Neverneverland I AKA Maupiti
As the plane descends towards
Maupiti I am almost too enthralled to remember to take a photo through the
window. Below me is a place so amazing that I know it can’t be real. Here, in
the middle of the blue ocean is a skinny reef protecting a large almost
continuous motu, an impossibly turquoise lagoon, and a conical rugged green
island. It looks like the set for a movie. If anyone were to show me a picture
of it I’d recognize at once as a fake. The colours, everything about it - just
not possible. Then I get it, this is Neverneverland.
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| Last minute photo from plane window taken almost as an afterthought. |
I am met at the airport by
Audine, proprietor of a lodge, have a garland of fragrant flowers put around my
neck, and am whisked away by skiff to the motu where she lives and I will be
staying. My hut is on the beach and my bedroom window looks out over the
lagoon, the reef, and the open ocean. If I peer hard enough I can even see the
next island over. (It too is too bizarre to be true.) Supper that night, family
style at one long table, is an out of this world Chinese Polynesian American
mix with amazing food from start to finish.
In the morning I walk across
the motu and paddle a kayak five minutes out to a specified buoy. There I tie
up the kayak and drop into the warm waters of the lagoon just above a cleaning
station where the world’s largest rays come every morning. Within a minute an impossibly
large creature flies gracefully in and then hovers as pilot fish eat the
bacteria off its skin. I float for ages, mesmerized, as one ray after another
comes to be cleaned.
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| NOT my best picture of the rays but the one that best shows their size. |
That afternoon I swim in the
‘gin clear’ water on the other side of the motu over coral full of weird clams
with purple, blue, and green ‘lips’, and, of course, fish galore, I learn to
paddle an outrigger canoe, I walk around the motu, and, though I hate to admit
it even to myself, I realize that perhaps Sven was right, even if for the wrong
reasons, and it was time for me to go; I am much happier off the boat,
independent and able to shamelessly spend my time exploring, than I was on it.
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| Clam. |
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| Fish. |
Following days I climb to
Pan’s lookout (as I call it) at the top of the island, I cycle all the way
round the bottom stopping to visit everything on the way; an art gallery, a
site with ancient petroglyphs, a tiny store, an immense white sand beach, I go
back to see the rays again… And, as usual, one day blends gracefully into the
next until I have lost count. Audine and her husband Alain are the perfect
hosts. I feel embraced by their hospitality, welcome in their home. When Alain
wanders down the beach to visit the neighbours he takes me with him and we sit and
chat and drink rum punches and watch the sunset and I want to stay forever.
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| The view from Pan's lookout! |
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| Amazing sky one morning... |
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| ... and another morning. |
I want to stay forever.
