The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The idyllic islands on the brink of stardom
The Olympics will soon be putting Tahiti in the global spotlight, so visit this glorious destination and its neighbours before the rest of the world beats you to it, says Anna Selby
French Polynesia is big. In fact, rather as Douglas Adams said about space, it’s really big. To get this message across, Air Tahiti, the national carrier, superimposes its route plan on a map of Europe – and it stretches from the Med to Scandinavia, from Cornwall to the Black Sea. It’s a territory, of course, that consists mostly of water, some two million square miles of the world’s largest, deepest ocean.
It is French Polynesia’s waters that will be bringing this usually forgotten corner of the world to the forefront of the international press next year when it is the only overseas French territory (France d’outre-mer) that will be hosting part of the Olympics. And the Games are coming to Tahiti for just one reason. The Wave.
Teahupoo is a small, sleepy village on the quiet side of the island. Among surfers, though, it is legendary. They have been coming here for years to try to get through the massive tunnel of water that is created at that magical moment when ocean crashes onto reef. According to Pascal Luciani, organising the Games in Tahiti: “It’s unique. It can be just two or three metres high though it can get much bigger, even 17 metres [55ft] – but that’s much too dangerous [to surf]. You have to manage your wave, get inside and negotiate your flow through and out. That’s what the judges will be looking for.”
You might say this marks surfing coming home – the Tahitians claim to have invented it (though so do the Hawaiians). It is inarguable, though, that it must be one of the fastest events in the Olympics – from start to finish, it takes less than 10 seconds. So the judges, camped out on the reef, will have to be eagle-eyed to rate the competitors’ technique. They’re not expecting too many spectators, and those who are there will mostly have to make do with a big screen on the beach – you can’t see much from the shore as you’re too far from the wave.
The surfing coverage on television, though, is sure to get plenty of viewers because, even if surfing itself is a relatively small sport and one that’s new to the Olympics, the place where it’s happening is utterly captivating. French Polynesia has a rather special magic – the very name conjures blue lagoons, black pearls, the scent of frangipani and Gauguin paintings. The surfers who come here often compare it to the Garden of Eden. Many locals, though, will tell you, entre nous, that you’ll find even more unspoilt paradise a little further afield.
The main island of Tahiti, the biggest and most populated of the Society Islands, is a pretty busy place and its capital, Papeete, is one of the few real cities among the South Pacific island nations. (Its market, incidentally, is the best place in the entire region to buy those black pearls.) These days, most visitors to French Polynesia head out after a day or two to the dramatic volcanic islands of Moorea and Bora Bora. Not only are they breathtakingly beautiful, but there’s a huge choice of five-star hotels with a castaway feel – and the added comforts of excellent service, French cuisine and gorgeous thatched villas built out over blue lagoons. Not surprisingly, this is a honeymoon hotspot.
Further afield there are fewer visitors on the vast atolls of the Tuamotus, islands that consist almost entirely of lagoon – Rangiroa, Manihi and Mataiva – made for snorkelling and every kind of watersport you can think of. And then there are the Marquesas Islands, renowned for their lushness, where fruit falls into your hands from the trees, a picture of fecundity, the very definition of that original garden.
The Marquesas have for a long time been quite difficult to get to. In the past, most people visited by boat – long-haul yachties or passengers on the local Aranui or Paul Gauguin cruise ships. Remote, unspoilt and empty, their relative inaccessibility has, of course, added to their allure. Now, though, Air Tahiti has increased its services and two of the islands, Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva, are slightly more within reach, albeit an almost four-hour flight from Papeete.
And almost a world away. There are few roads, virtually no traffic and fewer than 3,000 people on each of the two principal islands. And people here want to keep it this way. Rumours abound of a new international airport being built here and I couldn’t find a single Marquesan who was anything but implacably opposed to the idea. “We don’t want to be another Bora Bora,” said Heimata on Hiva Oa. “We have everything we need here. Marquesans visit Tahiti and can’t believe it when they have to pay for a grapefruit.” Here, they grow wild and super-sweet (no sugar required) alongside pawpaw, breadfruit, limes, mango and, out in the sea, lobster and tuna. Inland there are wild boar. “You don’t need money to live well here,” he continues, “just a bit of courage.”
Fortunately, my hunting skills weren’t required at the Hanakee Pearl Lodge, where I feasted on ika mata (tuna marinated in lime juice and coconut cream) overlooking the perfect horseshoe-shaped harbour of Traitors Bay. This is a mountainous island covered in forest and luxuriant gardens filled with dizzying scents. In the “capital village” of Atuona is a Gauguin museum and, more surprisingly, a Jacques Brel “shed” that houses Jojo, the Belgian singer’s prop plane. Both Brel and Gauguin are buried in Atuona’s tiny graveyard.
Nuku Hiva is even more dramatic – a landscape of mountain ranges and roads that consist almost entirely of hairpin bends. These are not the only driving hazard. The island is full of animals: pigs stroll along the roadside, chickens (never eaten due to their toughness) and goats run wild, and there are horses everywhere, hundreds of them feeding on the lush island grass.
Sudden jagged peaks over 1,200m appear and cliffs plunge into blue caldera bays with black volcanic sand. There are vast maraes (meeting places and sacred sites) hidden in the forest, tiki gods carved out of volcanic rock, ancient banyan trees, wild hibiscus and hillsides of stately tree ferns. Nature here is wild, rugged, untouched. Turtles float at the water’s edge and white tropicbirds, tails as long as their bodies, glide through the air.
Given the remoteness of the Marquesas, there have been few visitors over the centuries, though disembarking from our Air Tahiti prop plane, we are certainly not the first.
Herman Melville was briefly acclaimed a god here and Robert Louis Stevenson passed through on his way to Samoa. The islands are as untouched now as they were then and still a well-kept secret. When the world’s eyes turn this way next year, their secret will be out. This is surely the moment to go – but then again, who needs an excuse to visit paradise?