Sandwiched between two days exploring Tahiti, we opted to get back on the water for a day’s excursion to the nearby Teti’aroa atoll.
Teti’aroa has been known as Marlon Brando Island since the Hollywood actor purchased the islands in the 1960s. He had first ‘discovered’ Teti’aroa while scouting filming locations for Mutiny on the Bounty (which was eventually shot on Moorea). He arranged for a small village to be built on Motu Onetahi – the largest of Teti’aroa’s islets – and, lived there, on and off, til his death in 2000. Nowadays, there is an exclusive hotel (The Brando – $3000 a night!) on one of the islets, while the others are unoccupied and have become a very popular visitor attraction for day-trippers from Tahiti.
To reach Teti’aroa – even on a fast catamaran – takes a good two hours. Most of the cruises set off early to leave time to explore the islands before lunch, so we had an early start to reach the port in time for a 05:45 roll call. Thankfully, breakfast was served on the boat, so while the crew were checking-in latecomers and preparing the vessel for our sailing, we were tucking into coffee, bread and fruit.
With a capacity of 30, our catamaran was almost full, despite this being low season. Most of the other guests were locals. This being a Saturday, I’m sure many of them would have made a last-minute booking after seeing the perfect weather forecast.
After arriving at Teti’aroa, we were ferried, two at a time, over to Motu Onetahi on a dinghy. Though it couldn’t have been much after 9am, it was already blisteringly hot. The “beach” here is black, but not black sand like we saw on Tahiti (and New Zealand) – it is in fact dead coral, which makes it very hard and very spiny (we were advised against going ashore in bare feet!), but also a lot more interesting to look at than a few rocks.
Under Polynesian law, the first two metres of land around every island and motu is owned by the people, so there is no such thing as a private beach. Until recently, everything else here was private, and we saw several signposts declaring this to be private property of the Brando family. However, apart from the motu where The Brando hotel has been built, the remaining islets are deserted and the family eventually bowed to pressure from local activists and granted full access to visitors.
Following the lead of our catamaran-captain-cum-tour-guide, we wandered around the islet, sticking to the ‘beach’. Kit volunteered to provide English-language translations to the French commentary which was being given on some of the local plants and wildlife.
At the far side of the motu, dead coral is replaced by golden sand, and, in places, you can walk out several hundred metres without getting more than your feet wet. There are some deeper spots too, which provided us with an ideal spot for a swim.
Just off Motu Onetahi is a much smaller islet which is designated as a protected marine bird sanctuary. Though there are no signposts and no fence, tour guides make sure that no-one sets foot on the island. No big deal when you can stand in three-inch-deep water just a few feet away and see and take pictures of the birds from there. Amongst others, we saw a few dozen Red Footed Boobies – presumably, this is where the lone Boobie that we saw hanging out in the gannet colony in New Zealand was supposed to be!
After a lot of wandering around in this very blissful desert island paradise, and some more swimming, it was eventually time to head back to the boat. Rather than retracing our steps around the perimeter of the island, we took a path that goes straight through the middle. From the water, it appears that the motu is covered in dense forest, but in fact, once you get through the first few metres of coconut trees, the interior of the island is quite sparsely vegetated.
Back on the boat, we were treated to a delicious Polynesian lunch with barbecued fish, raw tuna salad, bread and rice. Some of the others went out snorkeling in the lagoon, but we were feeling quite lazy and spent a very relaxing afternoon on the catamaran chatting with some of the other guests, and crew.
On the way back to Papeete, the captain’s three year old son – who had been sleeping for most of the morning – decided that his Lego bricks would be far more fun to play with if Kit and I were his audience / occasional participants! For a while, he was quite happy making the usual birds, aeroplanes and cars from his eight bricks, but even in the middle of the Pacific ocean, modern technology is obviously quite pervasive as he decided it would be much more fun to build himself… an iPhone! Quite clever really, as with that simple rectangular block of bricks, you can make phone calls and take photos. He even had the swiping action going to end each call that he made!
Shortly before we arrived back into port, he was having such a good old time taking pictures of various people with his ‘phone’, that we decided he would like to try the real thing. After a very quick lesson with our camera, he was off! Needless to say, everyone on the boat had their picture taken – most several times – and we had some rather more… abstract… compositions too!
