Raiatea - Tahaa

Antoine's view

A thousand years ago, it seems that it was from marae Taputapuatea, a vast open air temple in the southern part of Raiatea, the largest of the Leeward Islands, that the large sailing canoes sailed, taking with them tne Polynesians that discovered and settled the three ends of the "Polynesian triangle" Easter Island, New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands. History, to some extent, repeats itself, for it is today from Raiatea that leave today's double canoes, the catamarans and monohulls that sailors charter for a week or two to cruise Polynesia...

Raiatea, in particular it's north-western part, neat the small marina of Apooiti, has become during the past twenty years the vital centre of navigation in French Polynesia; it is helpful to those who arrive by plane and spend a week or two cruising the islands, as well as to oceanic cruisers, who arrive on their own sailboats, and who are glad to find here a shipyard where they can haul out their boat...

Many long distance sailors have settled on the shores of Raiatea or on those of its sister island, enclosed in the same vast lagoon, the island of Tahaa, famous for the vanilla it grows.

Half way between these two islands, rising from one of the vast reefs, just above water, that clutter this part of the lagoon, until the year 1995, stood a picturesque lone palm tree, planted on an islet, two meters across; this remarkable islet was prominent on the cover of one of my photo albums "Iles. était une fois", and in the titles of the seres of films bearing the same name. Then a storm took away the lone palm tree. as my crossings sometimes bring me back to Polynesia, I plan, with some cruising friends who now live in Tahaa, to go and plant another coconut tree on this tiny islet!

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