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Tahiti has loads of motion past the seaside, as Lucy Gillmore found.
ft;margin-right:6px;”>By Lucy Gillmore.
Hilton resort, Moorea
‘Bora is boring.” With a Gallic shrug, Thibault, the supervisor of the stylish new gourmand restaurant on Moorea, Le Coco’s, dismissed the island that has been attractive honeymooners to its reef-wrapped sands because the first resort was inbuilt 1961.
Bora Bora, a byword for a Backyard of Eden tropical paradise, has model in spades, however no substance, apparently. Inside its ring of coral reef-fringed resorts time appears to have a dream-like high quality as guests gaze soulfully into one another’s eyes, wander throughout silken sand, paddle a turquoise sea – and never a lot else, or a minimum of that was the gist.
Not that I’d know. I used to be bypassing Bora Bora’s romantic torpor for an adventure-packed, culture-laced journey to a few different French Polynesian islands: Moorea, Taha’a and that different bucket-list fantasy, Tahiti. French Polynesia’s 118 islands are sprinkled like confetti throughout an space the scale of Europe – 5.5 million sq. kilometres of ocean – and clustered into 5 archipelagos: the Society, Tuamotu, Gambier, Marquesas and Austral islands.
Tahiti, Moorea and Taha’a are a part of the 14-strong Society archipelago, named by Captain Cook dinner within the 18th century. Now, as then, they tick all the normal paradise bins: palm timber, white sand, turquoise water, Discovering Nemo on a loop beneath the floor. After crossing half the globe somewhat extra swiftly than Cook dinner, I used to be greeted at Tahiti airport with a garland of intoxicatingly heady tiare flowers. That is the place that seduced the likes of Paul Gauguin and, extra just lately, the late Marlon Brando, who purchased an atoll, Tetiaroa, after filming Mutiny on the Bounty there within the Nineteen Sixties. Final yr, it opened to friends as The Brando resort.
Tahiti itself, nevertheless, is usually simply the jumping-off level for misty-eyed honeymooners. However, those that bypass it are lacking a trick. The rugged, volcanic inside is straight out of Jurassic Park. You may climb to the highest of Fautau’a waterfall, cascading 135 metres by way of a collection of basins, or scale Mount Aora’I, a full-day trek round eight hours – or two days in the event you mattress down within the mountain shelter.
I began gently, with a half-day hike by way of the verdant Orofero Valley. My information, Herve Maraetaata, was armed with a machete, a bandana on his head, his physique coated with intricate tattoos – the story of his life etched throughout his pores and skin.
Tattoos have been banned in 1819, together with dancing, music and the worship of Polynesian gods – these missionaries and settlers have been a liberal bunch – nevertheless, lots of the conventional customs have since been revived.
Together with his machete, Herve minimize strolling sticks to assist me ford rivers as we tramped and slithered by way of this remoted valley, the slopes a tangle of thick vegetation, waterfalls rippling by way of the greenery. Hacking at sugar cane stalks for me to suck, he identified espresso bushes, as soon as farmed right here, in addition to tomatoes, oranges, pineapples and chillis, earlier than digging up a ginger root for me to style. In case you received misplaced right here you would simply survive on fruit – though you is likely to be attacked by wild boar, whose tracks Herve identified within the earth.
Mountain climbing within the forest
As I scrabbled by way of the undergrowth he wove tales about his ancestors – the primary settlers who arrived right here from South-east Asia in giant canoes, his grandmother who might diagnose and deal with illness utilizing nature’s pharmacy.
He identified the enormous roots of a Tree of Life (the banyan tree, or tumu ora in Tahitian) amongst which mummified our bodies have been as soon as buried, and the kava plant, the roots of which, when chewed and combined with saliva, produces a drink with a hallucinogenic impact that was as soon as utilized in conventional rites. It is a Tahiti, not seen by the cruise ships docking within the capital, Papeete. They arrive for a whistlestop tour of the island’s colonial heritage and a grass-skirted, cocktail-laced present, ticking off the house of Mutiny on the Bounty creator, James Norman Corridor, earlier than crusing on.
Corridor’s low slung, inexperienced picket home simply exterior Papeete, is price a detour, nevertheless. Tahiti forged its spell over Corridor, who, arriving right here within the Twenties to write down journey articles, fell in love with, and married a Tahitian girl. They went on to have three youngsters, one in all whom was Conrad Corridor, the cinematographer who gained Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child, American Magnificence and Highway to Perdition and was nominated for six extra. Each males are buried on the hillside behind the home looking in direction of Level Venus and Matavai Bay, the place Captain Cook dinner noticed the Transit of Venus in 1769 and the Bounty memorial marks the place the place Captain Bligh dropped anchor in 1788.
Subsequent cease was Moorea, a wind-whipped catamaran trip from Tahiti. Its jagged, mountainous inside delivers one other journey playground, with thundering waterfalls and cliffs to clamber. The island is much less developed than Tahiti and residential to simply 18,000 folks; a single highway skirts its coast. I used to be staying on the Hilton Moorea, a string of thatched over-water bungalows spidering out over the lagoon, blacktip sharks circling every evening beneath the walkways attracted by the lights of the resort. Fortunately, they skulk again past the reef in the course of the day, leaving me to snorkel within the lagoon with a Disney-style array of tropical fish, strive stand-up paddle-boarding, and helmet diving – strolling alongside the ocean mattress amongst sting rays.
Again up on dry land, I made a beeline for Le Coco’s. The island’s first restaurant when it opened 30 years in the past, it’s now an area legend. In spring this yr, the outpost on Moorea was launched, glossy and stone-clad and dishing up house owners’ Thiery and Benedict Sauvage’s tackle bistronomie – bistro model however with gastronomic flavours – and overseen by Thibault, the Frenchman with a low opinion of Bora Bora, however a excessive opinion of vanilla from Taha’a.
He recalled that when working on the Mandarin Oriental in Paris, he was as soon as requested to make a pannacotta. The kitchen had Madagascan, Tahitian and Taha’an vanilla. He inhaled the scent from every earlier than selecting – and utilizing all of – the vanilla from Taha’a. The pinnacle chef nearly fainted – it’s the costliest on this planet, costing round €300 (£220) per kilo.
From Moorea, it’s a fast flight to Raiatea, 210km from Tahiti, after which a brief boat journey throughout to Taha’a or “vanilla island” – a mere three kilometres away and the island with which it shares a lagoon. My base was Le Taha’a resort, on a tiny motu (islet). Arriving because the solar set, I sped in direction of an offended purple sky, Bora Bora looming jagged and black on the horizon.
Le Taha’a is the one five-star resort exterior Bora Bora aside from The Brando. It’s very completely different in model, nevertheless, from Bora Bora’s honeymoon havens. It’s a wild, somewhat than polished, Polynesian resort.
I needed to get a style of the island’s prized produce and headed off to a vanilla plantation. There are simply 6,000 folks on Taha’a and 500 vanilla farms. The vanilla right here has 14 notes – the strongest aroma is aniseed – as a result of it’s allowed to dry naturally for as much as two weeks earlier than being unfold within the solar for a few hours after which in a sauna-style field to sweat. In contrast, vanilla from Madagascar has simply 9 notes.
The vanilla farm is extra of a country smallholding, the vanilla laid out to dry on tables in a shed in a clearing surrounded by dense vegetation and different crops comparable to grapefruit and bananas. Dealing with the lengthy black pods I might odor the heady sweetness. “It’s the second costliest spice on this planet after saffron,” mentioned my information as I handed over 3,500 Polynesian Francs (round £20) for a mere 100g. “Put a pod in an hermetic container with somewhat rum or vodka within the backside” was his parting tip.
Taha’s different declare to fame is black pearls. On the farm I visited, I used to be given a masterclass in cultured pearls (a small piece of grit or shell is positioned in a black lip oyster to type the nucleus, then the oyster secretes nacre on the irritant, making a lustrous pearl).
Leaping again on the boat, with a bag of vanilla pods and pearls, I motored dwelling to my wild, thatched resort and a day of beachcombing, snorkelling within the tepid turquoise water and lazing beneath a palm tree – something however boring.
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