French Polynesia

September 5–7, 13–16, 2011

Many people come here to lie on the beach, enjoy some fine dining and watch the sunset. We won’t disturb them.

The locals prefer fermented fish sauce.

Tahiti

A trash can at the airport.

Trash cans around the island.

A mother-and-daughter dumpster pair.

A large roadside dumpster, which looks like the head of a dim-witted Transformer.

Architecture.

Some timid graffiti. The naïve wall drawings in thin marker look like something you’d see in a school notebook.

All the buses (the one in the photo is a school bus) are decorated with ornaments around the perimeter.

A recessed ornament on a concrete flowerbed/fence.

The lampposts are also decorated with ornaments, only relief ones.

A traffic light.

Almost all municipal objects have metal pipe barriers to protect them from accidental car collisions. The lamppost is protected.

People here like to decorate poles by braiding palm leaves around them. The little electrical box is protected.

The fire hydrant is protected.

A manhole cover.

New payphones amidst the roots.

An old payphone.

Traffic signs. The sign for Zone 3 in Papeete (the capital of Tahiti) is embellished with two gardenia buds. Gardenias follow you everywhere around the island—they’re handed out on the plane, at the airport, in hotels, and so on. It’s the local symbol, sort of like the lei (orchid garland) in Hawaii.

One of the best ways to get an idea of what traffic signs in any given country look like is to glance at a driving school ad. As we can see, there’s nothing particularly special here.

It only takes a couple of hours to drive around the perimeter of the island. There’s nothing particularly special there.

Unless you count our old friend—the kilometer marker with a red top, a sign of French colonial influence (like in Laos, Vietnam, as well as Cambodia, Tunisia).

There’s only one unusual detail in French Polynesia: traffic lane markings (solid lines with occasional sets of four squares on the right and left) which permit passing slow vehicles on sections of the road where passing is otherwise forbidden.

A regular post box.

A rare model with the logo of the local post and the initials of the French Republic.

An extremely rare model—for monstrous volumes of mail.

The window display of a café for locals.

A street stand with sliced watermelons and melons for sale.

Moorea

Moorea is this island across the street from Tahiti. A ferry with dirty windows will get you there in half an hour.

Many take the ferry here to go swimming.

Many people swim.

Or paddle around in traditional Polynesian boats.

Or sit in bungalows with straw roofs, looking out on the water.

The fire hydrant located two meters away from the ocean is amusing. What, they can’t use the salt water if they need to put out a fire?

There’s a bike path on one of the roads.

A sign informs you how many people died and were injured this year.

Concrete signs in the shape of the island can be found all around the island. Too bad no one thought of putting a “You Are Here” indicator on each of them.

Eggs are sold in packs of 20 or 30, wrapped in cellophane.

Vegetable prices are marked right on their skin.

There’s nothing interesting on the island.

Well, except for the boxes with electricity meters standing by the road outside each house. But it’s really not worth coming here just for them.

Some Atoll on the Way

I’d never seen a real live atoll before. They’re pretty amazing: doughnut-shaped islands that are only a couple of dozen meters thick.

The plane lands here to fuel up on the way to Mangareva.

Mangareva

A backwater village on the outskirts of French Polynesia. Passengers’ luggage is carried into the airport and placed on a special two-tier slanted wooden table.

A dog sleeps inside a phone booth.

Schoolchildren rush home with fresh-baked French baguettes.

This is where I’m supposed to board the MV Claymore II, which will take me to Pitcairn Island. There’s no earthly reason I would end up here otherwise.

The ship’s passenger cabins have no portholes or ventilation. Each passenger is provided with a towel which looks like it hasn’t been washed since the ship’s maiden voyage. The smell coming from the towel is so bad that, were you to use it, no amount of soap would be able to wash it off ever again. A round-trip voyage aboard the Claymore II costs approximately four thousand dollars.