FRENCH POLYNESIADepending on the person, the word 'Tahiti' brings to mind images of honeymoon bungalows on stilts in the sea; white-sand atolls; the Mutiny on the Bounty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty); amazing coral and surf; and tales of South Seas black pearls.
However...the reality is that overpopulated, black-sand Tahiti (in vast French Polynesia) does not fulfill these Robinson Crusoe fantasties.
But the really, really great news is that the surrounding islands do that and more.
Scattered across the South Pacific, the Society Islands, which we're visiting, are ancient volcanic peaks, now bursting with plants and trees and sticking out of lagoons of varying jaw-dropping shades of blue-green-white. See pic above.
These lagoons (swimming heaven) are surounded by reef and coral islands ('motus', full of coconut trees), onto which big waves pound.
Maupiti was our favourite spot amid this baffling beauty, and not just for a reason some of you have heard about! This 4km-wide island, population 1,000 and more beautiful than Bora Bora, amazingly attracts almost no tourists. There are no hotels, only pensions.
There are also virtually no food supplies, due to a boat row, meaning the options for us (two of the world's leading fruit fans) were the fantastically-named pamplemousse, more pamplemousse and even more pamplemousse.
It's an enormous grapefruit, sweeter than in England and sometimes the size of my head.
Pamplemousse problems aside, we stayed Chez Manu, a lovely, plump Polynesian lady who had a sideline in paninis and had a very thin, lazy boyfriend called Jean-Claude.
Many women in these parts are big girls, and we found out why when Manu's long-overdue panini cafe food delivery arrived. A fully-stocked van was unloaded, consisting, to my amusement, entirely of Coca-Cola and Fanta.
We got stuck into another pamplemousse and quickly adopted to the locals' way of life, which consisted of doing nothing all day, then going to bed at 9pm.
The people aren't lazy - there just aren't any jobs in this tiny place, as is the case on many of French Polynesia's 118 islands spread across 2.5million square km of the South Pacific.
Major activites are drinking Hinano beer and playing ukeleles and petanque (boules).
We passed the time at a majestic beach, which we visited on bizarre bikes with fixed-chain brakes, and kayaking and swimming. This included - breathtakingly - a dip in the middle of the lagoon, with a volcano on one side and motu sand island on the other, possible after wading out on a submerged sand-spit.
Bora Bora is like a bigger Maupiti, but not quite as nice. It's jammed with tourists thanks to honeymoon holiday marketing continuing the popularity which began with American soldiers based here in World War Two.
To be fair, it's still pretty amazing, though.
The breezy balcony where I'm writing this blog is lovely and we had a crazy day yesterday snorkelling with 1.5m black-tip sharks, 2.5m lemon sharks and 1m-wingspan stingrays.
The rays were so friendly, somewhat alarmingly brushing their jellyish skin on our chests. Managed to briefly ride a ray - not every day you can say that! - dangling a fish in front of his mouth before the big fella sucked in (they have no teeth) his lunch so strongly he almost took my fingers with it.
Dived into French Poly's tumultous history of settlement (by catamaran canoe from Indonesia...Sir Steve Redgrave eat your heart out), explorers, whalers, missionaries, conquest and the almost-total destruction of native Polynesian culture.
That is is one thing travelling has taught me: every country I've visited where European colonists took over had its natives die in apalling numbers, through persecution, wars and, most devastatingly, disease - as these people had no natural immunity against European illnesses.
Got in touch with the locals in French Poly by learning their surfers' hello gesture (outstretched thumb and little finger)...this is where surfing was invented, after all. Also got picked out at a dance show to join in a mini-Tahitian traditional Olympics, throwing spears at a coconut and lifting a giant rock to head-height. Didn't try the open-a-coconut-with-your-teeth trick, though.
Now time to put right a few misconceptions about Tahiti and French Poly.
There are almost NO sandy beaches here. Even on the motu reef islands, beaches are sometimes beautifully sandy but equally as often scattered with spiky coral.
And as for the underwater coral itself, it's often not that impressive, certainly compared to reefs in Australia, SE Asia and Egypt.
What are impressive are the staggering lagoons and the fish - and the phenomenal quantity of them. Spotted dozens of species we'd never seen before, including the Nemo clownfish, found hiding in their anemone house on an island called Huahine, which strangely and amusingly (well, for me, anyway), translates as 'vagina.'
As French Poly is so remote, with almost everything imported, it's extortionately expensive, more than twice the price of England and above prices in Japan, Norway or Switzerland. The problem is the quality of accommodation and general infastructure is closer to that of Thailand.
The good news: a package holiday (which we didn't do) slashes the £600 A NIGHT cost of a hotel bungalow on stilts in the sea.
We juggled the costs, made a load of friends hitching around (public transport is almost non-existent)...and...what's better than sipping a bottle of gorgeous French wine on a Bora Bora pension balcony anyway?
