Christmas to New Year's

On Christmas Eve, Craig and I were scheduled to fly home from Rangiroa, but our flight was delayed so that when we arrived on Tahiti, we had missed the last connecting flight to Mo'orea. We took a taxi into Papeete, checked into a hotel, and went to Place Vaiete on the waterfront, where we had the Jewish Christmas I had always wanted at the Chinese food trucks. Craig wanted to attend Mass, so we walked next to the Cathédrale de Papeete, where we discovered that Mass was in progress, and that it was in Cantonese. Craig and I went and sat down in back; the congregation was primarily of Chinese descent, with some non-Chinese, and some obvious tourists. We sang along to the verses of O Come All Ye Faithful and Gloria in Excelsis Deo that were in French.

The next morning, we took the ferry over to Mo'orea; all the staff on the Aremiti 5 were wearing Santa hats. We joined my landlord Les and his family for Christmas dinner at noon. Les being from New Zealand, the main course was ham, baked with a bread crust and Mo'orean pineapple, but there were oysters, potatoes, salad, and no shortage of red wine, followed by pies and a bûche de Noël. Afterwards, Craig and I went down the hill to the station to call home on Skype.

The day after Christmas, Craig and I drove around Tahiti, stopping at Point Venus (the spot where Cook's first expedition observed Venus transiting the Sun in 1769), the Papenoo Valley, the Fa'auruma'i waterfalls, and the belvédère on Tahiti Iti before taking the ferry back to Mo'orea in the evening.

A few days before New Year's, Craig and I flew to Bora Bora, this time for fieldwork. Bora Bora is perhaps the most famous island in French Polynesia after Tahiti, and it certainly was beautiful the evening we arrived, but it was the fourteenth island in French Polynesia I had visited, and there are a few I like better. We had a local brush with fame in that Gaston Tong Sang (president of French Polynesia for most of 2007, and still mayor of Bora Bora) was on our flight.

Bora Bora is a small island compared to Mo'orea, and has only one species of Glochidion (G. myrtifolium), which was not too hard to find; this species is also found on the younger islands of Taha'a, Raiatea, and Mo'orea. It seems to have more or less the same suite of associated insect lineages as does Glochidion elsewhere in the Leeward Society Islands. Whether the pollinating moth on this species is the same as on the other islands where it is found will be interesting to see. We spent most of our two days in the field, the first driving around the island and exploring up a few dirt roads, the second climbing most of the way up Mt. Pahia (661 m, the second-highest peak on the island), where we found beautiful views back over the lagoon and evidence of Bigfoot. How Bigfoot might have made it to these islands is difficult to ascertain; I suspect either rafting on vegetation, or a Polynesian introduction from Southeast Asia via the yetis of the Himalayas.

For a place that is inundated with affluent foreign tourists, the local people we met were surprisingly friendly. While walking up dirt roads looking for trailheads, we met a lot of kind people; one let us collect behind her property, and another took us to see a pool with petroglyphs where the queen of Bora Bora reputedly used to bathe, and gave us some mangoes. That said, although the island is clearly more developed than most others in French Polynesia, and there are more French flags visible than elsewhere, the road on the far side of the island is full of potholes, and most of the tourists are sequestered away at resorts on the motu. It's also really expensive. Renting a Fiat Panda (the kind of tiny car most red-blooded Americans wouldn't be caught dead in) cost US $260 for less than two days.

New Year's Eve is a bigger holiday than Christmas in France. The car rental agency did not want us driving our Fiat Panda in the drunken hours of New Year's Eve, so they made us return it before 5 pm. This prevented us from following the advice of two friends recommending we go attend the general debauchery at Club Med, 6 km away. Instead, we walked half a kilometer down the road to Bloody Mary's, a legendary bar which displays two enormous signs listing all the international celebrities (mostly from the '70's and '80's) who have been there. It was closed for renovation. We kept going, to the Hotel Bora Bora, which had a bar, and a few hideously rich people two to three times my age, and a bad cover band, and drinks that cost US $20. But then it struck midnight, and the fireworks went off on the other side of the lagoon, and a few Japanese kids appeared shouting "Waa, kirei!" (Wow, pretty!), and it was magical. An Australian gave us rather large glasses of free champagne, and the Tahitian waitress wished us a happy New Year, and she seemed to really mean it. We walked back along the road, where Tahitians were setting off fireworks along the lagoon shore, and driving past in their pickups, honking and shouting "Bonne année!" to everybody they passed.

The next morning, the first day of 2008, we flew to Huahine.

More pictures from Christmas and Bora Bora are on my Picasaweb site.