Tahiti

a warm welcome

As we move deeper into the Pacific the islands are getting smaller and are at the fringe of the tourism belt, but no less engaging. Tahiti is well known around the world but is still a small community that has held its culture strongly. It is also home to some amazing upmarket seaside resorts.

The welcome we received upon arrival was the strongest and warmest of any country so far. I believe it to be genuine as many passengers were offered to have dinner with the locals in their homes if they wished. A few took this up and were treated as long lost family.

Papeete is a small coastal town focussed mainly on its own daily needs. There are many neighbouring islands serviced by ferries so moving inter-island is not difficult. 

There is a Gauguin Museum on the main Island that I was excited to visit. In Barcelona, I was able to visit the home of Picasso and see original works not generally displayed so I was expecting similar here. I was a bit disappointed as the museum held only poor quality copies of the artists work and was not the home of Gauguin. You could capture a bit of a life timeline if you worked hard but the core reason for this gallery escaped me, and it is heralded as an important tourist attraction on the island. The Black Pearl museum was far more engaging and gave an interactive history of pearling, grading and crafting of pearls.

These silly machines will kill us!

After all of this tourist flurry, a quick walk around and the beaches and resorts is the only thing left to do. We chose a more adventurous way to see the islands and hired a two seater go-kart for the day from Europecar. We jumped the car ferry to the Island of Moorea and drove around all day skipping from beach to beach, resort to resort.  Only the Intercontinental Resort security guards were concerned at our noisy, down-market transport and would not let us in.

Tahiti is a smallish place of some 800 square kilometres. It makes up over 25% of Polynesia and holds 70% of the French Polynesia population of 120,000. Papeete is the capital. 

A good beer, a good woman and excellent food

Interestingly, this area of the Pacific Ocean is called the “Polynesian Triangle” and includes Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. As a result of various migrations, the native Hawaiians and the Maoris of New Zealand all originate from common ancestors and speak a similar language collectively known as Maohi.

Captain Cook visited in 1769 for a bit of celestial viewing and a few other European seafarers also stopped by. The mutineers from the HMS Bounty made this island a bit more famous as well. It was the French who eventually won over the local royalty and led to Tahiti becoming French Polynesia.

A sad byline to this European interest was the devastation and disruption to local culture that followed. Guns, prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol caused the traditional tribal society to rapidly fall into disarray. Introduced diseases including typhus, influenza and smallpox almost wiped out the entire Tahitian population.  

Why Tahiti is worth visiting, the view over lunch on Moorea

In 1880 King Pomare gave Tahiti and most of its dependencies to France. In 1957, the islands of Tahiti became French Polynesia. In 1998, French Polynesia became a country with greater self-governing powers.