Huahine

On New Year's Day, Craig and I flew to Huahine, in the Society Islands between Raiatea and Mo'orea. We stayed at Pension Chez Guynette in Fare, the largest village on the island. Chez Guynette turned out not to be a typical pension (guesthouse) but was basically a backpacker's hostel, the sort of institution I had completely forgotten existed. What's more, it was located in downtown Fare. The notion of "downtown" is usually meaningless anywhere outside of Tahiti, but in Fare, it really meant something. In a span of about two blocks right along the waterfront, where cargo ships dock, were crammed this hostel, an enormous supermarket, an Internet cafe (run by a nice man who looked like a French version of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons), a bank, a rental car agency, a gas station, restaurants, roulottes (food trucks), and every morning, tables where people sold fresh vegetables, fish and fe'i (Polynesian plantains). To Craig's delight, there was even a public foosball table. I have never been anywhere so convenient anywhere else in French Polynesia. The rest of the island, about the size of Mo'orea but with only a third the population, seemed deserted and tranquil. An excellent place, it turned out, for me to give Craig manual driving lessons on real roads. That said, I was not an excellent person to give said lessons.

When I called Chez Guynette to make a reservation a month earlier, I began speaking in French, but soon realized that the woman to who I was speaking had an anglophone accent, so I asked "Do you speak English?", and the conversation quickly switched to our shared native language. Once this was established, we both wanted to know what on earth each other was doing down here; it turned out that Marty and her Tahitian husband Moe ran the place, and I explained that I was from the Gump Station on Mo'orea. We then ran through a list of other anglophone expats we knew from Mo'orea, and there was a substantial amount of overlap. When I arrived on Huahine, there was quite a bit of swapping of gossip about what the various anglophone immigrants on Mo'orea were up to; it turned out that Marty had been friends of my American neighbor Jim for decades, back since when they both lived on Tahiti.

On Huahine Craig and I climbed Mt. Turi (669 m), whose trailhead started just behind the gas station in downtown Fare (could this place get any more convenient?). The wet forest on Mt. Turi looks like what mid-elevations on Tahiti looked like before the invasion of Miconia trees. It was beautiful. Craig and I also climbed Mt. Puhaerei (462 m) on the south side of the island; the forest on this mountain had largely been replaced by plantations of non-native Caribbean pine, but there was a lot of Glochidion temehaniense and G. societatis in the understory. Huahine, along with Maupiti, is one of only two islands in French Polynesia where Glochidion grows on the motu (coral islets) at sea level; in this case, G. societatis and the endemic G. huahineense, which grow on Motu Oavarei, an islet that is now connected at one end to the main (volcanic) island. Having found them in the field, these two species are essentially identical, except that G. huahineense is hairy, and G. societatis is not; it may turn out that what is called G. huahineense is simply those individuals of G. societatis found on Huahine that have an allele for hairiness (this sort of thing has been found in plants before). If huahineense is actually a real species or evolutionary unit of some kind, however, it is extremely endangered. Most of their habitat has been replaced by cucumber and cantaloupe fields, and I found no more than about 15 individuals, mostly growing at the edges of people's yards. One of the best sites, actually, turned out to be a wetland next to the Fare municipal dump. In any case, my research should reveal the answer to the real status of G. huahineense, and I can make a recommendation to the French Polynesian government (who at the moment, have it on their protected species list).

Craig and I also walked around the spectacular Marae Maeva complex, on the opposite lagoon shore from Motu Oavarei. This major pre-contact Polynesian temple site has been beautifully restored, and includes marae along the lagoon shore, in the forest, and up in the hills. There are also some traditional stone fish traps in the channel.

Our last afternoon on Huahine, I got a phone call asking if I could, in 36 hours' time, take part in a 5-day expedition to Mehetia. Mehetia, the tiny and uninhabited geologically active volcano situated 100 km east of Tahiti, is the active point in the hotspot that created the Society Archipelago. This expedition had been in the works for a long time, but the entomologist had just had to cancel at the last minute, and I was the backup. I called back to say, yes, absolutely. Immediately after doing this, I started to wonder if I really wanted to go; the trip was 4 hours in a fishing boat, departing from Teahupoo on Tahiti Iti at 5 am, and I get seasick; nobody seemed to know how we would land, except that it was apparently "hazardous" and might involve swimming to shore. But I figured, this all aside, I would not regret going.

That night, Craig went and watched a fireworks show in Fare harbor, while I pressed plants back in our room. I emerged to discover Craig engaging several local kids in a foosball game; Craig, from long years of practice back in Quincy House, was the kind of foosball master these kids had never seen before. After a few minutes of watching him win effortlessly, one kid quit in a very public display of disgust, and the others quickly followed. For the kids of Huahine, this was the last free night of winter break; for high schoolers, this meant getting on the plane to go back to boarding school on Raiatea or Tahiti the next day. A lot of second-hand Ford Foci (focuses?) and Suzukis parked along the street, music blaring from car stereos. As the gendarmes (all white, from France) drove by to make sure everything was under control, teenagers (all Tahitian) waved in that sort of swaggering way that teenagers wave to police everywhere. The music continued until around 2 am, when a fight broke out.

More pictures here.