Tahiti - The South Pacific

Tahiti - The South Pacific

When you first hear the songs of the South Pacific sea your spirit lifts.  There is no other sound like it.  Hushing hummings rushing ashore slowly in rhythmic lappings and lullabies, leaping up in silence, smashing in surf and flat claps along a shoreline of black volcanic ash.  These are the same sounds Paul Gauguin the painter heard when he first arrived here in Tahiti in 1891, staying not far from where I now write; these same sounds. 



Ancient, unseen links to another time rolling ashore, one after another, slow and assured, rippling in from the darkness beyond a horizon where stars, one by one, blink, pop and shine in the depths of an endless black velvet sky.
 

It has taken me twenty-four hours to reach Tahiti. 

At least. 

Through four airports, passing en route here, in taxis, in transit, in line, locked out (Sydney International Airport closes between midnight and 4am), sat down, boarder checks, departure gates, bored again, buckled in, took off, in flight, fed food, fed up, flaked out, passing time, filling forms, ready to land, ready to sleep, touching down, luggage checks, passport checked, passport stamped, visa’s valid, picked up, driven off, signed in, exhausted, alone.

Ironically, the International Time Zone I passed hours / days ago suggests it’s only taken me a few hours of ‘actual’ time to arrive here.  In reality it has taken me twenty-four hours to reach Tahiti.  At last. 
The first thing I hear when I lay on my bed are the sounds of the South Seas, rolling ashore, drifting in through the open windows, passing through the white mosquito nets on a midnight breeze. 

Out on my balcony I look out across Mahina and La Fayatte beach and across to my left; beyond the low lights of Papeete - the capital of Tahiti nui - hogging the horizon is the presence of neighbouring island Moorea: jagged and sharp toothed, dormant in silence, sleeping in silhouettes.  To my right, Matavai Bay (where once the HMS Bounty came ashore before the mutiny occurred), and then looking out to sea, Pointe Venus – the place of Tahiti’s only, and lonely, lighthouse (built by the father of the poet Robert Louis Stevenson).  And all around me, this incredible sound of deep, deep silence, rocking and moving to the falling sounds of the South Seas of the Pacific.

 There is no sound like this sound.  I can see the point where the heavens met the horizon and there is ocean in between.  The Ramadan moon, carved into a crescent, shining in saffron, moves down from the celestial realms, passing by this corner of our world.  Again I hear the sounds of the South Pacific Sea, singing through the darkness of night.  These are the same sounds Gauguin heard; this is the same Gauguin van Gogh heard dream of here and speak of these same sounds. 

I cannot wait for what tomorrow brings.