A Big World from a Small Island

09/09/2021 from NASA © Carolyn Fisk  So far, I have written about the places I visited, but never about where I live.....so here it is. Since 2015, I have been living on an island the size of Singapore in the the middle of the Pacific Ocean...Tahiti.  You're probably thinking of beaches, coconut trees, the 1962 movie "Mutiny of the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando (btw one of his granddaughters was in my class last year) or Disney "Moana", and you would be right. Though, I want to show you much more to Tahiti than these images. It is more than a tropical tourist destination about 4 000km away from the nearest metropolitan city, Auckland. It's an island with an incredible cultural heritage. This heritage has been passed down through surf, dance and va'a. Surfing originated in Polynesia and  Tahiti is THE surfing paradise, where spots with crashing waves can be heard for miles around.   The first person to  document board riding in the Pacific islands was...

  10/08/2021 Two days ago, I came back from one of the best holidays I had ever had. Sunny weather? Check. Sea? Check. Beaches? Double check. The paradisiac atoll my family and I went to was Tikehau, a two-hour flight from Tahiti. Tikehau has about five hundred inhabitants, almost all of whom are fishermen.  When we arrived on 3 July, after a one-hour delay, we were welcomed by our hotel's staff. They drove us in a minivan for ten minutes, past hundreds of coconut trees, to a tiny port where a motorboat was waiting for us. We sailed for twenty minutes before arriving at an overwater cabin, the hotel reception.  Our hotel was called, drumroll please,..."Le Tikehau", with 37 bungalows, 2/3 of which are overwater. The first three days our bungalow was an overwater suite, with a queen sized bed, two single beds, a huge bathroom with a bath and shower, and best of all, a double-levelled outside deck with two deck chairs, a fare pote'e with a table and chairs, and a showe...

  16/06/2021 Hiva Oa Nuku Hiva          In July 2017, my family and I visited the wild Marquesas islands which has a total population of about 9 346 over 13 islands.    It is best to visit French Polynesia during the cool season between July and September. (Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa, Ua Pou, Ua Huka, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva are the main islands) These islands are 1 418km east of Tahiti.  Our flight to Hiva Oa was three hours and thirty minutes long and there were only 42 seats in the plane so you felt like a part of it. Before we took off the crew asked us to weigh ourselves to make sure that the weight was evenly distributed in the aircraft for security measures. The Marquesans do not speak Tahitian, they speak Marquesan. They are very proud of their differences from Tahitians. In Hiva Oa, we had at first, been surprised by the locals' customs, they would hunt mountain goats and wild boars. Since these animals are wild the Marquisieans are allow...

07/06/2021 Moorea is an island of French Polynesia. It is a fifty minute boat ride away from Tahiti, French Polynesia's main island, where I've lived with my family for the past six years. I have a friend from Moorea who takes the boat each morning at 5h30 to make it to school by 7h15. Moorea is home to about 17 000 people, its population has more than tripled in the past 45 years. The word "Moorea" means yellow lizard.  Long ago, on the small island of Maiao a woman gave birth to an egg. When it hatched, a yellow lizard came out. Its parents called it Moorea. But one day the lizard became too big for them to take care of so they decided to abandon him on a canoe.  The lizard waited for its parents, however, seeing that they weren’t coming back, he understood that he had been abandoned.                                                       ...