The South Seas
Getting There is Half the Fun—Or Is It?
The island of Tahiti in French Polynesia seems a million miles from nowhere, especially when you live on the east coast. But I met my friend Jean successfully in LA, and we hopped an Air Tahiti Nui airbus for the 3,844-mile flight to Papeete, Tahiti in the South Pacific Ocean.
Arriving at the airport in the middle of the night, dragging our baggage through customs and searching for the person who would transport us to the downtown hotel that was to be our home for the next two days was more than a little tiring—especially when almost everything was presented in the French language. But finally Jean and I arrived at Le Mandarin and were ready for a good night’s rest. That wasn’t to be, I soon found out.
An unforeseen problem surfaced as soon as we got to our room. The telephone was already ringing. When I picked up the phone, I could hardly understand the caller. He spoke my name and proceeded to tell me something in rapid-fire French.
“Lentement, lentement—slowly,” I said, summoning up a useful word from my long-unused high school French.
I finally understood the caller was a policeman. He was calling from the Papeete Airport Security Office to inform me that he had my airline tickets home. Some kind soul had just turned them in. This was impossible. I had never lost anything on a trip, I told him. But one look in my zippered “important papers” purse pocket, and I knew he was right! Thank God someone was honest, I thought and said I’d be there first thing in the morning.
At 3 a.m. the crowing of the infamous roosters of Papeete announced daybreak. By morning, Jean and I were all too ready to get moving to retrieve my tickets.
Prices are very expensive in French Polynesia, and I had already resigned myself to a $50 trip when I called for a taxi back to the airport. The driver, a Polynesian well-spoken in both English and French, turned out to be a godsend. His name was Allen Parker and he turned my mishap from “a lemon into lemonade.”
Americans we had just met in the lobby had shoveled out $40 apiece for a three-hour tour of Tahiti. On a whim I asked Allen how much he would charge to take us to the airport, help me find the security office to retrieve my airline tickets, and then take us for a grand tour of the island. He quoted a total price just $10 more apiece for Jean and me than each of the Americans had paid. It was a deal. Thus began an eight-hour adventure--a private introduction into the culture, history, and hotspots of the island of Tahiti—and much much more.
Allen took a liking to us, maybe because I was practicing my broken French at every opportunity. He threw in a whirlwind visit 20 kilometers out of Papeete to his family snack bar. There he introduced us to his sister, bought lunch for us though we protested, and picked up his 12-year-old niece, Amalie. She joined us on our whirlwind “see everything, go everywhere” tourist treasure hunt.
First, we visited all the spots that were fit to see on the big island! Then he decided to take us on a special detour to show us where he had lived as a boy and his “sections” of land. He raced the taxi across the narrow causeway connecting Tahiti to the smaller island of Tahiti Nui.
There we careened over gravel roads--but slowed down enough to enjoy the beautiful seacoast scenery of this rural non-tourist island. Sharing stories of his family and pointing out his many brothers’ and sisters’ modest homes, gardens, boats, tractors and fields, along the way Allen also revealed fascinating details of his family geneaology and finances. As he chatted, I was positive he wasn’t paying attention to the wheel and we’d be marooned in water when he raced the van across a shallow river. But on we went.
Finally, we reached his goal—a family farm. There we halted alongside a sweet potato field to say hello to his nephews who were washing yams and bundling them into burlap bags for sale to a market.
By day’s end, Jean and I were exhausted but much more knowledgeable about Tahiti! However, Allen was still going strong. He even offered to drop us off at a beach to swim and pick us up— all for free-- after our Aranui trip was completed. I’m still sorry we couldn’t take him up on the offer.
This was just the first day of our journey to paradise. We had had a fascinating introduction to the friendliness of the Polynesian people. It was an auspicious beginning to what we hoped would follow.
[Go to South Seas Part Three]
