Day Five
jungle:
1. an area of land overgrown with dense forest and tangled vegetation, typically in the tropics. (Oxford languages)
We ventured into the jungle Saturday, but before we get there I’ll tell you about the previous day.
There are 119 islands in French Polynesia. By the end of this trip, we will have visited four. Yesterday morning we took a tour of Mo’orea, led by a woman named Vivi who drove a surprisingly durable Mitsubishi truck without great shock absorption. I took comfort in the fact that she has driven these dirt roads and hills and, as one of my fellow voyagers pointed out, incredibly tiny mountain ridges, many times before.
We were five passengers: Bryan and me, Richard and Dawn AKA Kit, and Robin-April. Richard is a violinist and composer who has played Carnegie Hall as well as on many movie soundtracks: Moana, Beauty and the Beast, Jurassic Park(s), and so on. Dawn AKA Kit is a recovering actress who just stepped out of retirement to perform in a musical version of Pride and Prejudice in the summer theater of Coeur d’Alene, where they now live. She is also an entrepreneur and the inventor of a foldable Christmas display made of high-quality Italian paper. Robin-April is a translator from Derbyshire, England, who’s lived much of her life in southwest Spain, and who speaks more languages than she modestly let on. She mentioned French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, then kind of waved away the rest of the question. She shares my aversion to extreme heights, and so after we made our way up the incredibly tiny mountain ridge in the Mitsubishi and walked up one hill, where we took in magnificent views, she and I stayed put while the others ascended further. We spoke of the importance of knowing thyself, and thus thy limitations, physical and otherwise. This was on Magic Mountain, which sits on private property. The tour guides pay to use it, and it really does have spectacular views.
As do many of the other places where we stopped with Vivi. There were plenty of picturesque photo ops, and to me the most interesting parts of this excursion were when we learned about the island’s culture. We visited a pineapple plantation, where we saw pineapples, bananas, nuts and avocados in the wild, and Vivi explained how Polynesians use each in cooking and how almost no part of the plant is wasted. She picked a fruit none of us knew – trying to find it, it begins with an “s” — and we each sampled some. She pointed out Mount Mouaputa, which resembles the face of a woman whose age changes depending on where on the island you are. In this photo, she is lying on her back staring up at the sky, her chin on the left, her nose with the little hole just beneath it to the right, then her forehead and her long hair cascading down. This is the “young and beautiful” view of her.
The interior of the island, where the tour took place, is basically the crater of an inactive volcano (or several).
One of the cool things happening on this trip: we are running into the same people as we all tour the islands. A young family from our Tahiti hotel is here in our Mo’orea resort. We chatted with the husband/dad while we were checking in. This is their second time here, their first being their honeymoon in 2020. After their 200+ person wedding in Napa Valley was cancelled, they got their money back and splurged on French Polynesia, where they said they had some of the resorts practically to themselves. Now they return with their very young son and his nanny, who gets her own bungalow. Pretty good nanny gig and the toddler seems like a nice guy. B and I have named the husband/dad The Producer. They live in LA and he wears baggy sweaters and harem pants.
Our first day walking the Mo’orea property we also ran into Romar and Matt, a realtor couple from Livermore, California who sat behind us on the plane ride over. Remember how I said that our flight attendant took a vested interest in all of us? Romar was surprised when I addressed him by name (having only seen the back of my seat, he did not recognize me). I didn’t add that I hoped that Matt’s birthday trip was going well, that would have been too much. Very nice guys who we then ran into taking a different but similar tour – and finally again in the spa area of the resort, where Romar said, “Quit following me!” I think he was joking.
Romar and Matt, and Richard and Dawn/Kit, are all leaving today on the Paul Gaugin, which tours various among the 119 French Polynesian islands. Robin-April is taking a different ship today to the Marquesas Islands, which sounds amazing. I didn’t catch the name of her ship. She Was A Soft-Spoken Woman: The Robin-April Story.
After the tour, which concluded with a trip to a distillery where they make wine and liquor and fresh juices from the plantation’s bounty, we returned to the resort, had lunch, and spent the afternoon lounging and snorkeling, snorkeling and lounging until … Part II of Adventures with Strangers.
Bryan is a planner. This is good as I like to have plans, but also at times I like to NOT have plans. However … he had gotten us reservations to something called Tiki Village, which is clear across the island. It is a traditional Polynesian dinner with a show both before and after. Before was all about the food, its preparation, the meaning behind it, its history and about thirty awkward minutes of a young, very fit man demonstrating different ways to tie a pareo. Or, as we said last night, a guy wrapping a souvenir scarf (it had the names of the islands on it) around his loin cloth for half an hour.
When finally we sat for dinner we were seated with Ivana and Jay, who live in Orange County, and Isabella and Marc, young honeymooners from Cologne, Germany. It was a fun table, everyone was very nice, and Ivana and I somehow got to talking about intuition, getting messages from the ether, and ghosts. She told me that the next time I’m in LA she will take me to The Hotel Bar, which is quite haunted. I’m in.
Last night brought an absolute deluge that continued until we got back. It rained so much that Jay of Ivana-and offered to drive our German friends back to their Air BnB rather than sending them off on the mopeds on which they’d arrived. After dinner there was a show, dancing, singing, and fire eating/throwing/twirling, about the history of these islands. What we’d learned earlier from Vivi is that the first settlers here came from South America.
Whenever we experience something amusing here, Bryan says, “You have to put that in your book.” So it seems that my protagonist, Josie, has a trip to French Polynesia in her future. If this means I have to return here for research, so be it.
Two observations: the women here wear flowers in their hair and everyone riding a moped/motorcycle/motorized bike type thing wears a helmet.
What was so remarkable about yesterday was that we met people with whom we connected on certain levels – some more than others – and that there was a sense of shared experience with strangers that I’ve never before encountered on vacation. Perhaps part of this is that we are all SO far away from home – this is a destination with purpose.
Today we rented a car and made our way to Tiki Park where we hiked part of the Ancestral Trail. This is a beautiful walk through the dense rain forest, and a few minutes in, you come upon a 500-year-old ceremonial platform (below) that was once used for council meetings and rituals. You can feel the weight of history here, the spirit of the ancestors of the people we are meeting, and it is profoundly beautiful.
Bryan and I love to travel, obviously, and part of what we love is learning about and honoring the past and present of the cultures we are visiting. I can’t imagine traveling without curiosity, though certainly people do. Throughout our hike we were trailed by roosters and chickens calling to one another – there was something weirdly comforting about this. I was unaware of the preponderance of wild roosters and hens on this island; they are everywhere. And quite vocal.
We had lunch at Snack Mahana, which Bryan had read about. This place has no interior – it’s basically a roof on the beach. When we got there it was full and there are only three tables right on the water; after a short wait we were seated at one of them. We had a great lunch, and there were a couple of lazy, well-fed dogs making the rounds. Lots and lots of dogs roaming this island, and it’s hard to tell which ones belong to people and which belong to the streets – they all seem to hang out together.
Speaking of the streets, the main road that circumnavigates this island is 37 miles long and has not one traffic light.
During lunch we watched a large school of these black-and-white striped fish doing their thing. There was a sudden commotion, though the fish stayed in the area, and then a decent-sized black-tip shark swam by.
Tomorrow we are going on a whale-watching adventure during which we will have a chance to snorkel with sea turtles, rays, and the aforementioned black-tip sharks. They are apparently not all that interested in humans. I would prefer that they were 100% disinterested in humans, but as with the Mitsubishi ride up the tiniest ridge known to man, I take comfort in the fact that the people leading our excursion do this all the time.
I keep forgetting to tell you that we had a lizard in our room the second night in Tahiti.
I relish the fact that while we are experiencing this little bit of French Polynesia, I am writing about it and Bryan is taking his gorgeous, sometimes abstract photos.
We are sitting on the deck and he just said, “This has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.” Indeed it is.
firstsweetpang 