The end of an amazing experience.

CAUTION -- THIS IS A VERY LOOOOOOOOONG ENTRY
So here I am sitting at the Papeete airport, sweating like a pig and waiting for my flight. Honeymooners are still abounding, but this time they are either really tanned or really burned, and every single one of them is either wearing a shell or pearl necklace. I feel like I should put mine on soon too. I am really not ready this place…the last nine weeks have been absolutely amazing, and I know I will never experience anything like them again.
The last few weeks in Moorea went by extremely fast and were crammed with as much stuff as possible.
Sunday evening I worked on photographing the Tetiaroa insects for Biocode, which was really neat. You pin the bug into place and set focuses, and the high power microscope camera then takes dozens of pictures at many different focuses, compiles them, and spits out a beautifully detailed and clear image.
Vince Resh thought it’d be great for us to go out and see the forereef, which is the ocean facing part of the barrier reef, so Monday we set out in our little boats. The weather wasn’t too promising, but we decided to go anyway. We stopped in Opunohu Bay for a while looking for whales (but failing), although we did see an awesome huge cruise ship. We headed out to the reef, seeing some dolphins playing in our wake on the way. Meanwhile the weather had been worsening and the waves were humongous… one by one, everyone on the boat got sea sick. Frank and Al managed to jump onto a buoy to tie up their boat, and we jumped in the water. I was hoping being in the water would help with my queasiness, but it just made it worse. The forereef was amazing – deep, clear water allowed us to see the bottom about 20-30 feet down, covered in beautiful colorful coral heads and fish. It didn’t help to look underwater, as the fish themselves were being thrown back and forth by the waves. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to appreciate it fully due to how sick I was feeling, but it was still beautiful. Back at Gump and feeling better, I set out to Maharepa with Stosh and Chris to get class photos printed out for the dance teachers and buy frames at Champion. We picked up Pablo on the way to get some groceries, as he would be helping Monday cooking group make a Marquesian meal that night. The meal ended up being quite good: we had goat that Pablo’s dad had shipped over from the Marquesas, as well as bread fruit cooked in a fire and mashed into a thick paste, some fish, poisson cru, and salad. It was definitely nice of Pablo to show us this whole process and share his precious goat with us. After dinner, Ian and I went night snorkeling at the Public Beach, something that I had wanted to do since the beginning of our trip, but which I had never done for some reason. We were out there for about an hour. The coolest part was switching off the flash light and waving arms around to see bioluminescent plankton. We also saw lots of sea urchins, as they all come out at night to feed, as well as huge hermit crabs and lots of sleeping fish. I jumped into the water at Gump too, and saw some pretty crazy looking shrimp and a hermit crab with a sea anemone on its back. The only problem with night snorkeling is that you can only see what’s within the narrow beam of light, which makes it easy to lose track of stuff.
Tuesday, Trisha and I kayaked out to the barrier reef out by Gump to do the last of my field work. The corals were decently pretty, although on some parts of the reef, there was a decent proportion of dead corals. The kayak ride was beautiful, as it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We laid out on the dock for a bit, then did some work. Wednesday was also spent doing work, and in the evening we had the dance teachers over for dinner, an event I had planned a few days before as we all wanted to thank the teachers for their generous work. Danielle, Connor, Pablo, and I cooked a delicious meal of chicken (Pablo’s recipe), salad, grilled vegetables, and rice, and we all sat outside in the Fare Pote’e. (aside: During the cooking process, Ryan, who had been carving his paddle, managed to cut his finger and had to go to the hospital to get six stitches. He did all this dressed in his “man pareo,” also known as a skirt. Oh Ryan.). Sam had me come sit next to me and translate everything he said, thanking us for inviting them and for all our work in the community. He said a prayer thanking God for the food and for friends, and then said I couldn’t eat because he wanted to tell a legend and needed me to translate…thankfully he changed his mind. Even throughout the meal, the dance teachers would yell out “ALEX! How do you say blah in English?” It was kind of funny that I had officially turned into a human dictionary. After dinner, we had a bringue – a Polynesian jam session. Sam and his friends had brought instruments (guitar, drums, ukulele), and we sat around for hours, playing music, singing, and dancing (girls danced Atitia, and guys did the haka). It was such a great night and really was a culmination of our time in Moorea. I got up and presented the teachers with their framed photos, and they were all so delighted – Sam even cried. Apparently we just couldn’t even fathom what we done for them by learning their dance and performing. We were the first international group of students to come there and embrace their culture so deeply, and showing such enthusiasm in learning about it and sharing it with them. We had just shown the world that their culture is attainable by everyone, and that it is worthwhile to learn about. Sam is a judge at the Heiva Nui dance festival, at which all the major dance groups perform, and he said he still couldn’t believe how well we had been able to learn the dance, we who never had had any experience in Tahitian dancing at all. We had made them all so proud. Vince Resh could not stop thanking me for inviting him to our dinner, and throughout the following days made innumerable references to what a great class we were, and how no other class had ever gotten so involved in the community and in Polynesian life. The rest of the evening was fun, as we all signed Hiriatei and Prince’s frames and sat around chatting for a while. I discovered that one guy who had been playing guitar and singing beautifully all night was in fact just some random guy off the street, who had recognized Ian from the public beach and had decided to pop on over – this was completely harmless and rather funny, the perfect example of Tahitian culture: there’s a party? Let me go join in and play great music, even if I don’t know anyone! I talked to Sam’s son for a while, who told me all about how high school students who live in Moorea have to catch the ferry at 4 or 5 am to make it over to Tahitian high schools in time…and I thought 7 am class was bad.
Thursday and Friday were spent cleaning up the labs and packing stuff away…there were way more instruments in the lab than I had ever known were there. We got one more picture printed out for Irma, this time with Amanda photoshopped in as she hadn’t done the dance. In the evening on Friday, we went over to the Atitia Center, where a farewell potluck was being held in our name. Sam sat me down on his knee Santa style to thank me again for all we did as a class as well as individually (at least he realized my hard work in translating everything and getting every dance practice organized)…this is when we realized that Sam was really just a Polynesian Santa Claus. We also did karaoke with the Tahitians, which was so much fun. Some kids chose “Ces Soirees-La,” the French rap version of “Oh What a Night,” which had been popular back when I lived in Switzerland, and as they weren’t singing, I decided to take over and sing what I knew…people were a little surprised. It was also funny that half the songs on the game were old French songs that I knew. Hinano and Sam then gave a few speeches, AGAIN thanking us for all we contributed to the country, and we set out back to our own Fare Pote’e to have a little more private party. We celebrated Maya’s birthday with Special Dessert, which included chocolate covered strawberries and brownies, then Becky, Annie, and Christine presented the superlatives, which the whole class had voted on. I was voted Class Mom, although I’m not sure why – definitely never felt particularly motherly, but I guess I did do a lot around the house, so that might be why. We then had a little dance party in the Fare Pote’e and most people went to bed. I stayed up a bit longer and spent some time with Pablo, who was definitely one of the nicer and more interesting people I met in Moorea, always telling stories of legends and explaining cultural aspects to us. One thing I found particularly interesting was the fact that he doesn’t have tattoos – when he was a child, his grandmother told him that tattoos were only for royalty, and not for lowly peasants like himself, and to this day he has listened to her and refuses to get any, even though most other Polynesians have ignored this and have gotten tattooed.
Saturday I finished working on my rough Discussion, which was due that day, then went out to the Pearl Shop with Julie and Elliot. We spent about two and a half hours here, picking pearls and waiting for nice and extremely talkative woman to drill holes through them and set them for us. The pearls were gorgeous and came in all different price ranges depending on color, shape, and imperfections. It was a really nice experience, and the woman said that if we ever come back to Moorea, we should come stay with her!
Back at home, we made a giant dinner with all the leftover food we had, and invited the Biocode people and Pablo to come eat with us. After dinner Annie and I went night-snorkeling – we saw a sting ray and lots of bioluminescent plankton – and then showered. I then watched a movie with a few people, then we all ran around outside until 3 am, playing with Julie’s glowing balls and giant hula hoops, and watching the stars. It was a great last night in Moorea.
Sunday morning was spent furiously packing and getting everything together for our trip to Tahiti and then home. Christine and I decided to check one thing off our list and go topless swimming at the last minute, in the manner of the Polynesians, and then Pablo came by to say good-bye, which was a bit sad – who knows when we’ll see him again, since he is now moving back to the even more isolated Marquesas. Then David drive the Rover over and we just managed to squeeze every person and piece of luggage on: we had all the suitcases in the back, along with Ian, and Ryan, me, Elliot, Trisha, and two guitars in the back seat, and David, Danielle Pena, and Annie squished in front. The older rower was there and we all waved good-bye, and as we pulled away from our beloved Gump station, Elliot screamed out one more “GET SOME!” And then we were off to the ferry. The docks were bustling with people boarding and others saying good-bye, but we managed to climb onboard and get our luggage on. And that was the end of Moorea and the beginning of our Tahiti adventures.
Once in Papeete, where we ran into Al and Amanda headed back to Moorea after the rugby games in the city, as well as one of the young Tahitian girls who danced with us, we hopped into a cab, dropped Trisha off at the Hotel Tiare, and then went to the airport to put our luggage in storage. The woman was super nice and was all excited to hear we were from Gump, since she had recently seen something on TV about it. W
e then caught cabs back to Trisha’s and hit the town. Papeete was dead – it was Sunday and everything was closed, so it was more of a ghost town than anything described in the guide books. But we had a great time nonetheless: we headed over to the Trois Brasseurs, and all shared a few pitchers of beer and then got dinner, and just hung out for about three hours. At 8 pm, Ryan, Annie, Pena, Ian, and I went to the docks to get picked up by the French couchsurfers I had contacted earlier, with whom some of students had stayed before coming to Moorea. We sat with them at the Roulottes while they had dinner, and had a fun time talking to Fabien and Julien, as well as Vincent, a Swiss couchsurfer passing through from Fribourg who was familiar with the Paleo (what a small world). We then managed to cram 8 people into their little truck, and had a wild ride back to their house on the hill with a view of Moorea. Once arrived, we were offered drinks and had a nice time hanging out in the tiny pool. We went to bed early, sleeping on mattresses and couches, to prepare for the big day.
Next morning we awoke and had a breakfast of tortillas and peanut butter, which we had bought at Are’s with class funds before leaving. We had coffee and witnessed an intense argument between French collocataires, then Julien took us over to the base of Mt Aorai for our hike (Fabien had decided not to join us on our hike after all). We left at 7 am and walked along six or seven kilometers worth of road to finally arrive at the Belvedere Restaurant at an altitude of 600m, which is where normal people begin the hike. We finally began the actual trail at 10:30, after a snack of delicious apple sauce and GORP (Good Old Raisins and Peanuts). The first part of the hike was very nice, winding along a not-so-steep path contouring various little mountains, with views of Moorea and its barrier reef picture frame, as well as Papeete. After numerous breaks, we eventually reached the 1400 m hut and had a nice lunch (peanut butter and tortillas) and relaxed a bit. Ryan was quite excited about the outhouse, which faced a sea of fog, and we made sure to engrave Cal onto the wall along with everyone else’s engravings. At 3:00 we decided we should forego just dancing hakas and should try to make it to the top of Mt Aorai, since it was Tahiti’s third highest mountain and seemed like something we should do. We finally left the hut at 3:45 and began the difficult ascent to the top – we had to reach 1800 m before sundown. The part of the hike was a challenge: the path was very Rotui-esque, along a ridge line and extremely steep, requiring climbing on hands and knees and pulling of ropes and roots. The path was a bit wider than Rotui, but the cliffs on either side were sheer: any fall would result in serious injury or death (no exaggeration). Plus we were racing against the clock, which made this even more challenging. The lack of oxygen due to the altitude was felt by all of us, but we kept trudging on. The mountains were deep green and lush, with Ti plants and Miconia everywhere, reminding us of Trisha and Irene. The fog beneath us blocked the view, making it seem as though a fall would simply result with us landing on soft, spongy marshmallows. We periodically checked the GPS to make sure we would make it to the top before dark, and around 1600m, the clouds suddenly cleared and we found ourselves surrounded by amazing, huge green mountains on all sides. Their peaks emerged from clouds, and we could not even see the bottom – the view reminded me of Jurassic Park and we expected to see with dinosaurs or King Kong. We finally got to the top right at 5:45, just in time to put down our stuff in the cabin, change out of extremely sweaty clothes (I won the sweaty clothes award), and check out the sun set. The view from the top was amazing – we were witnessing the sunset from above the clouds, with lush green peaks poking out and views of Papeete shining through the clouds as darkness settled. Ian and Ryan made a fire, and we heated up our cans of ravioli, which were quickly devoured along with a bottle of wine. We watched the stars for a while, seeing numerous shooting stars and some satellites, and then decided to go to bed, as we were all exhausted. We wrapped ourselves in whatever we had, as the French people had warned us “qu’on allait se peler le cu” (have our asses peeled) due to the cold. I wore a shirt, a thermal, a sweatshirt, capris, a raincoat on my legs, and a towel as a blanket, while others did similarly. Ryan was the funniest: he wore his field pants and some shorts over these, followed by a t-shirt, his man pareo, Chris’ hamak, and three or four head wraps. We lay out on the floor, Ryan, me, Annie, Pena, and Ian, and shut off the lights at 8:45. It was absolutely freezing. We lay close to each other for warmth, but it did not help much. I was convinced that others were sleeping, but at 11:00 pm we all burst out giggling in despair over how cold it was. We tried to sleep again, sleeping even closer to each other, but to no avail: at 2:30 we all started laughing again and decided to have a snack. We sat in a circle, all wrapped in our ridiculous gear, and ate GORP and peanut butter. Ryan told us about his dream that a 40 year old woman was in the cabin with us, trying to sleep as well, which Pena understood as 4-year-old, which was quite creepy. When we noticed a pink child sleeping bag hanging in the corner, the creepiness was magnified (this had been there all along, but none of the others had noticed it). Ian took it down and cut it to make a mat for Ryan and me, and this, along with the heat from the food, allowed us all to sleep for about an hour. At 5:00 am we noticed the sun was rising, so we clambered out of our hut, all bleary eyed and exhausted. The sunrise was pretty – the sky was finally clear and we could see Moorea, Tetiaroa, Papeete, and all the surrounding mountains. We had some breakfast, packed our stuff, engraved BERKELEY 2009 and left by 7 am. By now clouds had already settled in. The descent to the 1400 m hut was done without too much trouble, considerably easier than had been the hike up. Just as we got to the hut, it began to rain – we had avoided the rain on the deadly part of the hike, which was extremely lucky. We left the second hut by 9:45, and it soon began to pour. It rained non-stop all the way down, with thunder and lightning nearby and huge, powerful drops falling from the sky. Little rivers and waterfalls formed within minutes, and we were all entirely soaked and muddy by the time we got to the Belvedere at 12:00, as we had all managed to slip in the mud multiple times on the way down. I called a cab from the restaurant, and as we sat around waiting for it, some nice Tahitian hikers offered us a ride down in the back of their truck. We rode for about 2 minutes, then the cab came and drove us to the Tahiti Airport Motel, where Annie’s mom was providing us with a room. We dumped all our stuff and took well deserved showers, managing to get mud everywhere despite our efforts.
While the three others napped, Annie and I headed into Papeete on the bus to check out the market. We arrived by 4 pm, and although it wasn’t supposed to shut down until 5 pm, a lot of the stalls were already closed. I bought some Monoi oil and a pareo, and Annie got herself a toere (the drum Sam had taught her how to play), as well as some other trinkets. We then hung out for an hour and a half at a table at the Vaimo Center, and then met up with the others at the Roulottes at 6:30 for dinner. The Roulottes are a bunch of carts that sell cheap but delicious food out by the docks in Papeete, frequented by locals and tourists alike looking for cheaper food for a change. They seem to specialize in French food and Chinese food, as well as grilled fish, hamburgers, and pizza. Ryan, Ian, and Pena all ordered steak frites, which they had had at Maria’s volleyball game and loved, while Annie and I got two different kind of “chao men.” The food was all delicious, but the portions were huge – thankfully they let us take the leftovers home (we even stole bread for breakfast).
After dinner we caught the bus back to the hotel and laid stuff out to dry. Our room was soooo smelly and muddy…poor cleaning staff. Nick then called, as he was at the airport coming back from Huahine to meet up with his parents, so he popped by for a bit. I went to bed while he was there and slept straight through the night.
Next morning we awoke and visited the luggage locker again to exchange some stuff, as well as bid Annie farewell. We then caught the bus to the city and had breakfast at the market. I had delicious coconut bread, which for some reason they had in a variety of shapes, while Ian and Pena decided to try the Chao Men baguette sandwiches, a perfect example of the fusion of cultures in Tahiti (there is a large Chinese population there, mostly running businesses).The Market was full of fresh fruit and vegetables, with more kinds of bananas than I’ve ever seen. They also sold a lot of tikis and pearl shell jewelry, and of course pareos. It was fun to walk around, but I quickly became disillusioned with all these souvenirs – after being in Moorea for nine weeks, I don’t feel like a tourist at all, and there’s no way that any of those little trinkets could even come close to conveying the experiences we had there.
We then set out to find Robert Rent-a-car, which was quite a walk out of central Papeete, made more difficult by the giant dry bag filled with food we were lugging around. We passed a burned jeep and I laughingly commented that was our car. We trudged on and eventually reached the end of the street, so I asked at a gas station where the place was. When they heard what we were looking for, they said that it had been burned down and was no longer in business. As I had talked to someone on the phone earlier, I knew it existed, so they pointed us in the right direction – about 10 min back the other way. The guys were tired, so Pena and I went back and found that the burned jeep I had commented on was actually the right place! How ironic. Of course it was closed for lunch by the time we got there, so we went back to fetch the guys, stopped at Champion to get some groceries, and eventually Robert came, and within minutes, we had our jeep! It was a small white jeep, pretty new-looking compared to the rest of the lot, and it even had air-conditioning! We called Trisha, who we were supposed to meet up with, and then went to pick her up at the airport. It was so great to have the freedom of a car! We started driving down the west coast, stopping at some caves, where Ian and Ryan almost got stuck in the mud while wading around. We also stopped at the Gauguin Museum, which had a lot of interesting information about the painter as he had spent a large part of his life in French Polynesia, as well as giant tikis and some of his paintings. We continued driving into Tahiti Iti, which was even more rural than Moorea and absolutely gorgeous, with towering, green, lush peaks very close to the coast. There was this great collapsing house, completely caved in with plants taking it over and even a cow skull with a plant growing out of it just sitting in the middle of the house. We found Trisha an awesome pension (Pension Orianda) run by an extremely friendly woman. We had the most eclectic dinner ever (sardines, corned beef, venison, and lamb, bread, canned ratatouille, cheese, crackers, carrots…very strange) and the woman even gave us dishes to use. We hung out for a bit and used Trisha’s shower, then decided to go find a place to sleep. We drove to the end of the road and decided to stay in the parking lot of the Plage Publique, parking underneath a tree to reduce rain. So here we were sleeping in a jeep about 10 feet from the waves breaking in Teehaupoo, one of the best surf spots in the world, where huge annual competitions are held – not a bad deal. Ian and Ryan got the front seats, and Pena, me, and the food bag squished into the back seats/trunk. Surprisingly enough, we managed to sleep a decent amount. At 6 am, we awoke to music and found that we were parked about 5 feet from the bus stop, at which a bunch of kids were standing, waiting to go to school and staring at us, in particular Ian and Ryan, who were both shirtless in the front seats. Soon enough a bus came and parked RIGHT next to us…apparently we had decided to park IN the bus stop. It was hilarious, and we just decided to close our eyes and pretend no one was there. We eventually moved the car a bit and slept some more, had some breakfast, then headed back to Trisha’s to say bye and then head up the east coast. Using our Lonely Planet guides, we thought it’d be nice to drive up to the belvedere to see the view. We followed a long winding road up the hill, driving through gorgeous farm land – this area was more rural than any other part. We kept turning and following little roads, getting followed by barking dogs and more confused by the minute (where was the belvedere?). We eventually got to this road that seemed like it was going down, so we decided to follow, laughing when it got narrower and narrower due to plant overgrowth. The road became quite steep and there was an amazing view of the ocean filling the whole plane of view…and suddenly the road was eaten up entirely by plants. So here we were in the middle of nowhere, on an extremely steep road with cliffs and emptiness down the side, in a little rental manual jeep. Pena thankfully managed to turn the car around, and drove it up a bit up the hill, then popped out to take some pictures. We then all took a deep breath, buckled up, and got ready to go. Pena tried starting the car about 4 times, but it wouldn’t work. The engine didn’t seem like it would make it. Great. We all got out, and Pena tried again, and was able to get the engine going. The rest of us jumped in, but the car kept rolling backwards whenever she took her foot off the break…a little terrifying, considering there really wasn’t much road left behind us. On the third try, she somehow managed to do it, and we were finally headed back up the hill to safety! On our way back to “civilization,” we drove by a family of wild pigs, piglets included, and also decided to name our car in appreciation for serving us so well as home and rescuer. We settled on “Fare here”—the home of love. Back in town, we stopped by the Hyper Champion to celebrate our survival, where we picked up some stuff to bring home: Tahitian wine, Hinano, coconut and vanilla tea, etc. We then continued along our drive to the Blowhole, where we had a nice lunch of more random foods and watched the powerful air stream spurt out. We watched the strange guppies writhing on the rock nearby, fighting to stay on the rock and flopping on their tails without any apparent reason, then watched some surfers and hung out on the black sand beach for a while. We then headed back to see some waterfalls, which were gorgeous despite the mosquito attack – I got six bites in about five minutes. On our way out of there, we noticed a rental car coming towards us and were commenting on it, when suddenly it turned around and began to follow us, with a crazy guy waving to us (Pena’s words). Turns out it was Nick and his parents! This goes to show how small these islands are – Nick was the only other person on Tahiti from our class (besides Trisha), and we had managed to run into him! We passed him our bug spray through the window, then continued on to Papeete, where we visited the Pearl Museum (pearl growing is apparently quite a scientific practice!). We visited the tattoo parlor where Trisha and Pena would be getting tattoos next morning, and then grabbed a drink at a café. We enjoyed some delicious pizza at the roulottes, saw Nick and his parents AGAIN, and then we were off to the airport! I bid my wonderful travel buddies farewell, rearranged all my luggage, and went to check in, which took forever.
And here I am now, waiting at the airport, and getting ready to board the plane to leave this paradise forever.