On-the-Road Tales

There is a Tahitian polynesian word something like ‘faa’, which describes the feeling one gets of general laziness and nonchalantness in the warm humid island environment. Well, it did not take long to kick in. Tahiti was not an intended destination for me, no real desire to ever set foot near the place but the only flight west off of Easter Island was to Papeete. I thought it rather silly to land there, spend a night and then move on so I alloted a week on the islands. I thought about shooting over to Bora Bora but quickly lost all desire to do anything even mildly constructive so I decided to bum around the Mo’orea for the week.

The campground locals were generally confused because the first few days I walked around saying hola and gracias to everyone. Slowly, my french vocabulary started reviving itself but it was a tough switch. 6 years of french and a summer in Dijon meant I could get communicate but it was way too much effort to socialize in french so I was super glad when a Swede showed up to camp. I got a good dose of Nordic personality -ie I never got his name because he believed this was useless information. It is true most interactions formed with people while on the road are fleeting and brief and you will never see them again but social politeness usually means you at least exchange names. His manner towards society’s norms was decidely curt and while it was refreshing in some instances and annoying in others – It was certainly amusing all around and gave a good perspective on the Swedish demenour.

The Swede, as he will thus far be referred to, does not do scandinavian winters and spends 3 months in some island chain around the world. This year, it was the society islands aka french polynesia. I could not imagine that long here but he travelled via ferry, cargo ship and airplane to many different islands (there are hundreds altogether) and camped around. I was glad for the company in the french abyss, especially one who knew the island. In a major bonus – he knew how to cook. So we bought groceries and he would drum up steak, pasta, all sorts of dinners and make creative hibiscus flower arrangements out of campground communal kitchen materials!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.