Afloat in French Polynesia
A cruise-ship castaway reconnects with the elements.
Photography by Luca Trovato The chief engineer, an earnest Scotsman, lives part-time in Alicante, Spain. The executive chef, a Filipino with a sophisticated wit and a hip-hop haircut, works on occasion at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Los Angeles. Our towheaded host, a California surfer by birth, retreats to his home on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula when he’s off ship. And the purser, a prim Brit in sensible pumps, has spend so much time in the South Pacific that she talks with a lilting French Polynesia twang. “Tawh-YEE-shin,” she says, the word rolling of her tongue likes some kind of mango marmalade.
Most of us 80 or so passengers, North Americans all, say “Teh-hee-shin” and “Tuh-hee-dee”—and tentatively, as if each syllable had the titillation potential of a word from a pickup line and needed to be subdued. Relative to the 100-member crew of the Wind Star, a 74-stateroom cruise ship sailing year-round in Polynesian waters, we travelers are hardly exotic. I suppose it’s our romanticized view of this worldly crew’s actual lifestyle—at home away from home on the South Pacific—that has brought us here, urbanites eager for a respite as castaways, the common bond between us and them being our fine choice of idyll setting. Postcards from Tahiti that look pleasingly fake barely do the place justice.
Tahiti’s seas are among the planet’s most beautiful. Peter Rona, a marine geologist at Rutgers University, has described the Pacific Ocean as “the largest, deepest, oldest…most biologically diverse, the widest, wildest body of water on Earth.” Zoom in on just 400 or so square miles of that 70,000,000-square-mile expanse—arguably, the bluest of Pacific waters—and you have the Wind Star’s playground. Sailing from Papeete on a five-island loop through Polynesia’s Windward and Leeward islands, it’s easy for the laid-back sensuality of the place to get under your skin. My goal for the week: To defy the reputed “float-and-bloat” scene of formal big-ship cruising in pursuit of health-oriented relaxation and communing with the elements.
My transformation from city dweller to seafarer kicks off in my cabin shower. Reentry into the natural world: Pluck soap and shampoo from a plastic clamshell caddy beside the sink and climb into a high-tech looking space capsule with vibrating showerhead and gray metal-flake walls. Scrub off urban life and its attendant anxieties. Towel down, don terry robe, flop on queen-size bed, and check out Raiatea’s inviting shoreline through the cabin’s twin portholes. We’ve anchored off this, the second largest of French Polynesia’s islands at 92 square miles, after a night crossing on a bit of a swell. But at 360 feet long and 5,350 tons, the ship’s stability allowed me to wake refreshed and ready for topside adventures.
Following the morning’s orientation and a lifeboat drill, my fellow passengers and I are free to go ashore by tender to either explore the island on our own or via a selection of shore excursions, from a tour of a black-pearl farm to four-wheeling through Raiatea’s forested interior. “Drift snorkeling” turns out to be the least popular choice, but for me, an avid swimmer and scuba diver, it’s the most novel.
In the company of our snorkeling guides, Marie and Tony, five of us trudge along a muddy trail to the end of a wide channel edged in volcanic rock, then swim out single file into the middle of it, where a fast current shoots us back inland. We fly along over a living carpet of corals, past starfish, a tiny eel, jewel-tone tridacna clams, bright yellow damselfish. It’s a giddy and near-effortless pleasure, and we’re all game when Tony says, “Okay, now that you have the hang of it, let’s do it again!”
Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks? The average age of the passengers on this ship is 51, but loosed outdoors to play on the reefs, we’re already acting like kids. The cocktail hour brings a lounge show of Polynesian singing, drumming, and dancing performed by Raiateans wearing pareos and flowered headdresses. A pareo and a flower tucked behind an ear is standard street attire in the islands, too, right along with a perpetually friendly demeanor. It’s as if here in Tahiti all’s well with the world; Gauguin’s painterly vision of a century ago still exists.
Given I can’t yet match the islanders smile for smile and still have kinks in my neck from the eight-hour flight from Los Angeles, I bypass dinner and devote myself to an hour-long massage. Delivered by Dana, one of the Romanian goddesses who staff the shipboard beauty salon, it turns out to be a brilliant way to wrap up the evening.
Anchoring off Huahine the next morning, breakfast awaits us in the Veranda dining room: a bounty of fresh-baked pastries and buttery croissants, yogurt and cereals, a bright assemblage of local tropical fruits, smoothies, bacon and sausage, made-to-order omelets. I eat light—toast and coffee—in preparation for an 8 a.m. dive at Huahine’s Fitii Pass.
The two dive guides meet three of us at Wind Star’s water-sports platform where we set off in dinghies to hang at 46 feet along a 75-foot drop—in 85-degree water that affords blissful 92-foot visibility and sightings of Moorish idols, assorted butterflyfish, blue chromis, stoplight parrotfish, and pristine hard corals. As it happens, though, I miss the find of the morning: the sharksucker, a relative of the remora that hitches a ride on my wet-suited flank. Everyone spots it but me.
“You want to know the secret to life?” says an old salt at the bar. He whirls around on his stool, drops his voice and leans close. “The secret,” he divulges, with growing excitement, “is to stick to your animal instincts!”
The second dive of the day is for beginners doing the ship’s resort course at the same site, so I opt out for lunch in my stateroom and CNN; room service is available aboard the Wind Star round-the-clock, and in-room amusements also include DVD players, minibars, Wi-Fi, and international direct-dial phones. And though the afternoon offers such activities as a black-pearl seminar, gaming lessons in the casino, visits with the captain on the bridge, crepes and tea on the pool deck, and a vegetable-carving demonstration, I take a nap, then return to the salon for one of Dana’s reflexology-focused foot massages, after which she slips my newly revitalized feet and realigned chakras into disposable chartreuse flip-flops. It’s nice to get outside one’s head for a change, a sentiment that many of the repeat passengers on the ship seem to share.
Nearly half my shipmates have sailed on a Windstar cruise before. One couple from Texas—a cardiologist and a painter, both of them recreational pilots—tell me they’ve been aboard nine times. I note they approach each day at a casual pace, with no attempt to do everything or even anything at all. This cruise is definitely not for those who live by the mantra “work hard, play hard,” nor for the black-tie-and-diamonds set. The emerging dress code is sandals, T-shirts, shorts, swimsuits, and pareos.
Yet the ship itself, built in 1986 in France, is rather elegant, if quietly so, excepting the flame-red floral arrangements of anthuria and heliconia. Decor assumes a nautical theme throughout, with scrimshaw and knot-tying displays adorning the reception area, prints of sextants and quadrants or photographs of historical yacht races lining the halls of the two cabin decks, commemorative plaques of inaugural sailings in the stairwells, and swagged curtains printed with constellations framing the windows of the main restaurant.
Purple orchids in silver vases stud the linen-draped tables. En route to Bora Bora, I survey the evening’s menu and the enticing wine list overseen by none other than the James Beard Foundation. Entrées are grand: sautéed shrimp on bean puree with a lobster nage, braised lamb with garlic-herb gnocchi, fresh fish of the day with corn salsa and plantain, potato risotto with oyster mushrooms. Having gorged myself on scenery and still sworn to a fitness focus, the Thai chicken with vegetables suits me fine.
Popular among American movie stars and French tourists, Bora Bora is, among other things, home of the famed Bora Bora Lagoon Resort, the landmark Bloody Mary’s restaurant, and the lesser-known Aquascope, a minute yellow submarine that allows visitors who don’t wish to get wet to see the island’s reefs. It may be said of Wind Star’s shore excursions: Whatever your age and inclination toward the sea, there are myriad ways to take in close-up views of South Pacific marine life: swimming, snorkeling, scuba diving, kayaking, dolphin- and whale-watching.
Inside the Aquascope, an eight-person submersible, the octogenarian sitting next to me enthuses over the reef fish a few feet below the surface. As a diver, I’m not wowed; they’re mostly sergeant majors and ubiquitous in tropical waters the world over. On the other hand, I am entranced by the way the fish look like holograms as refracted through the sub’s thick glass, by the piped-in techno-pop playing on the intercom, and by the bare-chested beach boys sporting tattoos and wraparound sunglasses who man this craft, black pearls dangling from gold chains around their necks.
For lunch, the chef throws a beach barbecue of marinated flank steak, grilled chicken, and tangy coleslaw. I swim. I snorkel. I watch pipefish, a relative of the seahorse, slithering by twos on a coral head. I also meet my lone nemesis in all of Polynesia, a territorial Picasso triggerfish that nips my ankle with its tiny teeth. I don’t mind. Dana is giving back massages on the beach. Face down in the massage chair, head bowed beneath palms whose fronds rustle softly in the wind, the sound of the surf in my ears, I can’t help thinking I’m blessed, that days rarely get better than this.
As an encore I do a night dive at Toopua Reef with three of the crew, and spy two spotfin lionfish that splay their spiked fins under our flashlights. Only here, off Bora Bora, have I ever been greeted with a lovely cup of hot chocolate upon resurfacing.
After the dive, a few of us go ashore for dinner at Bloody Mary’s, an island landmark opened in 1979. “Bloody Mary’s attracts only Americans,” the cab driver tells us. “Kurt Russell, Eddie Murphy, Cher—they all go there. The French go to Bamboo because the French like French food. Bloody Mary’s is American.”
Sand serves as the establishment’s floor, tree stumps stand in as chairs, the decor is Robinson Crusoe meets Frank Gehry. As often as not the patrons are dining barefoot.
“Our specialty is traditional Polynesian,” announces our tattooed and shirtless waiter. So I see. I dig into my “Polymerican” plateful of rice and ahi tuna. It’s meant to be dipped by forkfuls in vanilla sauce, a condiment utterly beloved by islanders but reminiscent to my tastes of Neutrogena hand lotion. While the shipboard cuisine beats this place by a mile, Bloody Mary’s holds its own in terms of iconic South Seas ambience.
“You want to know the secret to life?” says an old salt at the adjacent bar, I assume to no one in particular. He whirls around on his stool to face me, then drops his voice and leans close. “You want to know the secret?” he says, jabbing his index finger toward my forehead. “The secret,” he divulges, with growing excitement, “is to stick to your animal instincts! That’s the secret! Stick to the basics! Keep it simple!”
“Is that right?” I say. And I wouldn’t dream of arguing with him; that’s what I’m here for. As the evening unwinds, I’m moving outside in long easy strides, enjoying the caress of the warm night air, stepping lightly into a cab, climbing into Wind Star’s tender that zips me back to the ship, slipping into my cabin, stretching out on my bed, drifting off, the ocean gently rocking me to sleep.
In the days that follow, I venture to Bora Bora galleries where regional art means museum-quality sculptures and carvings, and to shops where the fashion in black-pearl jewelry reflects a well-heeled clientele’s burgeoning interest in a return to nature: Rather than encrusted in precious stones and heavy metals, these pearls are strung on leather cords and silk ribbons. It’s easy to feel like a millionaire here, when five dollars equals about 500 French Pacific francs; with gem-quality black-pearl strands running upwards of 2,000,000 CFP, however, it’s essential to be a Tahitian gazillionaire.
On Moorea, the sportier and prettiest of the islands, I spend an afternoon on a motu, where the main attractions are the stingrays that hang around for handouts from tour operators and nimble islanders who demonstrate how to climb palm trees for coconuts. For me, the bigger draw is snorkeling solo at the far end of the motu lagoon with a black-tip reef shark. I’m so taken with the lagoon that I convince a reluctant swimmer in his 70s to go back out with me just so he can see all the anemones and clownfish.
And it’s at this point that the raison d’être of Wind Star devotees sinks in: While exceptionally well-cared for on this voyage, passengers are left to themselves to invent a South Pacific idyll of their own making. I wonder if, in the end, they’re all the same….
Back aboard ship, I chat with a gal from Los Angeles on the pool deck who’s waxing poetic over her day’s experience—in her case, a first shot at parasailing. She’s wearing a baby-blue bikini printed with rosebuds. “I have to say it was, well, spiritual,” she tells me. “Something about being up there in the air, floating above this beautiful tropical island, that gorgeous sea—I felt so grateful for my life.”
Add to that picture frequent rainbows and not a single mosquito. •
Virtuoso Life
By Trish Reynales. All rights reserved.