From the garden of Eden:
For two weeks Marta and I were in Tahiti and two other islands in the society archipelago of French Polynesia.
Imagine halve of the globe is the Pacific Ocean and we are on a small island in the middle of that vastness.
We visited a pineapple plantation. Near the plantation we hiked into the Tahitian jungle. A confusion of trees: breadfruit, ironwood, coconut, hibiscus, guava, pandanus and giant ferns. It is a mad vegetation growing ever wilder and more entangled, it becomes almost impenetrable if you get off the trail. The strange thing is except birds there are no animals, only a few lizards we saw.
We hired a captain of a catamaran to take us to Cook’s bay with those incredible rugged dead volcano mountains in the background.
We had our first snorkel experience here and were amazed at the marine life near the atoll where the coral reef separates the open ocean from the lagoon. The stingrays and blacktip sharks come right up to you in the shallow cristal clear turquoise water. Humpback whales that are now coming back from Antarctica can be seen in the open water further out jumping high out from the water surface. It is an amazing spectacle to behold.
At night we’re lullabied to sleep by the gentle lapping of the lagoon waves next to our beach bungalow. Then there is the constant roaring of the ocean breakers crashing on the reef further out. The sunsets are something else, incredible!
The Polynesians are beautiful people. Always laughing, singing and dancing. They love to be photographed.
Here, I read Paul Gauguin’s book “Noa Noa”, about his journey to Tahiti, where he later lived in extasy.