Whenever the subject of travel comes up in conversation, I always say that Moorea is my favorite place I’ve been. If you don’t know where it is, let me help you a bit. First, I will say Tahiti, then Bora Bora. Moorea (mo-o-ray-ah) is the third of the larger islands in French Polynesia.
I only ended up there by accident. When I moved back to Seattle from San Francisco, I promised psycho-ex that I would go to Tahiti with her in the fall. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t quitting on us, just life in the Bay area.
I didn’t really have the money to go to the islands. I was unemployed at the time. Funny how that always seems to work. You have all the time in the world to travel, but no money. Damn that working for a living thing.
But, that’s what 401(k)s are for when you are young and in love. I cashed in my chips and booked passage to French Polynesia. We were going to stay at Club Med on Moorea, which is about a 10 minute flight from Tahiti. It’s where the Mutiny on the Bounty was filmed, both of them.
The flight to Tahiti is long, raeal long, about 8 1/2 hours to be exact. But I felt a lot sorrier for the people on our flight who were coming from Paris via New York and Los Angeles, our jumping on point.
I must say, Moorea is gorgeous. The mountains rise right out of the turquoise sea. There’s not a lick of America there. A large portion of the population speaks English, but Tahitian is the preferred language followed by French.
I always like to tell the story of a typical morning in Moorea. The bread man makes his deliver of baguettes every day. As you drive down the street, the fresh bread sticks out of the mailboxes. I could get used to that, being a bread-ho.
The resort itself was lovely, right out of a postcard. They would even make you a picnic lunch of meats, bread, cheeses, dessert and wine that you could take over to the little island across the way. That was one of the best days I’ve ever had. We snorkeled in shallow water bursting with sea life, stuff you usually only see in deeper waters. It was like spending the day in an aquarium.
I did learn my first valuable lesson about life there, too. Never bring the picnic back to your room. We had some leftovers so I dropped it on the bed as we went out to enjoy the resort. When I came back, I opened the box. Out poured perhaps 100 cockroaches – about four inches in size, tannish brown and totally freaked out. It was like a scene right out of Joe’s Apartment.
My little home away from home in Moorea.
They scampered away into the cracks and the crevices. It still didn’t occur to me to get the box out of the room. I simply put it next to the trash can in the bathroom. That night, I had to use the boy’s room. As I flicked on the light, a party was now in full force in the shower stall, my little bug friends inviting a couple hundred more. I returned in a flash, flip flop in hand, and started dispatching the buggers with zeal. The shower stall looked like the final scene of Psycho.
If that turns you off from traveling to French Polynesia, don’t let it. That was all my doing. They had warned us and I did not take heed. And once the food was gone, the cockroaches never returned. As I said, lesson learned.
I also learned what a small world it was. One day we rented a car and drove around the island. We ended up at the top of Mt. Belvedere. It was there I had my “it’s a small world after all” moment. As I was taking photos, someone from across the way says, “Robb?” It was Janice Gaub, a one-time account exec at the agency I had worked at in Seattle. We never ran into each other in back home, but there she was halfway across the world, at the same place, at the same moment in time. It always amazes me.
During our little drive around the island, I also met up with two little Polynesian children. They could only speak French, but I understood the word “foto”. I thought they wanted me to take their picture, but I was wrong. They wanted to take mine. So I handed them my camera. I had a motor drive on it and by the time I could get the camera out of their hands, they had racked off about 15 shots of my blurry feet, the sky, the church we were parked next to and one of me just barely ducking into the shot. Too cute. But it would have been even cuter if they had digital photos back then. I hadn’t brought that much film with me.
I have to say that the highpoint of the trip had to be dinner time. The Club Med in Moorea was the playground of the Japanese and the Tasmanians and New Zealanders. We fell in with a group of Tasmanians one night and I don’t think I’ve ever found a group since that could party harder and longer. Crazy bastards. All night they would patiently wait for other diners to finish their meals, then spirit off with the wine on their tables. That’s how I first came to notice them. They were true pirates, finally stacking up about 16 bottles of wine at their table of 8. We made added six more that I had made off with. That led to an incredible night of laughter and stories that I will never forget.
Whenever someone asks me where to go for vacation, I never tell them Hawaii. It’s just too Americanized (I suppose with good reason). As I say, it’s the states with palm trees. There’s a McDonalds on every corner. For an extra three hours on a plane, you can visit the real Pacific islands, where there is no America, just exotic ports of call, beautiful women, fresh seafood and cultural delights untold.
I would go back in a moment. In Florida, I may be in what many people consider paradise, but I’ve been to the real deal. And believe me, it’s well worth the trip.
Out on the Treasure Coast, plotting my next escape to French Polynesia,
– Robb