A Few Days in Tahiti

Tahiti

My stay in Tahiti was brief but memorable. Ten hours time difference from england – almost the other side of the world - and it really felt like it. On the Air Tahiti plane the first thing they did was give each passenger - and there were only around 40 of us on a big jet – a little white flower. And flowers were everywhere on the island, giving the place a paradisiacal air and a heavy scent – something between shea butter, honey and cinnamon. But the main difference was the interaction between the people. I love england (wow, reading back that statement and feeling slightly uncomfortable putting those three words in that order makes me realise how much the far right has stolen) and I love that many of us are totally anal and understated and unable to communicate our warmth, but in Tahiti everyone is just in the zone of communication. Like ageing ladies on buses in west yorkshire. Sat at a show of a local amateur dance troupe, I felt someone hold my hand, I looked over and a man sat down next to me, looking at me and grinning. This was his way of saying 'may I sit here?'  but the translation was 'I am sitting here, great to be here with you' and probably 'you haven't had any physical contact for a few days, let alone a hug, so I am just going to remind you that you are part of this world and everything is ok'... or at least that is what I took it to mean.

We were in a basketball court that had been tastefully redecorated to make a big stage. I was there as the guest of my couchsurfing host's running partner, and so was party to a regular event in tahitian life. The dancers – ranging from maybe 4 years old right through to 40s and 50s – danced in groups, all in beautiful and coordinated dresses. The younger ones were all about the bum waggle, arms outstretched, big grins. The older women (all were women) were much more sophisticated, graceful, creating patterns of movement as they shifted around the stage in groups. I am sure stuff like this used to happen everywhere, but has been gradually stamped out by urbanisation and TV (though I imagine morris dancing was never quite so... assured)

Other highlights included picking and eating my first pineapple from a tree (so tender you can eat the middle even) and a massive ocean swim in a thunderstorm, rain bouncing off the surface of the water in my breaststroking face, rolling waves sucking me in and out at will. Jet black sand on the beach. Oh, and did I mention the fish? Huge slabs of maki, mora mora... ugly looking things, but flesh hard like tuna and a more delicate taste.

So yeah: well done tahiti. But this was more of a acclimatisation period for the Marquesas...