The lack of postings after Thursday was because I was actually getting work done...

On Friday it stopped raining, and I hiked up to the Belvédère. There were about forty American, French, and Japanese toursts, so I decided not to hang around while I drank water. I took the trail to the left towards the Col des Trois Cocotiers (Three Coconut Trees Pass), and shortly thereafter, found Glochidion, the plant I was looking for. I kept going along the trail, which wound through dark forests of mape (Inocarpus) with buttress roots and Marattiaceae ferns with two-meter-long fronds. The forests were pretty quiet (these volcanic islands don't have much native wildlife), but everywhere there was a patch of sunlight, the forest floor was alive with the sounds of a dozen skinks running away from my approach. I also saw a handful of wild chickens, and two native Tahiti kingfishers. The trail zigzagged up the hill, and then I found myself on the ridge, looking north back towards Cook and Opunohu Bays (where I had started from) and south towards the south coast of the island, an absolutely spectacular view in all directions. I kept going along the ridge westwards, but was eventually blocked by a barbed-wire fence strung along the trail. This was disappointing, but I found more Glochidion on the ridge, and even some with exit holes in the fruit, suggesting the presence of the moths I was looking for.

On the way back I ran into a friendly French guy who was checking the route for a 10k race being held on the trail the next day. Based on what he said, I went back to the Belvédère the following day, but turned left instead. This took me through more dark, humid mape forest with lots of giant Marattiaceae ferns. One or two stone marae (ancient Polynesian temples) were along the trail, rectangular enclosures made of stone with a few mape trees growing out of them. I ended up taking a trail to the Sommet des Trois Pinus (Three Pines Hill), where I found yet more Glochidion, with both flowers and fruits. I resolved to camp out here the next night.

Camping was not as successful as I was hoping. As soon as the sun went down it started raining, so I went inside my tent. This was only mildly annoying, but then frequent lightning and thunder began. This made me freak out, because I had no idea if it was safe to even be in my tent on top of a hill with several trees around. It wasn't until about an hour later, when the thunder and lightning let up, that I realized that the lightning was very far away (actually, on the other side of the mountains) but the lightning lit up the whole sky. I was able to do some nighttime observations of Glochidion flowers but I never saw any moths (or any other insect for that matter) coming to pollinate them. But the plants were crawling with all kinds of other critters--various kinds of bugs, two species of ant, and even several geckos. One of the geckos didn't like my camera flash very much. When I went back in my tent it started raining again. I didn't sleep well, and hiked back down the mountain very tired the next day. Normally I enjoy camping, but this time it wasn't fun at all. I resolved to look up more about lightning before I go camping in French Polynesia again...

Meanwhile, by dissecting Glochidion fruits I collected, I was able to find the caterpillars of the moths I was looking for. They're red with white bands, which is pretty distinctive. So it was a productive field trip. Around this time, most of the anglophones at CRIOBE left, and a bunch of French people moved in. This was pretty intimidating at first, but I really enjoyed talking to many of them. One man was fourth-generation French Algerian, and lived there until 1987, when he decided it was too much and moved to New Caledonia (he had never lived in France). It was really sad hearing him talk with resignation about how he's never identified with France, and hasn't been able to go back to Algeria since he left. There was also a bunch of marine biology students who had been doing plankton surveys in the Tuamotu Archipelago, the leader of whom was a fantastic cook (and had lived in Florida for 10 years, so spoke very good English). He cooked an excellent gratin the night before I left and invited me to join him and his crew for dinner. Sadly I didn't understand much of the dinnertime conversation, but everybody was really friendly. "French scientists have their priorities," he said to me while cooking gratin in the kitchen. "On our vessel in the Tuamotus, the kitchen was bigger than the lab area."

On Tuesday, I joined Elin from our lab and a botanist from the French Polynesian government on a 4-wheel drive trip up Mt. Marau on the island of Tahiti. Tahiti is much larger than Moorea and has an amazingly complex geography, with steep cliffs hundreds of meters above forested plateaus and valleys, much more spectacular than anything on Moorea. I was able to collect my own specimens, but the botanist found some amazing rare native Tahitian species for us--orchids, lobelioids, and tree snails found nowhere else in the world, and the flowers of a native Fuschia (fuschias originated in the New World, but they have colonized Tahiti as well). The summit of Mt. Marau is a long, narrow ridge covered in thick beds of Dicranopteris ferns, from which the mountainside falls away steeply hundreds of meters to the valley below. The cliff walls are covered in groves of tree ferns. I'm very excited about doing fieldwork on Tahiti.

Wednesday was my last day, with a flight out of Papeete at 10 pm. It was a hot, sunny day, and a French marine biologist from New Caledonia offered to let me go snorkeling with his family in the lagoon outside Opunohu Bay on Moorea. We borrowed an old boat from CRIOBE, with a recalcitrant engine that he aptly described as "merde", but that didn't keep us from seeing a bunch of tiki (stone statues representing Polynesian deities) that were lying on the bottom of the lagoon, snorkeling in the coral reef, and visiting a motu (offshore islet) inhabited by coconut trees and terrestrial hermit crabs. I had a lot of fun teaching his son about hermit crabs. One thing I really appreciated about this trip was being able to meet so many French people. Stereotypes aside, I really had feared that the relationships between our two countries had become so poisoned that it would be impossible for a person from the United States to sit down and have friendly, cordial conversations with people from France. This in restrospect, seems a little naïve, but I was really struck by everyone's friendliness and generosity towards me. I only wish I could have actually interacted with some Tahitians as well!

Anyway, now I'm in Los Angeles (properly speaking, in the basement of the astronomy department at Caltech) with Dan, until tomorrow afternoon. Time to go wake him up from his nap...