THE BRANDO
Film buffffs will know that in the early 1960s, Marlon Brando visited French Polynesia to star in Mutiny on the Bounty. The brooding actor became enamoured not only of his 19-year- old co-star, Tarita Teriipaia (who became his third wife), but also of the languorous pace of Polynesian life. Much of his time in the archipelago was spent on an atoll, called Tetiaroa, about 50 kilometres north of Tahiti. Brando fifirst visited while scouting for locations and later negotiated to buy the group of 12 low-lying islets for a mere $US270,000. (One story goes that a previous owner, a dentist, had been given the atoll as a reward for curing the king’s toothache.) The actor spent his days on Tetiaroa living a real-life deserted-island fantasy, talking on his ham radio and propping up the bar. Before he died in 2004, Brando discussed building a hotel but he was adamant that it would be done with as little impact on the environment as possible.
So it was when The Brando opened in mid-2014. There are no overwater bungalows, the 35 villas instead hunkering down in sand dunes. This has the dual effffect of protecting the privacy of the hotel’s privileged guests (Barack Obama spent a month here in 2017 writing his memoir) as well as ensuring that, from the water, the island looks the same as it did 100 years ago. The hotel kayaks are even fifitted with GPS devices because guests have become disorientated while paddling in the lagoon and struggled to fifind the resort.
Enormous efforts have hotel’beenbeenmadetoreducethehotel’s impact on the environment, including the establishment of the Tetiaroa Society to fund scientifific research.
The 78-hectare resort is made for social media – honeymooning couples ride bikes, luxuriate in private plunge pools and order cocktails at the thatched-roof Bob’s Bar that’s a replica of the one Brando built. The two restaurants are overseen by French chef Guy Martin of the two-Michelin-starred Le Grand Véfour in Paris. Each one-, twoand three-bedroom villa is more like a self-contained holiday home with its own media room and outdoor bath or plunge pool. You’ll most likely have the white-sand beach to yourself, with the only sound being the low rumble of waves breaking on the distant reef.