Any trip to French Polynesia begins on the island of Tahiti, a transit stop for us and apparently the rest of the world treats it that way too. It was a place for us to adjust to the new time zone before really starting the travel. But we decided to hire a tour guide and see a big of the island anyway on our day there.
The guide was so full of stories that we began to wonder if they were all true although they sounded plausible enough. But taken together. . .
Michael was born in Tahiti but moved to England as a young child, worked as a cop for 25 years, married (again) to a Tahitian woman and moved back here. He told us about his bout with dengue fever that almost killed him because it causes you to bleed out; the many battles between the natives and various Europeans explorers and clergy which sometimes ended in the victims begin eaten by victorious natives. “Not because they were hungry but because it was a way of claiming conquest over the defeated”.
Then there was the Mutiny on the Bounty, a story which occurred in these waters and was later filmed here. Robert Louis Stevenson lived in Tahiti and his stories are infused with the place as well.
Driving around there are churches and then more churches, built by the French mostly. Handsome buildings with narrow arched windows along the sides and steeples.
Cannibalism was outlawed, but not until 1978. There were stories of woman wanting to increase the gene pool of the island and seducing sailors, then extracting payment in nails and other commodities which whose utility was recognized. If the babies were too white, though, they were smothered.
What really impressed me about the island was that the central mountains loomed over everything else. The road around the perimeter was lined with houses and stores and some cities and small towns, but when you glanced towards the interior, the mountains, covered in greenery loomed in natural splendor, their rounded peaks ringed by clouds. They lent a mysterious aura to the more mundane life occurring at sea level. The other feature that impressed me were the beaches — so many places where the ocean was accessible, right by the road.
