahiti. And, outlandish as it may seem, his three hectares of Carignan grapes, cultivated on a tropical atoll, are now producing fine wines.
As I wander about the cellar, appreciating its coolness and richness, a thought occurs to me. ‘Noel,’ I ask, ‘do you have a wine called Pétrus?’
His expression becomes very respectful. ‘Oh yes, we have three bottles of Pétrus.’ He leads me to a space where a trio of dusty bottles of red wine lie. ‘They are our rarest wine,’ he declares, then watches nervously as I pick up one of the bottles. It has an unpretentious, even dowdy label. Later, when I study Le Relais de la Maroto’s wine list, I begin to appreciate Noel’s discomfort. Pétrus sells for over US$750 a bottle. I am now much happier with my room.
From the balcony of Pétrus I can see, at the head of the valley far below, an area of cleared, level land, surrounded by bush, on which there stand some low, rectangular structures. I consult the map and work out that this must be the ‘Site archéologique de Farehape marae’. From boyhood I have harboured a fantasy of being an archaeologist, so I grab my pack and head off down to the valley.
The road is rough, and because of the steepness of the descent it doubles back on itself several times. At the bottom of the valley the heat is overpowering. Parched, leaden-legged, I trudge up the road, and ten minutes later reach the clearing.
The coarse grass shows signs of being recently attacked by a weedeater. Stepping up on to the site of the ancient marae, I see that it is a low platform of blackened, closely fitted river stones. In traditional Tahitian society the marae was the centre of community and ceremonial activities. Here the primary gods, Tane, Tu, Oro and Ta’aroa, were worshipped, and here too a family’s lineage was inscribed in stone, delineating its specific rank in the social hierarchy. The marae was also a memorial whose raised stones and posts recalled deceased chiefs and ancestral lines. Here at Farehape, with the bush cleared away, I can see that the several marae are perfectly intact: the platforms of neatly fitting stones, and the rectangular, low-walled enclosures with their upright genealogical markers, stand out starkly in the clearing. A noticeboard informs me that some of the stone stages were platforms where the Tahitian élite carried out their archery contests. Clearly, the Papenoo valley was once an area of vigorous social, religious and sporting activity. But why here, in this remote place? And, if it was such a significant settlement, why did the people abandon it?
I notice signs of human activity at the far end of the terrace. A group of people is doing some sort of work on one of the stone platforms. Strolling down to investigate, I see that most are young Tahitians in shorts and singlets. Young men mainly, but also a couple of young women. They grin and greet me: ‘Bonjour M’sieur,’ ‘Bonjour,’ ‘Bonjour.’
A square about two metres by two metres and half a metre deep has been cut into the marae floor. Strings have been pegged across the small, neat excavation. In the background a platform of bamboo has been set up. There are plans and notebooks on it. I would love to know exactly what is going on here, but how to ask? My French is not archaeologically refined. Then I notice that one man seems to be directing operations. He is European, tall, athletic, deeply tanned, about thirty, and wearing a long loose mauve singlet, shorts and a back-to-front baseball cap.
‘Ah, bonjour M’sieur,’ I say as I approach. ‘Je m’appelle Graeme. Je suis un écrivain de la Nouvelle Zélande. Q’est ce que vous faites ici, s’il vous plait?’
His face breaks into a grin, and he extends his hand. ‘Hi. I’m Mark Eddowes, from New Zealand. I’m carrying out research here for Otago University.’
It turns out that Mark has been working in French Polynesia for years, excavating archaeological sites from the Marquesas to the Australs. He’s fluent in Tahitian and French, has a traditional Tahitian tattoo on one leg, and here in Papenoo is supervising this group of Tahitian archaeology students. He also goes on cruise ships through the islands, lecturing to the passengers on the ethnology of Polynesia, on which he is now a world authority. As we wander over the site Mark explains that this part of the Papenoo valley was once home to thousands of people, as were most of the inland valleys in Tahiti. ‘There are hundreds of marae throughout the interior. There’s even one on the top of Orohena, the highest peak on the island.’
The valleys’ fertile volcanic soils supported crops of taro, sweet potatoes and plaintains. The people lived in thatched fares built on stone foundations – paepae – surrounded by the marae. ‘Tahitian society was strongly lithic,’ Mark goes on. ‘This area was a source of stone for tools as well as building. We’ve been excavating the floors of various fares, and we’ve found stone implements and the remnants of hearths. It was cooler up here at certain times of the year, so they needed fires for heating as well as cooking, and to keep the mosquitoes away, probably.’ The inland valleys remained densely populated until the European missionaries arrived, from 1797 onwards. ‘After the Tahitians were converted to Christianity,’ Mark tells me, ‘the people moved down to the coasts because the churches, mission schools and ports were built there. The interior of the island was largely abandoned.’
Mark is an enthusiast, a personable man who has immersed himself in this reconstruction of Tahiti’s pre-European past. I suggest that it’s good to see the young people joining in. He agrees: ‘Most of them are very good students.’ He pauses and shouts a directive to two young men who are erecting a shade tarpaulin over the excavation site. ‘The main problem is stopping them smoking dope. Sometimes they go into the bush to cut a pole, and they come back so stoned they forget what the pole was for.’ Marijuana growing and smoking is rife in Tahiti.
On the way back, burning with the midday heat, I pause at a place where twin rivulets pour down between boulders into a small, deep pool. I strip off and slip into the mountain water. It is wonderfully cool, clean, revitalising. Opening my eyes under water, I swim up to where it pours, foaming and bubbling, between the boulders. It is like swimming in champagne. Vintage champagne.
In the evening I dine alone in the large, plush dining room of the relais. It’s half dark and eerily silent. The young Tahitian waitress serves me the entrée, then vanishes. The prawn terrine, smothered in a rich, brown Roquefort sauce, is a minor work of art. Its pièce de résistance is the front end of the shell of a small crayfish, presumably the former owner of the curved tail which crowns the terrine. The carapace is about three centimetres long, a beautifully moulded, smooth, ginger-brown shell. It has a long, flat snout, a pair of very long, severally jointed front legs with elongated pincers, long thin whiskers and a cluster of secondary legs under its body. Its on-stalks eyes seem to express astonishment at finding itself on my plate. The whole complicated arrangement of legs, eyes, feelers and claws reminds me of a Swiss Army knife with all its bits and pieces extended. It is a freshwater prawn – une crevette.
When Noel calls into the dining room I express admiration for the crevette’s beauty and flavour. He tells me that the creatures live in the river and that Michel, one of the workers, caught this one last night. Then Noel has an idea. ‘Would you like to go to catch some crevettes tonight with the chef, Christian?’ Mais oui.
Michel is a huge Tahitian with a bald head like a cannonball and a gentle, considerate manner. He lends me the pic – the many-barbed bamboo spear – he uses to spear the prawns. Last night, he says, he speared a whole bagful. The chef, Christian, lends me a torch, and the pair of us head off down the steep, rocky road to the river.
Christian is about twenty-five. He comes from Strasbourg and likes living in the mountains because of the tranquillity and the outdoor life. ‘No cars, no noise. The only sound here is the river.’ At the bottom of the hill we come to the river. Although the moon is full and the sky is light, at ground level it is dark. The river bed is filled with the shadowy shapes of boulders and the sheen of moonlit pools.
Christian explains the technique. We shine our torches into the rock pools. When we spot a crevette we hold the spear over him and, still shining the torch, bring it down on his body, skewering him. It sounds simple, and already I can see a large crevette in a pool, his eyes turned fluorescent red by the torchlight. I hold the spear over him, aim, plunge it down on the prawn. Supposedly. In fact my spear strikes only the stone over which the creature was recently hovering. Sweeping the pool with my torch, I can now see no sign of my quarry.
Moving upstream, I illuminate another pool, locate another crevette. Shine, aim, strike. Miss. Two–nil to the crevettes. The problem is that the little crustaceans, with those swivelling eyeballs on stalks, are sharp-eyed and very, very quick. They dart, in reverse, at top speed. Then they vanish. I can see Christian’s torch waving about downriver and hear him splashing about. I stumble over to the pool where he is hunting. He has just one crevette in his bag. He suggests we try further downstream. Climbing over boulders, clutching our pics, we scrutinise every pool we come across. The large crevettes seem to have vanished completely. Now there are only tiny ones, who drift about waving their antennae idly. After an hour, hot, tired, wet and frustrated, we give up.
As we take the long, steep road back up to the relais, Christian observes, ‘The Tahitians say that when the moon is full, it is no good for catching the crevettes.’ It’s the empty-handed fisherman’s oldest defence – blame the moon. I decide against pointing out that last night, when Michel went crevetting, he caught plenty, and the moon must have been much the same shape as it is now.
Nevertheless, Christian and I look up reproachfully at the gleaming globe. Then I think of the scarpering mutineers from the Bounty, who ran away up here to escape their pursuers. Perhaps it was a good thing they were caught. If they hadn’t, they would have gone insane trying to catch crevettes. Not that the poor wretches were saved, in any real sense. After being cruelly incarcerated in ‘Pandora’s Box’ – an iron-grilled cell above decks – for weeks on the voyage back to England, and surviving shipwreck on the Barrier Reef off Australia, Burkitt and Millward were tried by the Royal Navy, convicted of mutiny and desertion, and publicly hanged aboard HMS Brunswick on 29 October 1792.
Resuming my cross-island journey with Poken the next day, we head off in the direction of Mt Tetufera. Now the road is not really a road, just a grassy track, barely three metres wide, winding tortuously around great bluffs and ridges. To our left is a ravine hundreds of metres deep; ahead is the huge green face of the mountain, so sheer and high it is obvious no road could conquer it. How will we get over Tetufera? I don’t dare ask Poken: he is concentrating on keeping the truck on the track, wrestling with the wheel and the gear lever, his face set grimly. Some corners are so tight that we can hardly get around them. The road is still climbing, and although the long grass covering it suggests that it is not used often, I cannot imagine what would happen if we met another vehicle coming the other way. One of us, I suppose, would have to reverse. The very thought makes my palms sweaty.
Now the narrow road is traversing the face of the mountain, past waterfalls and bush-covered bluffs, still with the dizzying drop to our left. I manage a moment of admiration for whoever it was who incised the road into the cliff face, but I’m still bothered by where it will end. We’re now well over 1,500 metres high and still climbing. Then, lo and behold, the track swings abruptly right, and we enter a tunnel, about 100 metres long, cut straight through the basalt rock. Grids of reinforcing steel are plastered into its sides and roof, from which water pours constantly. We slosh through and out the other side. ‘Very good too-nell, uh?’ says Poken. I have to agree. French engineering must be on a par with French cuisine.
On the western side of Tetufera it is all downhill and perilously steep. On several hairpin bends Poken has to reverse and have two shots at cornering. This backside of the mountain is obviously wetter, and on our descent we pass through rain-clouds and stands of tropical forest, huge trees whose boughs and foliage enclose the road. Cataracts spill over the walls of rock to our right, draining away down the mountainside to Vaihiria, Tahiti’s largest natural lake.
Gradually, carefully, we follow the river’s course down the ravine, through the mountain mist and rain forest to the lower reaches of the valley. Barrages, man-made lakes and small power stations appear once more. Far ahead I can see a patch of blue sky. At last the road levels out as the valley floor widens. There is a house, some coconut and banana palms, plots of taro. Minutes later, more buildings, an expanse of greenhouses, then the valley merges with the coastal plain in the commune of Mataiea, once home to Paul Gauguin, and later to the brilliant young English poet Rupert Brooke. Brooke left England in 1913 after suffering a nervous breakdown – the result of a complicated romantic tangle – and spent several months travelling in the South Pacific. He found sanctuary for a time at Mataiea, in the arms of a lovely young Tahitian woman, Taatamata, and, it has been claimed, even fathered a daughter. Lack of funds caused Brooke to depart for England in July 1914; a few months later World War I began, he enlisted, and died of blood poisoning in the Aegean, in 1915.
The sky is wide and blue, the lagoon sparkles in the afternoon sun. Tahiti’s interior has been penetrated, its heart explored. As I look back on those huge, green, jagged mountains, I think again of awestruck Sydney Parkinson’s description: ‘As uneven as a piece of crumpled paper … a beautiful verdure … even to the highest peaks’. Parkinson was never to see Scotland again. He contracted dysentery in Batavia on the homeward voyage and died on the Indian Ocean, in January 1771. But his marvellous botanical illustrations of Tahiti endure, as does his peerless summation of the physical allure of a high tropical island, an allure which is unending.
Then there is Moorea. Not only artists and explorers, but also writers, scientists and sundry scapegraces have been entranced by the sight of that high volcanic island, Tahiti’s neighbour, just a few kilometres away across the Sea of the Moon. It is the first thing that visitors to Papeete notice, and one of the last sights they see as they leave. Moorea is just eight minutes by light plane from Tahiti; twenty minutes by catamaran; forty by car ferry. Any way you go it’s a treat. From the air you can stare down at its great saw-tooth peaks, the mottled pink of its lagoon, the white ruffle of its reef waves. Approaching by sea, its green spires seem to rise up from the water, moving slowly and hypnotically into focus.
To appreciate Moorea, however, it’s not necessary to go there. It’s enough to watch its shifting moods from Papeete. Early in the morning the peaks are a soft, gin-and-tonic blue. By day they are usually concealed by a mosquito net of cloud. In the late afternoon the clouds lift and the sinking sun backlights the island, bringing the mountains into sharp relief. But it is in the early evening that Moorea and the western sky turn on their best show.
Back in my waterfront hotel in Papeete after my traverse of Tahiti, I’m again captivated by Moorea, as no doubt Sydney Parkinson was as he strolled along the black sand of Matavai Bay, sketch-pad in hand. My hotel is not in the prettiest part of Papeete: it’s at the eastern end of Boulevard Pomare, the part the locals call the Gaza Strip. By night the streets are full of strutting soldiers and strident music. Raucous vehicles roar past the plump Tahitians hookers who lurk in the shadows of the buildings’ colonnades.
The hotel itself is, to put it charitably, unpretentious. Its small lobby contains a few vinyl-covered chairs, some soft drink-and cigarette-vending machines, and a TV set which is never turned off. The receptionist is a kind young Tahitian woman who gives me a fruit drink every time I change my New Zealand dollars for Polynesian francs because she pities me the exchange rate. Through the tatty curtain behind her sits a morose, chain-smoking, ageing Chinese man with a face as pale as the rind of uncooked pork. The whole building has a sad, soiled, profitless feel about it. Judging by the furtiveness and frequency with which different couples come and go through the little lobby and up the clunky lift, I suspect that some of its rooms rent by the hour. Another curious feature of the hotel is that it has no restaurant or dining room. Finding a place to eat is no problem, however, as every evening over on the waterfront dozens of little food vans – les roulottes – trundle up to dispense everything from crêpes to kebabs. Their braziers glow in the hot black night and the aroma of their dishes invades the waterfront.
On my second-to-last night in Papeete, sitting at a roulotte and looking up from my plate of poisson cru, I notice that my hotel is very high, a fact I had not previously realised. Now I can see that from the top floor there must be a grand view of the harbour and Moorea, a panorama which I long to capture on film.
The next day the sky is almost totally clear, suggesting that sunset conditions will also be favourable. At six o’clock that evening I take the jerking lift and my camera up the fourteenth floor of the hotel. Outside the lift is a small, gloomy landing and a set of bare concrete stairs. At the top of the landing is another landing, covered with dusty, stacked tables and chairs. Behind is a solid door bearing the notice, ‘Restaurant Capitaine Cook’. I push past the furniture and try the door. Locked. Merde! In minutes the sunset will be starting, and there’s no window, no balcony, no view, and thus no photo. Then I notice another stairway to the right of the landing. At the top is another door. I don’t hold out much hope of its being open, but climb the stairs anyway and try the door handle. It turns; the door opens.
Before me is a wide, slightly convex expanse of asphalt. There is a concrete shed and a big TV satellite dish, but the roof is otherwise bare. I walk across to its leading edge. It is like standing on the brink of a canyon. There is no guard rail, no guttering, just an updraft of hot tropical air. Far below is Boulevard Pomare, its vehicles as tiny and silent as cars on an architect’s model. To my left and right, already pricked by firefly lights, are the buildings of Papeete. Behind them are Parkinson’s crumpled paper mountains. But my eyes do not linger on any of these. Instead I stare ahead, over the waterfront, over the Sea of the Moon.
There are only smudges of cloud. As the sun slips below the horizon, the sky begins to flare, suffusing the entire horizon with light, saturating it with variegated colours: red, pink, orange, vermilion. And beneath the sky, looming like a dark iceberg, is the jagged profile of Moorea. It is an opera and I am in the royal box.
Then, with startling speed the colours begin to fade, as if somewhere in the mountains behind me a dimmer switch is being turned. I pick up my camera, frame the scene, pause, and press the shutter.