It’s a local thing to descend on the hotel
for Sunday breakfast, so the terrace restaurant was busy with family groups and
little kids feeding bread to the fat goldfish in the pond. A ukulele/guitar
trio serenaded us from the landing as we ate our crèpes and croissants – very
French Polynesia. Not to be picky, but you can, I find, have enough of the
ukulele after a while. It’s not what you would call a subtle instrument.
At the shopping centre beside the hotel
there was a small market in progress, car-boot style, where you could buy a
parsley plant, a pearl bracelet or a puppy; and next to it the SuperU
supermarket with tempting French goodies like Roquefort and pork rillettes, and
also NZ Tip Top icecream in 4.5 litre buckets which we never see. Probably just
as well.
We took a round-island VIP Tour with Dave in
the afternoon, which filled five hours very nicely. Dave is Hawaiian, but has
lived here for 27 years and is an excellent guide, very knowledgeable about
history, geology and culture, and also pleasant company, happy to chat about
anything. Following the narrow ring road around the coast, we passed black sand
beaches, narrow valleys giving glimpses up into the mountainous interior, along
cliffs and through farmland and plantations; and stopped at a number of points of interest, like the cool and dripping grotto where everyone, naturally, ignored the bossy sign.
The marae we visited first had some creepy
stories about human sacrifice – not just the ritual eating of slaughtered
enemies, but of members of the tribe too: like the man honoured with climbing
into a hole to hold the foundation stone in place while the walls are built
around it – and then buried alive in there. Though the gardens around are green
and lush, the stones are black basalt, the stumpy statues have grim expressions
and it’s not a place to linger.
The gardens further along are, though, full
of bright, fragrant, exotic flowers and fruits, growing luxuriantly but neatly
kept: gingers, heliconia, lotus flowers and many more. Besides the shady grotto we also visited a feathery waterfall, but the best watery
performance was at the blow-holes, where a loud sudden roar accompanied each powerful
spray of water from a tube beside the path: very startling, and good fun.
Finally, we stopped at a point beside a
lighthouse built of milled coral blocks, and visited the memorials of Capt.
Cook – who viewed the transit of Venus from here in 1769 - and the Bounty,
which linked with our visits to Nantucket and Townsville, as well as my
stopping, as a 3 year-old en route by ship to England, at Pitcairn Island. Connections, people!
The day ended with a delicious dinner at
the rather sumptuous Intercontinental Hotel’s Lotus restaurant, built over the
water where lights shone down on the hopeful fish continuously circling in vain
as I polished off every morsel of my scallop risotto and chocolate dessert. It
was a very fine way to finish our week in Tahiti: classic French Polynesia,
showcasing the best of both elements.
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