Note: This is the first in a series of posts about French Polynesia. The series continues here.
How did I meet Sam? It started with spotting a vague yet intriguing blog reference to “spear-fishing at the Mo’orea reef with a Maori fisherman.” Then some googling. Then driving up a muddy, rutted road near Ha’apiti that definitely fell outside of my rental’s insurance coverage. Parking next to a long-abandoned structure over which the jungle and a flock of chickens fought for dominance, and climbing over a tree felled across the road by that afternoon’s storm. Trespassing my way up a private driveway and staring down Marley and Roxy, two of the South Pacific’s cuddliest guard dogs. And, finally, pleading in what was evidently sufficiently comprehensible Frenglish that Sam’s planned hiatus be mercifully reconsidered because I was on Mo’orea for just two more days.
And so the next morning, after submitting my self-administered COVID-19 test to the rural hospital on the opposite side of the island (a mid-visit checkup required of all guests in French Polynesia, and my third test in a week), and then waiting a bit longer to recover my sight after having poked my own brain with an eight-inch nasal swab — an indescribable delight — I meet Sam near the Eglise de la Sainte Famille. Sam apologizes that his daughter’s school activity makes it impossible for him to take me fishing, but that his young friend and apprentice, Manu, will do the honors expertly, after which we’d all meet Chez Sam for lunch.
PADDLING OUT
We carry our gear across the island-looping road to the small bay, where Manu helps Sam pull his outrigger (va’a, in the native tongue) down from its dry dock of two eight-foot palm trunks that jut out over the water, their bases lodged securely among giant lava rocks. Sam heads back to his truck and on to his daughter’s school, while Manu and I load our gear and clamber aboard, Manu taking the back seat from which he’ll have primary control over our navigation. We start to paddle our way out of the bay.
“Have you canoed much?” Manu asks me in excellent English.
“A bit, but never in an outrigger.”
“Good. You just paddle, I do the rest.”
“OK.”
Paddle, paddle, paddle.
“Better to paddle maybe four or five times on each side, not just one, too much switching,” Manu instructs.
“OK.”
Paddle, paddle, paddle.
“Better to turn the paddle around,” he adds.
(For the record, I was not paddling with the handle-end in the water, thank you. His instruction meant a twist on the axis rather than an end-to-end flip. Unlike standard-issue canoe or kayak oars, the carbon-fiber shovel of Manu’s competition outrigger oars are angled to cut more efficiently into the water, and mine were cutting the inefficient way. Manu goes on to say that he inherited his grandfather’s wooden oars, whose surface area is at least double, maybe triple that of these oars, and displace a lot of water, but which are also “very, very heavy,” and so, gratefully, we’re using his lighter set today.)
Before we turn away from the shoreline, Manu steers us toward a bush that dominates a small outcropping. It’s the size of a bungalow and riddled with bright yellow blossoms. He plucks a couple and tosses one my way. “Hibiscus. To wipe inside your mask. Better than…” and then he makes a ptah! ptah! spitting noise and accompanying gesture that those who dive or snorkel recognize as the standard method of fog prevention. “Cool. Who taught you that?” I ask. “My grandfather.”
Manu’s mother was the seventh of thirteen children. His father’s love of eagles led to his son’s name of Raimanu, the native word for this majestic bird that is not native to these islands but whose tattooed image adorns Manu’s shoulders in a shape not dissimilar to that of the island itself. His father having gone into construction, Manu learned to fish from his grandfather, using the same techniques I’ll witness — and, to a limited and decidedly novice extent, practice — today in these waters that have been home to his family for innumerable generations. He tells me that in his twenty years, he has never left Mo’orea or its sister island, Tahiti.
As we distance ourselves from the shoreline, it occurs to me that I can’t recall having seen water quite so clear, or that captured the sunlight just so, in any sea in which I’ve ever paddled or swam: not the Caribbean, not the Aegean, not the Andaman, not anywhere. Looking back over my shoulder, I see mountains reminiscent of Kauai’s Nā Pali coast, but somewhat more inviting and even, yes, more lush. “Do you ever get tired of the beauty of your home?” I ask Manu. “Never,” he responds unhesitatingly and with a real, not imagined, sense of wonderment in his tone. “Every day is amazing.”
THE NET AND THE CATCH
Within a hundred or so meters of the breakers marking the reef, the cadence of Manu’s strokes slows somewhat, from which I infer that we’re approaching our spot. “OK, this is it,” he confirms as he works the roped weight that will anchor our small vessel. We put on our snorkel gear and jump in at a depth just over my head, Manu with a fifty-meter net in his left arm. For the next ten minutes, I watch from above and below the surface as he gently weaves the net among the coral formations to eventually lay out a rough semicircle that, point to point, runs perpendicular to the shoreline. The net isn’t tall enough to cover the entire span from surface to seafloor, but it covers enough to catch lunch.
“All right, here’s what happens next,” Manu instructs, slowly and methodically, as we dogpaddle at the far end of the net. “I go over there, you stay here. When I give the signal, you swim as fast as you can to the other end of the net. This means you swim toward the lighthouse, fast, and stop at the net. But don’t stop before then, OK?” I nod, and he swims away, northward, to my left as I face the shore.
With my sightline just at water level I can’t make out the details of whatever’s going on with Manu out at about what would be the far edge of an imaginary circle completed by our net, but his “signal” is unmistakable, and so I turn toward the lighthouse and start to swim. The instant my mask submerges, I’m startled by a wall of fish maybe five meters in front of me — dozens and dozens of them in many varieties and schooling in the sort of density that I’ve only seen in National Geographic — racing across my screen from left to right and toward the net. I’m swimming hard, but they’ve all passed by the time I intersect the line of their flow, and the water seems suddenly vacant as I continue toward my designated stopping point.
Manu, meanwhile, has been swimming directly toward the center of the circle, and then veers off toward the end where I had been. Here he signals me to come back over, and begins to carefully roll up the net with a rainbow of fish now caught in its web. He hoists this up into the outrigger and we climb back aboard.
“Good catch,” he nods as he maneuvers fish out of our net and into our bucket. “Sam will be happy.”
I report excitedly on my astonishment at watching the wall of fish blur by. Manu explains that he slapped the face of the water to frighten them in that direction, and that the trajectory of his swimming was to chase them toward the net, while mine was to discourage them from turning around. So simple, so perfect.
He also explains that the wildly colorful parrot fish, of which we’ve caught half a dozen or so, are especially meaty and tasty, and that we’re going to scale and clean the fish there in the water so that everything is returned directly to the sea. I glance around for the implements we’ll use for this task and, finding none, see that he’s using his hands. Already feeling a bit outmanned by the proceedings thus far, I insist on giving it a go as well. “OK, just like this,” he demonstrates as he grinds his thumbs and, in alternation, clustered index and middle fingers into the side of a fish, scraping repeatedly from tail toward head. “Just make sure you push hard into the flesh or the scales go under your fingernail. Not good.” Manu scales all but two of our fish in the time that I scale one, but my efforts pass muster and I feel at least slightly manned-back-up. I ask why he throws the other, untouched fish back. “Not very good to eat. But very strong. It will be OK even after being out of the water so long.”
That bit of work done, Manu points us not toward the shore, but toward the breakers where we see several late-morning surfers riding two-meter waves. We paddle out into large swells at the mouth of the channel and I wonder what’s up (in addition to the surf) as he turns us back toward the island. And then he starts paddling ferociously as a big swell catches and carries us what seems close to a quarter mile and at a surprisingly quick clip. It dawns on me that we are surfing in an outrigger. “That was awesome! Let’s do it again!” I exclaim, not fully appreciating that I was not doing fully much of the awesomeness-generating work. But Manu’s having fun, too, so we do it again, and it is, truly, awesome.
As we approach the shore, we intuitively and silently zig-zag a bit off course to pick up two bottles, a reusable shopping bag and a chunk of styrofoam. This sobering catch on board, I ask Manu whether Mo’orea faces the same challenge as many other remote Pacific islands, that of tide-pushed plastic piling in heaps on less-frequented beaches. “Not really. Some care and pick it up. Others don’t care and leave it. I care.”
OUR LUNCH AND SAM’S EDENIC GARDEN
We dock the outrigger and cross the main road, where we meet Manu’s friend, Ati, who accompanies us up the side road I’d driven the evening before, to Sam’s house. Ati had been the long-tenured head baker and confectioner at the Mo’orea Intercontinental before it closed due to the Coronavirus and everyone except a skeleton security crew was laid off with only a few weeks’ severance pay, a sorrowful story played out in tens of thousands of variations in these islands. Today, Sam has enlisted Ati to oversee the stove, which involves, among other duties, char-roasting the uru (which the locals know as “bread fruit,” for its center that is the love child of a frisky Yukon Gold and a voluptuous gros pain), baking the taura (an indigenous root similar to taro, but richer in flavor) and frying the fish. Meanwhile, Manu and I — mostly Manu — harvest, husk and shred the coconuts while Sam prepares his own take on poisson cru au lait de coco, a regional specialty of raw fish (usually tuna or marlin — today it’s marlin, which Sam prefers over tuna) in fresh coconut milk enlivened by lime, onion, cilantro and other spices.
When our meal is ready, I tell Sam (or at least I think I tell Sam, in French), “Manu and Aaron do all work fish. But Sam do not work fish. Manu and Ati and Aaron eat. Sam not eat. C’est bien?” Sam smiles, rolls his eyes, and gestures for quiet as he prays over the bounties of the sea and the earth that are available to us in such abundance and in such close proximity. And then we eat. And every bite of it tastes at least twice as good as whatever you’re imagining.
Sam proves to be more loquacious and considerably more affable — even when doing an unnervingly convincing haka at me while he squeezes coconut milk through a cheesecloth — than I’d supposed at our first encounter the evening before, and he explains many things to me over the course of our relaxed, multi-hour meal. For instance, he explains that his two dragon tattoos (one on the left side of his abdomen and the other, more abstract and angular one on his back) are in homage both to his Chinese birth year and to his ancestors. These, he says, hailed from what is today Taiwan and populated the islands in progressive ebb-and-flow waves, by cultivating and planting newfound islands, retreating for several years to previously established homelands, returning to harvest and colonize, and then proceeding in similar fashion to more distant islands.
The four of us talk about home, travel, family, la pandémie, nature, work. Manu asks me what kind of work I do, then seeks to clarify my response with the question, “You mean, with a computer?” and makes a typing gesture with his hands. When I confirm, with words and gesture, that, yes, I do “computer work,” he nods and gives a subtly forgiving look that helps me to understand that on these islands, “computer work” isn’t real work, but that it’s all right for other people to do, elsewhere.
Dessert is a banana dipped in a passionfruit, each of which was attached to its respective tree all of four minutes ago. The guys laugh as I nearly convulse, overwhelmed by the flavor of my first bite. Too effusive for French, my reaction goes straight to Manu for real-time translation: “Whoa! This banana is so flavorful, it almost tastes like fake banana candy!” Manu translates through his chuckle, and the guys laugh again.
Sam walks me through his hillside garden. We walk it for at least half an hour without treading the same path twice. I stagger at the verdancy and variety. He points out plants and trees carried home as seed or sapling souvenirs from places he’s visited or that friends and relatives abroad have sent him. He has a particular fondness for Thai fruits, vegetables and spices, which he says thrive in this climate, and also has rooted ambassadors from Mexico and elsewhere. I tell him he lives in Eden. “Oui, je sais,” he agrees.
Back at Chez Sam, I promise my new friends that I will someday bring back one of my sons to learn how to fish in the way that Manu’s grandfather taught him. And that, if and when Manu decides the time to venture beyond these islands has come, my home in American is open to them, although I appreciate that he is in no hurry to go anywhere. They send me on my way with smiles and a bucket of banana, guava, passionfruit and a miniature pineapple that will be my breakfast the next morning.
Contact: Sam’s wife and business manager, Sylvie, can be reached at +689 87 35 79 23.
MORE MO’OREA NOTES
- The ferry between Tahiti and Mo’orea runs frequently and costs about $30 round-trip. Of the two carriers, Aremeti and Terevau, the latter uses faster vessels but doesn’t offer on-board dining, and the Aremeti’s baguette sandwiches alone are almost worth the extra time.
- Enjoy views of the Opunohu Valley and Cook and Opunohu Bays from the Belvedere Lookout. The shortest version of this requires a 15-minute drive off the main road, but the lookout can also be hiked to, and trailheads at the lookout lead farther up the mountain. The lookout road intersects with the Route des Ananas (Pineapple Way), a U-shaped road connecting Cook and Opunohu Bays and framing Mount Rotui. Along the Route, look for opportunities to take small side roads higher into the hills and keep your nose attuned to the mild, sugary-sweet scent that infuses the air.
- The coral garden a couple hundred meters off of the public beach at Tema’e offers some of the finest snorkeling I’ve experienced, highlighted by my first encounter with the distinctive neon-blue (and other colors) clams, tridacna gigas, that close, endearingly, at one’s approach then reopen slowly. The palm-lined, white-sand beach at Tiahura should be in a museum somewhere — maybe Gaugin took care of that — although the snorkeling is not the island’s best. At Tipaniers Beach (accessed, at least by me, by walking the driveway along the west perimeter of the Hotel les Tipaniers property), rent a kayak for $5 per hour and paddle fifteen minutes to the banc de sable raies et requins (you can Google map to the exact spot using that phrase), a sandbar where rays and friendly blacktip sharks hang out. Sightings are more likely in the morning than in the afternoon, and in about 45 minutes of milling around at the banc, I saw several sharks and was at one point surrounded — within an arm’s length — by a trio of sizeable rays (seemed just shy of two-meter wingspans), and saw a few others of similar size at less clench-uppy distances. I didn’t visit the Mo’orea Lagoonarium, which appears to receive higher marks than Bora Bora’s by those who have been to both. I imagine that the advantage of the Lagoonarium is that you are more or less guaranteed to see creatures, whereas at the banc you’re dealing with fully wild animals and so it’s more of a roll of the dice but potentially more thrilling.
- Late-summer through mid-fall is humpback whale migratory season here, and several outfitters offer tours to see them, including snorkeling and diving options. I didn’t do this, but a friend who snorkeled with humpbacks off of Bora Bora describes the experience, not surprisingly, as “unbelievable…you can hear them singing when they are close.”
- Hard to complain about free samples during a factory tour at Jus de Fruits de Mo’orea, on the west shore of Cook’s Bay.
- By appointment, you can be inspired by the efforts of volunteers at the Te Mana O Te Moana (The Power of the Ocean) sea turtle rescue sanctuary operating within the grounds of the (currently closed) Intercontinental Hotel.
- Catch a sunset — or two, or three — from the northwest tip of the island, near the old Club Med ruins.
QUESTIONS FOR READERS
- Where does Mo’orea rank on your list of earthly paradises?
- What are some of your most surprisingly memorable experiences with locals during your travels?
- Any COVID-19 travel success stories to share? Any extraordinary precautionary measures taken, beyond masking, social distancing, and testing?
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