Tahiti
On April Fool’s Day 1982, my boyfriend, Mark, and I boarded a jet bound for Papeete, Tahiti. In retrospect, this was the beginning of our honeymoon, five years before we actually got married.
After a fifteen-hour flight, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Mark had been to the islands a year before and assured me that the “natives were friendly.” We would be well taken care of. What an understatement this turned out to be!
The moment I stepped off the plane, I began to fall hopelessly in love with Tahiti. It was one o’clock in the morning; a scent of gardenias wafted on the balmy sea breezes. A group of attractive Tahitian emissaries greeted us. They had thick black hair and supple golden skin. They wore pareu (lengths of vividly colored material) and tiare flowers tucked behind their ears. They put frangipani leis around our necks. The pink, white and yellow blooms were intoxicating.
Mark’s friend, Alex, came to pick us up at the airport and seemed unperturbed about being rousted from bed at such an early hour. “No problem,” was the island attitude.
On the way to his house in his open-air jeep, Alex excitedly laid out his sightseeing plans for us for the next two weeks. “We must see Tres Cascades, the blow hole, and the Black Pearl Museum, and for sure Vaima.”
We would also fly to the island of Raiatea to visit his friends, descendants of Tahitian royalty. As soon as we arrived at Alex’s house, we bade him goodnight -- “Ta-o-to ma-i-ta-i” -- and stumbled onto bed, a mattress on the floor covered in brightly patterned cloth and topped with a thin cotton sheet.
Later that morning, after some long-desired sleep, Mark and I awoke to a magnificent day: 80 degrees, bright, hot, and breezy. Several colorful plants and trees filled Alex’s front yard. Mark climbed up an avocado tree, tossing down ripe fruits to me that were the size of footballs! Alex fixed us a pitcher of juice squeezed from two grapefruit the size of volley balls!
It was immediately clear that Tahiti is paradise to all senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste.
The food! Breakfast that first morning consisted of crescents with guava jelly, freshly caught parrot fish, of course the long, thin French baguettes, and bowls of strong tasty coffee with cream and sugar.
A birthday feast for Alex’s aunt that night featured all kinds of exotic dishes. There was a fruit salad of pineapples, mangos, papaya, guavas, lychees, bananas, and coconut with a dash of vanilla. We gorged ourselves on the famous “Poisson cru:” On a bed of rice, fresh raw tuna with sliced onion, marinated in lime and coconut juice, so succulent I can still taste it!
Every day held a new set of adventures. On the north side of the island, we visited Tres Cascades, a series of tall, dramatic waterfalls with a backdrop of lush volcanic peaks covered in ferns. Later, Alex took us to the site of an ancient marae, sacred ground bordered by rocks once used for religious ceremonies. Alex warned us that it is “tabu” to set foot on the maraes. You never knew what the gods might do if you angered them. And you did not want to find out.
Scattered along the island’s circumference are several caves -- silent black pools in deep grottos where Alex took us swimming, a cool alternative to the sun-drenched black and white sand beaches fringing the turquoise ocean. On the south side of Tahiti is Vaima, a sacred lagoon where water gushes up from the heart of the island, pure enough to drink right there, at the source. When we swam there and drank the water, I thought, “This is the Fountain of Youth!”
While visiting Raiatea, Jean Yves and his brother, Tiria, took Mark and me on a hike up Mt. Temehani, the one place on Earth where tiare apehati, the five-fingered lily, grows. This velvety white flower is considered sacred, which made our hike a spiritual pilgrimage. Once we reached the top, we all sensed the forceful energy surrounding this volcanic peak as upon our arrival, the weather shifted immediately from hot and sunny to cloudy and dark, with a fierce wind. Then, as we began our retreat down the mountain, it flipped back to hot and sunny. And yes, we were fortunate to find several bushes adorned with the legendary five-fingered lily.
We arrived back at Jean Yves’s house on the beach at dusk. But our romantic excursion was far from over. As the sunset spread like mango jam across the sky, Tiria took Mark and me out in the motorboat and dropped us off at a motu -- a tiny, uninhabited island. Mark and I spent the night there in our tent, safe from the mosquitos and a steady night of rain.
We awoke to a glorious morning, finding ourselves truly deserted on a white sand island with nothing but coconut trees, broken seashells and skittering hermit crabs. We snorkeled around the entire island, encountering clown fish, angel fish, anemones, sea urchins and a moray eel along the way. Then we lay out in the sun under the coconut palms. The moment we started to miss the company of our friends, we spotted the motorboat with Tiria at the helm, coming to fetch us.
Our Tahitian friends took us into their homes and hearts. They are people who love to eat, drink, celebrate and share their “barefoot Paradise.” I look forward to visiting them again, at least once more before I die.