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.

Tahiti - Papeete

Papeete

I am looking at a map, standing in the shade of the Papeete Market on the Rue Paul Gauguin, trying to get my bearings.  New cities and new places dazzle and confuse in equal measure.  Time perspires in this heat as everything else seems to stand still.  I need to find a Bureau de Change on the Boulevard de la Reine Pomare. 

I also need to find a shop that sells a phone charger... batteries are running low in every sense.  Adjusting to an 18hour time difference is not the easiest thing to do – even in a place as beautiful as Polynesia. 

Having flown all this way to Tahiti it seems insane to want to sleep in my room, or on the charcoal sand underneath yellow skies.  Fortunately, a local stops, offers help and draws careful crosses on my map.  He talks for a while about where I have come from, and talks with great enthusiasm about rugby and his favourite team, the All Blacks. 

Papeete, unpretentious, bouncing with colour between its narrow boulevards, all lined with trees – this place has such a good feeling to it.  It has a huge double-storied market slap bang in its middle, buying and selling food, flowers, colours, coconuts – there are few things more enjoyable than wandering around a city’s market.  Here you see glimpses of the city’s essence, the soulful nature of its people and how life operates there.  Papeete Markets – compared to other markets I’ve visited – seems clean, hospitable and welcoming.  

At the Gare du marche, I sit for a while and drink fresh orange juice from a clear plastic cup in the afternoon sun.  I look out across the harbour at the Ferry Terminal blurred with movements, coming and going, shipping tourists and locals to and from the nearby island of Moorea. 

The afternoon seems to slow to an ebbing lull.  People watching begins to become an effort. 

The air is perfumed with blossom and the sounds of cooing doves before chirping birds begin to get things going again, chasing each other in the crouching branches of overhanging trees. 

Soon, laughter fills the air.  A shift in gears occur.  People walk past, turning to smile when the moment arrives.  Slowly the day is starting again as 4pm in Tahiti equates to 10am body clock time (yesterday). 

Back at the Rue Paul Gaugin, I wait for my bus back to Papava, to swim again in the bottle green ocean, as the yellow sun sinks beneath a black horizon.  I have successfully found my landmarks for next time: the Papeete Market, The Cathedrale Notre Dame, the Municipal buildings and also the ocean.  Four points of a compass – my compass.  In the shade my body feels heavy and tired, almost urging my bus to arrive.  Slowly, I begin to imagine being asleep on that black ash beach, watching yellow skies fade to twilight as a green flat ocean rolls ashore in a hush of pink foam and surf.  The colours here are out of this world.

 

 

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.

West Coast - Northbridge

West Coast – Northbridge

The morning wakes wide with the chatter of spoons rattling across coffee cups and ceramic saucers, demitasse dreams steam in clouds of yawning as ink flows again and wide-eyed words begin to rise and write themselves between the thin tramlines of fat yellow sunlight.  The purring prowl of the Blue CAT bus smooths past my table, heads down along the palm trees of James Street, and disappears from view somewhere before the Horseshoe Bridge.  The silent flight of a departing plane is reflected through the crema of my espresso and across its flat, black surface – stretching deep and wide the blue sky opens up and thoughts of travel return again.  Lucky then, that John Lennon sings somewhere that ‘Life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans…’

 

Sitting outside Sorrento Restaurant at mid-morning and everywhere surrounding seems so full of life – James Street busy with passing traffic, people on foot walking one way or another, vespas and vans delivering vegetables and messages ferry past tooting horns of ciao comé va, open palms waving out from behind steering wheels, resting bodies having danced all night move so slowly over drying flagstones sluiced clean from the night before concealing all secrets seen – even the insides of yesterday’s newspapers drift face down and fast asleep along the kerb.  Man, I’d almost forgotten how much I love this place.

 

The more I travel the more I realise the ease in which we can forget to appreciate what little gems we have in front of us.  We become blinded by the repetitions of routine.  We can begin to lose track of our footsteps during our journeys, distracted instead by destinations or departing planes streaking across the skies, impatient for the future – so exotic and so much better - wishing away the here and the now, wasting our imagination on daydreams of tomorrow, forgetting our blessings as life keeps moving past.  If we are careful enough we can exist outside of this Time; we can stop still for just a brief moment within this flow and try to catch a fleeting glimpse of what’s around us now because whether we like it or not, it is later than we think.

 

Back at Sorrento, back at James Street, back on a sunlit tablecloth, I am asked, ‘Desidera un’altro café?’

 ‘Si, un espresso, per favore.’ 

 

 Yes, one more coffee – there must always be time for one more coffee…especially here in a little gem like Northbridge.   I look up for the plane but it’s long gone.  Morning shadows have begun to shorten, dancing and moving around me in the coloured sunshine – pockets of silence heave through James Street.  Time is moving as it should. 


The Blue CAT bus returns around again, passing by from right to left, driving down through the avenue of palm trees, towards the Horseshoe Bridge, stopping briefly by the lights outside the Brass Monkey alehouse before disappearing somewhere down William Street. 

These little moments, these sweet siestas must be treasured, the joy of being before the doing gets in the way… just as my coffee arrives I overhear an exchange of hellos from two elderly friends meeting nearby: ‘…life is good and the joints are too...’  Yeah, that’s what I heard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka: Colombo

The midnight hour has slipped past those of us wide awake and waiting now at Bandaranaike International Airport, Colombo. Waiting now in neon shadows and reflective glows, waiting to fly out across the Indian Ocean, back to the West Coast of Australia.  Waiting now for a 1am departure from Sri Lanka, at an empty gate (itself waiting to get ready to ferry this flight through the Heavens and back to our other lives).  A group of Buddhist monks walk past, all in orange, all in silence.  A few hours from now and we shall all be higher than the clouds, shooting through the stars, passing by the dreams we all visit in our sleep…

I spent the afternoon beside a pool, steaming in Colombo’s humidity, listening to Snoop Lion (‘Torn Apart’ on multiple repeats) drowning out the pina colada commotions of a group of boisterous travellers, just landed, just getting warmed up for the beginnings of their new adventure.    My body felt warm and relaxed in the heat (exactly as it should; not just when on holiday, but as it should each and every day if only for a few fleeting moments).  I take time to watch thick, fat, purring fur of purple clouds pass overhead – distracted by yellow flashes of periphery lightning, waiting for those flat claps of booming thunder rolls, echoing overhead.

At a bookshop, much earlier, around noon, I spent time chatting to the salesman on shift.  He asked me what I thought of Sri Lanka.  I replied that it was the most beautiful country I had ever seen.  He asked me if I had time so he could show me his favourite book; one he hoped would not sell for a little while longer as he loved to leaf through it during the quiet afternoons.  In the book were many colour photographs of his beloved country.  He asked if I had visited a place called Nuwara Eliya during my stay.  I hadn’t. 

 

‘I think you will return here to Sri Lanka,’ he says, ‘and when you do, you will visit Nuwara Eliya.  It is far from everywhere, and it is a most beautiful place and when you arrive there, you will remember this meeting and you will know what I mean.’

 

My boarding gate suddenly blinks and flashes its readiness to ferry us travellers home, dispelling the reflection from my mind.  Time to get ready to board this flight.  And in an instant you can feel the shift of gears taking hold of Time – from this lulling rock-a-by-baby wandering through a country, a fast-tracked blur of hurry begins again.  The normality of routines and demands beckon.  The seeking of distractions and sleeping through their daily dominance gather beyond the horizons.  But for now, but in this awareness of pure Time, let me slow down in that fervour and allow the mundane to become sacred, even spectacular (if only for a few treasured seconds).  Time to board my flight

Galle

Shaded streets are spiced in silence – scented with fanning palms of afternoon leaves, casting down cool pools of green off canopied shadows across the stretching heat of day.  Merchants and mosques sing out through the quarters of Galle: an old fort town, musked in its own past of myths, dreams and legend, coloured by the moonstone shore of its beloved Indian Ocean.  Serendipity yields its rich rewards and impossible is nothing.  Small pearls of cloud shine high in pure blue, and Sade sings into my ear, ‘…I’d give you the world if it was mine…’

I watch the sun off the shore, and wander slowly, twisting and turning at please, stopping and talking whenever the mood takes hold.  No plans, no deadlines, no outcomes, no deadlines, no idea – free-wheeling and waiting to watch the sun set from the Triton Bastion (one of the many vantage points inside this fortified town named after the Sun, Moon or Stars).  An open book rests on a sunlit table, in a room with rose-coloured walls.  Cricket is played in an open square.  And small pearls of cloud shine high in an endless blue, as Sade sings into my ear, ‘…I’d give you the world if it was mine…’

A storyteller called Faisal faces the old lighthouse from his frangipani balcony near Rampart Street.  He drinks sweet tea and distributes gemstones.  ‘Do you ever wonder from where your dreams are born? Look around you – this is where they all begin.’



 

 I watch the sun off the shore, and wander slowly, touching and tasting at please, stopping to savour whenever the mood takes hold.  Time has managed to yawn.  Echoes carry.  Shadows move in minutes. Old quarters beckon and now new dreams bring to arise from within.  We can make this up as we go along; creating our lives as we wander – leaving behind attachment to outcomes, the plans, the deadlines.  Only ideas from within, free-wheeling self-belief and the rich rewards serendipity yields. 


Never, never let me forget this day… as the small pearls of cloud shine high in unfolding blue, and Sade sings into my ear, ‘…I’d give you the world if it was mine…’

  

 

Road Trip: Kandy

The night sky over Bentota is filled with a thousand prayers.  Each one drifts along upwards on the moonstone blue scented smoke of a hundred burning quills of incense, curling and purring ever higher towards a flat, full moon; each one from a single candlelit courtyard inside a silent – but busy – temple.  Cats and dogs mingle, resting together.  Shackles of Time dissolve beyond vaults of darkness in this sacred light.  And the depths of Deep Peace begin to move out again into an endless Eternity, part of an aria that sings out into the alpha and the omega of Being and now.

 

The day has been spent journeying to Kandy, to see Sri Dalada Maligawa  (the Temple of the Sacred Relic of the Buddha).  A fourteen-hour round trip: there and back to Bentota.  The Temple was constructed from around the late 1600s, and is sacred to the Sinhalese Buddhists who strive to complete at least one pilgrimage here in their lifetime.  In the countless hours wishing, planning, and even imagining what this feels like – for some, the journey itself will become as memorable as the destination itself.

 

Travelling back to Bentota, one cannot help but be amazed by this beautiful land.  No gimmicks are needed in order to appreciate its beauty.  Deep, green valleys fall away into oceans of mist, all still, all silent.  Forests climb up along the roadside, ranging out and across the harvests of tea and peaks and mountains and clouds.  This is some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen and will ever see.

 

Journeying back, then, through the dusk, then twilight, then evening, I began to think of what’s left of my time here.  Time is running out.  There are numerous other destinations I am desperate to see here in Sri Lanka: the mystery of Sigiriya, the beaches of Unawatuna and even the peaks of Sri Pada (where Adam first set foot on earth, and where now the butterflies come to die).  But time is running out; so, too, the money.  Pilgrimage is not necessarily done in a single trip, rather its essence is a long, transforming journey unwinding at its own accord. 

 

And if we come to view our lives as a similar type of journey, then, perhaps, the smart money is on enjoying what we have, what we can do, what is in front of us… now.

 

Maybe the time has come to give up the chase; instead, spend more time journeying slowly, rather than rushing to destinations, appreciating the things in … and if I have to come back to a place like Sri Lanka to see the things I’d like to, then so be it.  For now, this amazing night in Bentota will more than suffice.