It was another moving day, and the
clouds above Bora Bora turned overcast as we imagined we could hear them saying,
“we waited for you to leave so your visit here could be perfect!” We drove around, had a last lunch at a snack
bar aside a beautiful beach, scooped up a bit of sand to remind us of the place,
and caught the ferry to the airport before boarding a plane to Maupiti. The clouds hung low and we got out first rain
shower as Gerald ferried us to Poe Iti, situated on one of the motus facing a beautiful
bay and the central island of Maupiti.
He had greeted us at the airport with two necklaces of incredibly
fragrant flowers, and we made the only great photo of the day in front of our
new bungalow.
Beauty and bungalow at
Poe Iti
While we relax after a huge dinner
in the beachfront dining area, it’s time to tell you a bit of the human history
of these incredible islands (by the way, you wouldn’t believe the homemade
coconut ice cream they serve after dinner here; it tastes more
coconutty than the coconut itself).
While relatively little is written about the original inhabitants, they
were surely the greatest oceanic navigators in the world at the time of their
arrival in the Marquesas around 300 A.D., and until the time of the great European
explorers. Without compass, astrolabe,
clocks, or even a system of writing, these ancient mariners crossed thousands
of miles of open sea to discover and settle the most remote inhabitable places
on the planet, including, later, Easter Island.
More than a thousand years after this migration from perhaps the
Philippines or Indonesia, Europeans had trouble not only finding the islands,
but returning to specific islands after their initial discovery.
While none of the original
Polynesian vessels has survived, descriptions of early Europeans, particularly
Cook, showed them to be a cross between the canoe and the catamaran, with two
hulls joined by connecting beams of wood on which were mounted platforms to
carry supplies and perhaps people. It is
said that more than 50 people could travel on one of these, with whatever
animals, plants, fruits and vegetables they could carry. It is almost unimaginable that such a
“primitive” people could cross thousands of miles of open ocean to make such
discoveries. Kind of puts the boat
people from Cuba and other places into perspective.
The islands were divided into
chieftainships, and battles and raids occurred within the different island
chains as manifestations for the desire for power and control. Sound familiar? There was a religion, and there remain the
vestiges of a few places of worship, called marae. And there was total inhibition in sexual
matters and complete lack of respectable clothing on the part of the natives,
particularly the beautiful females—a thoroughly disgusting state of
affairs. But after the European visits
by Magellan in 1520, Wallis in 1767, de Bougainville in 1768, and Cook in 1769,
the Spanish finally brought missionaries in 1772 to convert the heathens. After three years they threw up their hands,
and left. It was up to the crew of
Captain Bligh’s ship, who spent 6 months on Tahiti in 1878, to bring around the
natives. But as you recall, the lure of
the South Pacific helped convince Fletcher Christian and his comrades to kick Bligh
and his supporters off the ship, returning to Tahiti to partake further of the
many delectable fruits available there.
16 of the mutineers decided to make it their home, while Bligh took
eight of them and the ship to Pitcairn.
The eight were never brought to justice, but the ones remaining in
Tahiti who had not been killed were rounded up in 1791 and brought to justice
back in England.
Anyway, more missionaries came and
the marae were mostly destroyed. The
natives were converted to Christianity and required to wear decent clothing. Then the French took over and the place has
never been the same. More about that
next time. You have had all the
information you can take for one day, and it’s time to say good night.
Charlie and
Tricia
©2012
No comments:
Post a Comment