Tahiti - Beach

Sunrise.  I woke at dawn and walking at first light here along Lafayette Beach I watched the morning colours change.  A yellow sky waiting for a yellow sun, reflecting floating hues on the surface of this ocean.  


Just magical.  Just incredible.    Bits of blue, green, shining emerald, a ruby light, then far out to sea, giant clouds, sometimes black sometimes white, move without sound across the horizon, passing between me and the island of Mo’orea.  Regular breaths of surf crash ashore and distant songs of a ukulele murmur against the lapping shore.

Midday.  The sun is moving overhead.  The beach looks incredible now.  Black sand shines with the glint of golden sheen, flecks of yellow inside the blackness of Tahitian ash.  A yellow sun high in a yellow sky, reflecting light in the flat endless ocean.  Pebbles and stones rattle together as they are dragged back and forth through the rolling shoreline.  Kids play in the surf beyond the break.  A fisherman loads up his bait. A coconut floats out to sea.  There is no breeze.  All is breathless.  All is still.  Slowly, slowly, jet lag overtakes and I sleep again in the warmth of this soft, volcanic sand.

Siesta.  Asleep on the beach I have officially turned 40 somewhere else in this world.  My birthday begins here in Tahiti at midnight tonight, but it happened 18hours ago in Australia and 12hours ago in Europe.  Too much time and time passes too slow, too slowly for time to think.  Stuck in the depths of a dream where treasure maps spin through hearts and minds, whispering clues, coursing out paths in journeys wide enough to keep you on track towards an ultimate X marked out in the sand.  

Places like this do exist.  Stretched out on the black sand I sleep in the shade of the day. Yesterday’s jelly-fish sting still rings raw across my back as the sun pins and needles its blistered ache.

This is why we travel: to journey, to pilgrimage, to open ourselves to others and new surroundings, to open our hearts, to open ourselves to the shared vulnerability of being alive – allowing unseen lives to pass alongside us and in some small way, touch us forever.  If such places call to you, then go.  The world is a grand dimension restricted only by our imaginings. 

Sunset.  The sun is dipping behind a huge bank of thick grey clouds, causing a purple haze to emit sunshine and shadows around the island of Mo’orea. It drops from the heaven onto the ocean like a giant curtain – pulling the end of the afternoon as evening approaches.  People slowly leave the beach now.  The light has dipped a lot, and disappears quickly here on the equator.  The air is filled with the sounds of a cooing dove as distant thunder keeps sounding.  Flat thunder claps of sonic boom.  Bright flashes of sheet lightning blink behind the cloud bank as the storm broods. Some kids from France sit further up on the sand playing a guitar, all singing Bob Dylan’s ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door.’

The thunder keeps sounding and the sky changes colour again.  Some blue, some pinks, some yellows.  All reflecting on a silent South Pacific Ocean – as ever the sand is black, ash black.  A huge crescent moon begins to rise.

Mauruuru, Tahiti.