Mo'orea

It is early morning and I have caught the morning Ferry from the Quai d’honneur at Papeete, heading north across the Pacific ocean towards the island of Mo’orea. 

The morning is beautiful, the sort of morning it should be whenever setting sail for somewhere new; sunlight practically dances on the bobbing waves.  The ferry is full.  Standing on the roof of the ship along with many others, I watched Tahiti recede from the stern and the giant silhouette of Mo’orea loom large on the bow.

 

Within minutes of pulling into the Quai de Variare at my destination one of my fellow passengers gives me a thumbs up and says, ‘Welcome to my island.’

I am here today to hire a motorbike and to ride around the island (which is apparently possible to do within a few hours).  On a full tank I leave Variare, and follow the coastal road anti-clockwise around the island.  I’m heading for Cook’s Bay.  It was one of the places I had thought about holidaying instead of Tahiti, but chose Lafayette Beach instead. 
 

 

On arrival it’s easy to see why James Michener described it as a monument to the prodigal beauty of nature.  It is one of those places where words are useless.  Even photographs fail. 

Paul Gauguin, described only his feelings here in 1894, stating, ‘I no longer knew what day or time it was; I was no longer aware of Good and Evil.  All was beautiful, all was well.’

I rode on past Paopao and up towards the Belvedere View Point, some 240metres above sea level.  The road eeled itself up curling through the tropical greens, creeping like a vine upwards towards the conical volcanic peaks. 

If ever I should be fortunate to pass by these waters again, I must stay here longer... much longer, and simple spend days staring at the ocean and the sky.  The view is like nothing I have ever seen before, and probably will never see again... or until the next time.

 

The hardest part of this journey was not stopping.  Each small bay and beach along the West Coast called out, asking for you to stop a while, and spend time there: Ha’apiti, Vaianae and Atiha were the ones I listened to, taking photographs taking stock, connecting to a sense of the sublime while watching colours flood through these waters. 

 

Scooting through small villages with the ocean always on my right, high palm trees reaching up into the afternoon blues and great valleys of volcanic greys and green towering down, I began to understand what Gauguin had meant when saying how easy it was to transcend all bindings of Time and purpose.  All was beautiful; all was well.

 

Back at Papeete, I sit outside the closing markets as the evening shadows gow long in these heated streets, drinking the milk of an iced coconut I managed to buy.  My bus will be here soon.  It is the stillness and sense of existing outside of Time which is so seductive here, which is something we should try to achieve when back amid the confines of routine when we return to our points of origin, where our lives belong for now.  In another half an hour the sun will begin to set.  And then that silence of night will arrive again sounding from a distant horizon.