Finally, some pictures from French Polynesia:
This is me partway up Mt. Rotui on Moorea; I'm not sure why I look in such good spirits. We started too late to get to the top, and on our way back down we got dumped upon by rain (I guess it hadn't happened yet at the point this picture was taken). The trail runs along the ridge all the way to the summit.
View from Mt. Marau on Tahiti, but I can't quite remember which mountains these are in the picture; I think one is Mt. Aorai. In any case, you can get an idea of the complex topography of Tahiti from this picture.
Cloud forest on Mt. Atara, Tahiti. Everything is covered in moss and epiphytic ferns and orchids.
The Temehani Rahi Plateau on Raiatea, which is covered in an unusual dry, scrubby vegetation which after four weeks in Polynesia, reminded me of California. Here there was the greatest abundance of Glochidion of anywhere I have been so far. In the distance on the left side of the picture you can see Bora Bora; on the right, closer in, the island of Tahaa. Also you can get a really good view of the lagoon (light turquoise) surrounding Raiatea and Tahaa. The lagoons are built by coral reefs and are much calmer than the surrounding ocean; Moorea has a similar lagoon and that was where the vast majority of the people at the Gump Station were doing their research.
posted by David @ 8:09 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
hi david! such fantastic sights you've seen. are all the names of the mountains and such named with a syllabry (seemingly) consistent with japanese?
You're right, you can accurately render all Tahitian words in katakana (although the 'r' is closer to a Spanish 'r' than to that in English or Japanese). They also have long and short vowels. But Tahitian was not a written language until the arrival of Europeans, and it has always been written in the Roman alphabet.
There are actually two different ways of writing Tahitian in use today: the orthography approved by the Fare Vana'a (Tahitian Academy), which you generally see in public places; and the orthography used by evangelical Protestantism (used by missionaries, and in churches). How these two should be reconciled was the topic of a newspaper headline I saw while I was over there.
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