The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest

by Graeme Lay

  After the fire dies down, we drag ourselves under the tarpaulin and fall asleep on the muddy ground, where my dreams are accompanied by the relentless roar of the reef waves thirty metres below.

  The sandy cove at the bottom of the bank is useful as an ablution facility. A small waterfall tumbles down the lava cliff, making a fine shower, and the rock pools are good for cleaning the teeth in. Next morning, while doing this, I glimpse a movement in the sea just beyond the reef. Scrambling up on to the rocks, I see a pair of cavorting and spouting humpback whales. They’re so close I could jump from the rocks and land on their backs, if I were brave enough. I call up to the others and they too come and watch. Zena tells me that ‘les baleines’ come close to the reef so that they can rub the barnacles off their bodies on the coral. Minutes later the huge creatures wallow their way down the coast and out of sight.

  For the next two days the forest clearing becomes our kitchen, lounge and dining room, the beach our bathroom. Zena is remarkable, a blend of Sherpa Tensing, legendary Maori Guide Rangi and chef Robert Carrier. One day he tosses a line from the rocks and catches small reef fish for dinner; the next day he scoops up crevettes – freshwater prawns – from the stream, catching them in his pareu. During the day the three of us make forays further along the spectacular, untamed eastern coast of Tahiti Iti, while Marcel stays behind to guard the camp.

  It is not easy hiking territory. The cliffs are steep, the way often blocked by waterfalls and swift-flowing streams. Sometimes we have to climb the cliffs hand over hand, using ropes which Zena has tied to the trunks of trees. It’s tough going, swinging from the end of a knotted rope and hauling ourselves up a slippery cliff, with boulders and rushing water waiting below if we slip. One day, following a river into the interior, we come to the foot of a cataract, eighty metres high, that spills down a black rock face in a hundred silken threads, turning it as shiny as patent leather.

  Later, making our way further around the coast, we come across the remains of a prehistoric marae, a platform of stone built on a small plain at the foot of the cliffs. Evidently the ancient Tahitians knew this coast well. As we make our way through a pandanus grove on the plain, Emile says, ‘I feel I am the first white man to be here.’ It’s corny, but I share the feeling.

  On the second afternoon it rains, without warning and in a grand deluge. Finding shelter under an open-sided shed built and used by the French military, we lunch on tinned fish and discuss corruption in politics. ‘We have no corruption in New Zealand politics,’ I suggest, ‘because our politicians have no imagination.’ Emile waves a now-stale baguette at me, and declares in his usual opinionated manner, ‘There has been only one incorruptible French leader. Only one.’ He looks at me challengingly. ‘Guess who?’

  At each name I reel off – Napoleon III, Pétain, de Gaulle, Mitterand – he shakes his head. ‘All corrupt. In some way, all corrupt.’ Then, grinning at the irony, he supplies the answer: ‘The one responsible for the reign of terror. Robespierre. Murderous, but incorruptible.’

  I have to admit, Emile’s French lessons are effective. By the end of the hike I can even write a minimalist rhyming poem in his language:

  J’ai vu

  la boue

  partout.

  And la boue, the mud of Tahiti Iti, probably because of its origins in volcanic soil, proves hard to erase. Even after scrubbing and dry-cleaning my sleeping bag, a dark brown stain remains obdurately along one side.

  On my return to Papeete, I check in for one night at the deluxe Sheraton Hotel. When I turn up at reception, filthy, feral, unshaven and dishevelled, I expect the staff to take one look and call security. But they are completely unfazed. I sign the register with a mud-encrusted hand, and the Tahitian porter carries my sodden boots and grimy pack to my room. And there, even as I luxuriate in a steaming hot bath and scrub the mud, my mind is still on the wild side.

  THIRTEEN

  LOSING ERROL

  TAHITI

  ‘I’M GOING ON THE Circle Island Tour. They said a 9.30 a.m. pick-up. It’s late.’ The man sitting opposite me in the hotel lobby in downtown Papeete clutches a plastic disposable camera. He’s about fifty, thickset, balding, with a flushed flat face, thin lips and gold-rimmed spectacles. His accent is English, with an overlay of New Zealand.

  ‘It’s only 9.35 now,’ I point out.

  ‘Are you going on the Circle Island Tour too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He gets up and extends his hand. ‘I’m Errol. From Morrinsville. I’m a schoolteacher. Primary school. Nine-year-olds, mainly.’

  His anxious, florid face and pudgy body remind me of Billy Bunter. He wears a bright purple shirt covered in yellow tropical flowers and the names of the Hawaiian islands. His trousers are dark blue, his black shoes heavy, so that his top half is in the tropics, his lower half still in Morrinsville. He keeps glancing around, through the open doorway, at busy Boulevard Pomare. A thin, barefooted Tahitian woman is hosing down the tiled pavement, which was covered with the dust which regularly coats everything in Papeete. Behind Errol a white minibus with Tahiti Tours on its side draws up.

  ‘Here it is,’ I tell Errol, and he scrambles to his feet.

  The driver introduces himself as Teva. He’s in his late twenties, part-Tahitian, part-Rarotongan, a slim, handsome man with glossy, raven-black hair. The only other passenger is a middle-aged Chilean woman who sits up at the front next to Teva, casting admiring glances at him as he drives out of town. She is dark and plump, with buck teeth, and is dressed in a tight white T-shirt and crimson trousers. She looks at the light rain that is falling and says to Teva reproachfully, ‘I leave the sun in Chile to come to Tahiti, and I get rain. I fly all night, twelve hours, and here it rains.’

  Teva smiles patiently. ‘It’s just a shower, it won’t last. For the last few weeks here, fine weather every day.’

  Errol leans forward. ‘It’s been dry at home, too. No rain in Canterbury for ages. Or Marlborough. Things are getting desperate.’

  The Chilean woman stares at him, mystified by the place-names.

  ‘Our wet season is from November to March.’ Teva is speaking into a hand-held microphone now. ‘Right now, the dry season.’

  ‘It’s dry now in Fiji, too,’ says Errol. ‘And Samoa. Dry all over the Pacific at this time of the year.’

  I’m sitting a couple of rows behind Errol. Although the front half of his head is bald, the rear half is covered in wispy black hair which grows in rows right down his wide flat head and inside his Hawaiian shirt collar.

  We drive eastwards, through the sprawling suburbs of Papeete and out of the town. The road hugs the coast. On this eastern side of the island there’s only a narrow coastal plain; to our right, lava cliffs rise sheer from the road. Teva points out some springs which burst from the foot of the cliffs, and near Papenoo we see women filling plastic water bottles from pipes jammed into the basalt rock.

  This is Tahiti’s windward shore, and the reef is intermittent and close in. The freshwater streams which pour down from the mountains prevent any continuous coral formations from occurring here, and the easterly trade winds batter the coast, bringing rain which saturates the slopes and often causes landslides. But today, now that the shower has passed, the sky is clear and burning blue. Past Papenoo, Teva stops and points out scores of young people bobbing in the bay below the road. The waves are sloppy but there are plenty of them. Teva takes up his microphone again.

  ‘Surfing is very popular in Tahiti. We have a stage of the world championships held here every year, at Teahupoo.’ Two nut-brown surfers scramble up the bank below the road with short boards under their arms. ‘Children start with boogie boards, which are cheap, then later they buy proper boards, which are expensive. Some drop out of school and surf all day, every day.’

  Errol cranes forward. ‘It’s the same in the Waikato. The young ones go to Raglan, stay there for weeks, surf all the time. Some of them never go back to school.’

  A few minutes later
we reach Arahoho, a pretty cove with a black-sand beach and a wave break on a point composed of a lava flow. A surfer lies on top of his board, waiting for the right wave. Teva leads us to a hole about a metre across at the base of the cliff on the landward side of the road. ‘Stand here for a minute,’ he says. We watch the hole curiously. Without warning, there is a horrendous sucking sound, and a powerful gust of warm air shoots up from the hole, battering our faces. Errol staggers back, clutching his spectacles; the Chilean woman’s cigarette is nearly torn from her hand. Teva laughs. ‘It comes up from the sea, up a tunnel under the road. A blow-hole. In French, un trou du souffleur.’

  Errol adjusts his glasses. ‘Just like in Tonga,’ he says. ‘Blow-holes all along the coast in Tongatapu. The south coast, that is. None on the north coast.’

  The coastal plain gradually widens and we pass through the village of Tiare which, in keeping with its name, ‘Flower’, has won the competition for the prettiest and tidiest in all Tahiti. The road here is bordered with bright lilies; the hedges flare with hibiscus blooms; the village houses are smothered in palms, breadfruit trees, torch ginger and gardenia bushes. The road rises and falls, giving us constantly changing views of the green mountain massif, the crystal-clear waters of the rivers which flow down from it, and the intensely blue Pacific to our left. This is a wild, unspoilt, picturesque coast. The beach sand is black, but I’m not bothered by that. I grew up beside the sea in Taranaki, where the sand was never any other colour.

  Teva describes the flora of the island. ‘We have hundreds of introduced plant species in Tahiti. Trees, shrubs, flowers. Many were brought early last century by an American botanist, Harrison Smith. He started the famous botanical gardens at Papeari.’

  ‘Was that the same Harrison Smith who built hydroelectric power stations in New Zealand? In the South Island?’ asks Errol.

  Teva frowns. ‘I don’t think so. No, it can’t be. This Harrison Smith was a botanist.’

  He guides the bus unhurriedly around the headlands. We pass a group of Tahitians preparing to launch their pirogue, an outrigger canoe. Teva comments into his microphone: ‘Unemployment is quite high in Tahiti, but many people who don’t have a regular job get by, fishing for mackerel and bonito or growing their own food.’

  ‘It’s like that in Rarotonga,’ says Errol. ‘Catch their own fish, grow their own food. Self-sufficient there, too.’

  Teva nods, continues his commentary. ‘But many people have come to Tahiti from the outer islands, from the Tuamotus, from the Marquesas. They put a lot of pressure on resources.’

  ‘Just like the Cook Islands,’ Errol says. ‘People come to Rarotonga from the outer islands, take a lot of land, a lot of fish from the lagoon.’

  The Circle Island Tour reaches its quarter mark at Hitiaa, adjacent to the anchorage of French voyager Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, whose frigate appeared on the horizon here in 1768. He was the second European explorer after Samuel Wallis to arrive in Tahiti. With some difficulty Bougainville’s ship managed to enter the lagoon at Hitiaa, then stayed for nine days. On his return to France his vivid descriptions of Tahiti were published, and delighted French readers. A plaque commemorating Bougainville’s visit has been placed beside the road at Hitiaa, and adorned with an apricot-coloured bougainvillea.

  We get out of the bus and look at a river which flows, shallow and translucent, into the sea. Teva points to a coconut palm draped with a climbing plant: ‘Fruit salad plant. It lives off the coconut palm, see?’

  ‘Epiphyte,’ adds Errol quickly. ‘Very common in Sri Lanka, that genus.’

  For one wild moment I consider shoving him over the bridge rail and into the river. Errol is not just a bore, he’s a superbore, a titanic bore. I don’t know why he bothered to come on this tour – he already knows everything, has seen everything and been everywhere. He pesters and browbeats poor Teva at every opportunity. Teva is admirably patient, clearly used to dealing with tedious tourists, but I can’t stand it for much longer. Errol’s pudgy face and incessant drone have become anathema. And the worst part is, we’re only a quarter of the way around the island. I will have to endure his company for another five hours, until the circle’s complete and I get to Taravao, where I’m booked to stay the night. Five more hours of Errol.

  The coastal plain widens (‘Just like the eastern side of Vanua Levu. That’s in Fiji’). Partly to control my hands, which are twitching with the urge to garrotte Errol, I pick up the map Teva has given us, and see that we’re now in the district of Faaone, approaching Taravao and the isthmus that joins the two islands, Tahiti Nui and Tahiti Iti. Teva points to a grove of mature but unusually stunted coconut palms: ‘Those are especially bred so that their crowns grow low to the ground, to make it easier to harvest the nuts.’

  Right on cue, Errol comes in. ‘Yes, that species was developed in Queensland. They have them in the Philippines, too.’

  At that moment, still staring at the map in my hand, and trying unsuccessfully to block out the sight and sound of the hideous Morrinsvillian, I have a flash of inspiration. Obviously, Errol won’t leave me; ergo, I must leave Errol. Why not get Teva to drop me off now, in Taravao? It’ll mean arriving a few hours early at my hotel but give me more time on the isthmus. And, as Teva’s tour goes daily, I could arrange to get picked up tomorrow during his next circuit and finish the tour sans Errol.

  I move up to the front of the bus, out of earshot of Errol, and let Teva know my plan.

  ‘No problem,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘Hotel Fare Nana’o is just up here. I’ll see you out on the road there, midday tomorrow.’

  As I stand on the side of the road with my bag at my feet, watching the bus depart, I catch a glimpse of Errol’s face at the window. Realising that his audience has now been halved, he looks as if he is about to burst into tears.

  Bliss. Before me is the sea, beneath me is the sea, around me is the sea. Above me is a roof of woven palm fronds and the Tahitian sky. Fare Nana’o is built on piles set into an islet of coral rock, two steps from the beach. But it’s a world away from that overpriced Pacific cliché, the ‘overwater bungalow’. Its creators, Jean-Claude and Monique Meriaux, were Parisians who wanted to lead a completely new life. Twenty years ago they came to Tahiti and bought a strip of coastal land near Taravao. Jean-Claude was a builder but an unorthodox one. Relishing the availability of the natural tropical materials, he began constructing by hand a house for him and Monique and their eight children.

  When the large, low house was completed, he decorated it with his big wooden sculptures, then built a fare – a thatched hut – among the rampant foliage. He used peeled logs, driftwood, rough-sawn timber and palm fronds, and gave the fare a steeply pitched roof. Then he built another, beside the sea, out of the same materials. When a storm blew over an ironwood tree on the property, so that its big trunk leaned out over the lagoon, Jean-Claude sawed off its branches and built a fare in its crown, like an eagle’s nest – a very comfortable eagle’s nest, with beds, tables and a small library, reached by climbing along the leaning trunk by a series of notches cut into it. Jean-Claude and Monique called their unique tree house Fare Aito, and their tree-engulfed complex Fare Nana’o.

  My fare – Fare Heremeti – is a little way along from the tree house. It has a table built around a centre post, well-stocked bookshelves with reading matter in French and English, an attic bed reached by a driftwood ladder and, from its deck, a hypnotic view of Taravao Bay and the slopes of Tahiti Iti. When I crumble the leftover bits of a baguette and drop them from the deck, they’re gobbled up by the reef fish which glide and dart among the coral formations below.

  Some years ago, Jean-Claude and Monique separated, leaving Monique to run Fare Nana’o. She is a serene, kind, sophisticated woman, a history graduate of the Sorbonne and a survivor of the student revolution of the 1960s. Meals are taken communally at the main house, in a slate-floored dining room whose walls are an interesting jumble of bookshelves, original paintings and wooden sculp
tures. At lunch I sit between Tuco, an Easter Islander who is a gardener at the hotel, and Bertha, a Tahitian girl who helps in the kitchen. Lunch is baked mackerel, netted this morning in the lagoon, poisson cru and salad, with wine from Bordeaux. Conversation is in Franglais. Everything is done without fuss or formality, and, best of all, it’s Errol-free.

  When Monique learns that I prefer to explore by bike, she finds one for me. I cycle around the edge of the lagoon, past the little boat harbour and up a hill into Taravao village, which stretches like a belt around the narrow waist of the isthmus. The last section of the road is steep, and as I push the bike up the short hill I see that I am being watched by a young, heavily armed French soldier standing behind the barbed-wire gate of the military barracks which forms the core of Taravao.

  For hundreds of years this two-kilometre-wide isthmus has been of crucial strategic significance. Before European colonisation it was a vital portage for canoes, and so fiercely contested territory for the warring tribes on both islands. In 1844 the French built a fort on the isthmus to subdue the Tahitians, who thought foreign rule an unappealing prospect, and there have been French troops here ever since.

  I park my bike outside the big supermarket in the centre of Taravao, and go inside to buy a bottle of water and a baguette. At the checkout are clusters of soldiers, very young men in tight-fitting, mud-brown shirts, shorts and combat boots. Their shorts in particular look impossibly tight. Big, athletic and tanned, with closely cropped hair, the soldiers look like boy scouts on steroids. Then, amid the babble of French, I hear a loud American voice: ‘Okay, guys, move along there will yuh?’ It comes from a tall, angular soldier in his mid-twenties.