Trip to Papeete

Yesterday I went back to my old field sites from last summer. As my first time out in the field since arriving, I was pretty excited, but as soon as I climbed off the road and into the first thicket of Glochidion (cheese trees), I was reminded of two things I had mercifully forgotten: the humidity and the mosquitoes. Thank goodness for quick-dry clothing, but even with quick-dry clothing, it was a long and sticky day. I don't like using DEET (it feels funny on my skin, and I can't help but think it's really bad for me somehow), but it did the trick this time around, except when I found mosquitoes landing on my fingers as I tried taking a GPS reading. At the Gump Station (at sea level) the kitchen is infested with a bunch of invisible mosquitoes that bite at my legs and bare feet, but not enough to be really annoying. (The kitchen is also infested by a visible and brazen cat named Poisson, but that's another story.) Out in the Opunohu Valley yesterday, I see the mosquitoes, so I figured it had to be really bad.

The good news is that some of my cheese tree populations are doing great. The bad news is that others have been cut down! At the end of one of the trails I take is a spot called the Col des Trois Cocotiers (Three Coconut Trees Pass), and here, once you pass the namesake coconut tree (the other two were knocked down by a storm in the '80's), you come up on a ridge that affords spectacular views of the whole island: the lagoon and the ocean to the south, the pineapple fields of the Opunohu Valley, the unbelievably massive Mt. Rotui to the north, and the tallest peak on the island, Mt. Tohiea (1207 m), usually shrouded in clouds. It also happened to have a couple small but healthy cheese trees, and a perfect place to camp overnight to do observations, but I was frustrated to discover that somebody had come by only a week earlier and cut down all but one of the cheese trees to afford room for a couple pineapple plants, and planted some coconut seedlings. I reported this to the conservationists at the Délégation à la Recherche in Papeete today, and they were more pissed off than I was. It's unclear who did this (whether it was a local authority, or some private citizens), but it's a moot point. The trail has gotten a lot of press recently on local TV and is highly recommended by the Lonely Planet guide. I saw way more people on the trail this time around than I ever did last summer. Only in a place like French Polynesia is any amount of hiking by the general public considered bad for conservation--it leads to trail widening and the clearing of vegetation, and creates a wonderful corridor for invasion by alien plants.

I went to Papeete today to meet with the conservation authorities at the Délégation à la Recherche in the French Polynesian government. Papeete is the capital of all of French Polynesia, and it's on the island of Tahiti. My first impressions of Papeete last summer were pretty negative. I think I was expecting a French version of Honolulu, or a Polynesian version of a Southeast Asian city, and it is neither of these (it's not terribly pretty, nor overrun by overseas tourists, and it lacks ridiculously cheap yet tasty street food). It's not a very big city, with a population of 26,000 (the urban area around it has 128,000 people, or somewhat larger than Berkeley. To get there, you (and all the people who commute between islands) take a half-hour ferry from Mo'orea over to the port at Papeete. Since Papeete is so small, everything is within walking distance from the ferry terminal. You can see the island of Mo'orea silhouetted behind the cargo containers of the port through which all goods entering French Polynesia by sea pass; the city's only brewpub (Les Trois Brasseurs) is across the street from the ferries; there is usually a French naval vessel or two nearby; all the French Polynesian government buildings are in a sprawling complex a couple blocks distant, with several ministries per building. The Assembly of French Polynesia is next door to a McDonald's. The Australian and New Zealand consulates are reportedly inside the Qantas and Air New Zealand travel offices. Like I said, it's not a very big city.

After visiting the Délégation à la Recherche, I stopped by the Direction de la Réglementation et du Contrôle de la Légalité, the federal French government office where I apply for my carte de séjour (residency permit). I walked just into the office, looked around with a lost look on my face trying to figure out which of the three people with unmarked desks was the person in charge, and I was told by the lady nearest the door (who was busy chatting and working at something with a gorgeous younger woman who was acting like her friend) to please take a seat. This I did, and I spent the next half hour waiting outside on the couch, while everyone in the office completely ignored my existence. It was unclear what the lady and her friend were doing, but I began to wonder if they were taking care of personal business, and that French bureaucracy is as bad as everyone says, and even started to wish I was in Japan instead, when I saw them both fold up piles of documents, the young lady picked up her bag and left, and the older lady beckoned for me to come in. She was wonderfully helpful and friendly, and I figured the younger woman must have been a European citizen applying for the same status as me.

Anyway, now I am the proud owner of a demande d'authorisation de résidence pour un étranger, issued by the Haut Commissariat de la République (High Commission of the Republic) en Polynésie Française, which is clearly a photocopy of another document in which various passages have been blacked out by both pen and marker, and others added by hand. Also, about 2 cm of the margin on the left side has been cut off. In keeping with this, the nice lady tells me that instead of getting official translations, I can do my own translations of the pertinent bits in the margins and between the lines of the original. I'm not sure if I believe this, but it puts me in a good mood for today.