My Trip To Tahiti

[All names have been changed to protect my friends.  And other people.]

As some of you know, Todd and I (and six other screenwriters) were lucky enough to be invited to Tahiti by the French government in some kind of boondoggle meant to increase filming and tourism.  We were given a very generous whirlwind six day tour. 

There are two overarching themes that defined my trip to Tahiti:  humiliation and danger.

There is no more authentic Tahitian culture anymore.  (I'm talking about the nation of French Polynesia, not just the main island of Tahiti.)  Europeans arrived with smallpox and God.  Smallpox killed 90-98% of the population, and missionaries came in and obliterated what was left by making them put on some fucking clothes and worship Jesus.

Add to that the fact that the Tahitians never had a written language, and they have no past.  They don't even have a good creation myth - something about a couple of dudes showing up in a canoe and fucking the natives.  Where'd the natives come from?  Another island.

But the French thought the islands were pretty, so they kept them for themselves.  The only jobs left on the islands are:  dressing up like a white man and working for the French government, or dressing in some cartoon approximation of what they used to dress like and performing for tourists.

Here's what I kept thinking about the whole time I was there:  imagine that Winnie the Pooh was once a member of a large race of Pooh Bears that ruled California.  Fat Southerners came and burned down their towns and killed them all, save Winnie. 

But they made Winnie an offer:  we've got a job for you.  You get to live at Disneyland, where we'll build a shitty papier mache version of your lost homeland and force you to live in it.  Oh, and wear this red t-shirt and no pants.

Winnie doesn't want to do it, but he's got to have honey. 

The final humiliation?  Spending all day shaking hands with the descendants of the fat Southerners who killed your grandparents while some other jackass takes your picture.

And now for the danger:  there are lots of experiences in America that offer controlled thrills.  Rock climbing, for example:  here's the path, you shouldn't fall, but if you do, the rope will catch you.

The Tahitian version of that:  here's the path, you shouldn't fall, but if you do, you fucking die.

Here's how the trip began:  we take a redeye to Tahiti, arrive around 4 a.m., take another flight to Bora Bora, take a boat to our hotel, have an hour to slam coffee into our body before we have to meet at the beach to jet ski to a private island to see some turtles or something.

Apparently this is a very big deal - the turtles are off limits to the general public, but more importantly, the jet skis aren't supposed to be taken out of the harbor, and we're going to cross the open ocean for an hour in each direction.

We have two native guides and an ever enthusiastic rep from the tourism bureau who will serve as our jet ski experts.  They're stoked - they've never gotten to take the equipment out into deep water, and they can't wait.  They ask us who's ever been on jet skis - I think two out of the eight writers have any experience.  One guy has been on a snowmobile.

They say it's easy - just follow them, keep 100 meters or so apart, and if the guy you're following makes some arcane hand gesture, stop. 

Let's go!

One guy raises his hand.  "Where's reverse?"

No reverse on a jet ski.

Let's go!

One more question:  "Where's the throttle?"

We're wearing on their patience. 

The guides take off and we follow.  "Follow" isn't really the right word - they're having too much fun to travel in a slow, safe line.  They buzz back and forth in the wake of speedboats in the harbor, jumping in the air.  We try to keep up, but the wake from the boats and the guides' jet skis are bashing the shit out of us.

There's an interesting phenomenon at play - the throttle is a lever on the right handle.  If you start to fall off the back of the jet ski because of a huge wave a guide swamped you with, your hand naturally pulls backwards and accelerates to full speed, just making everything worse.

Remember, all of this is in the harbor.

Soon we're out in the open water.  We gather to make sure we haven't lost anyone yet.  I take a moment to read the warning sign on my jet ski - I must KEEP MY SHORTS ON.  If they come off and I fall off the jet ski, water will be forced in my anal cavity and kill me.  (Women have it worse, because they can be killed from water rushing into their anus or vagina.)

Onwards!

Again, the guides scatter, loving the big swells we immediately find ourselves in.  We try to stay in the semblance of a line, but we're all blinded by the constant saltwater spray in our eyes.  The swells grow larger, about three or four feet as we power along, parallel to the shore.

I admit, I had fun for around two minutes here.  I got a feeling for the accelerator, and had fun shooting up those waves and catching some air before I'd crash down into the troughs between them.

Then the crashing started to take its toll.  One little twist and you'd land on one knee, wrenching the shit out of it.  One twist in the other direction and you'd eat your handlebars.  A swell surprises you from the side, and you're clinging on for your life, praying you don't slide off the back and have your anus flooded.

We gather up again - time to turn and head for Turtle Island.

Away from the shore, shit gets real.  Fast.  The three to four foot swells turn into ten to twelve foot swells.

No one's having fun - they're trying to survive.  And we've got an hour of this in front of us.

The only way to keep from being swept off the jet ski is to head straight at the waves.  Of course, our path isn't straight into the waves, so our choice quickly becomes taking off at random angles or getting swamped.

We start to spread out.  The idea of staying in a line is laughable - if you're lucky, you catch a glimpse of someone else in the group between blinding spray and huge waves.  Most of the time is spent falling ten feet through the air and crashing on top of your jet ski, smashing your knees, your ass, your face...

One writer is swept off and bobs around next to his jet ski.  He seems dazed by the wave that hit him, but that was the easy part.  Now he's got to worry about his jet ski being picked up by a wave and dropped on his head, or another clueless writer shooting up blind over the top of a wave and crunching him into dust.

And then, blessedly, it's over.  The pilot of the chase boat says we have to go home - the seas are so rough that he can't see Turtle Island over the huge fucking waves.  We're lost.  Time to turn back.

I don't think there's one of us that isn't relieved, but now we have to make it back.  Our joints are fucked, our guides are still busy enjoying their freedom, and the rest of us limp home as fast as we can.

We later learn that the local government and the resort pass a new rule:  no jet skis out of the harbor ever, for any reason.

It isn't even lunch time of the first day, and to a man, we're crippled.  Our leg muscles are beat to shit, and every step for the next few days is agony.

We're given a hour to stagger back to our rooms and shower, and then we have to go to our next "experience."

---

Before I continue chronicling my journey of terror and shame, let me take a brief pause to talk about The Only Fucking Food They Know How To Make In Tahiti:  Poisson Cru.

At our first lunch, our rep urged us to order the local favorite, Poisson Cru, which means, "raw fish."  It is chunks of tuna, salt, lime juice and coconut milk.  I just looked up a recipe on the internet, and here's the money phrase:  "The secret is to prepare the dish as quickly as possible and not allow the flavours to infuse the fish."

Indeed.

Thank god I resisted the rep's advice to order it for lunch, because every meal from then on would revolve around Poisson Cru.  Every native would make us watch them prepare Poisson Cru.  Every lesson on cooking would be on how to prepare Poisson Cru.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Even on Death Island (details to come), you can bet your ass that all the ingredients for Poisson Cru made it to shore.

How I grew to loathe this dish. 

And let's be honest - for all the bragging about how "fresh" the fish was, the only part of the process I never saw was actually, you know, fishing.  The only tuna I saw during the trip, apart from the slimy chunks inside Poisson Cru, were the old warm fish hanging in people's front yards for sale.

(This was the Tahitian version of yard sales - people would net some fish, hang them off sticks, and sit in groups of three and four, waiting for a car to stop and buy them.)

Honestly, I pray that in the obliteration of Tahiti's history, they lost a treasure trove of recipes.  Because the thought of those people having exactly one dish that they produced and ate for two thousand years makes me want to weep.

(Not the first time I had that feeling.)

---

The rest of Day One was taken up by mind numbingly boring lectures about Tahitian history.  I only say they're boring because NO ONE FUCKING KNOWS ANYTHING.  As I said, no written history, and then everyone died.

"This is either a war club or maybe a stick for making Poisson Cru.  It's possible that this crown was worn by someone important.  Or it's a spark plug.  The people here either came from South America or Asia.  In either 500 B.C. or 1200 A.D.  Isn't this a neat shell?"

Day Two:

Those of you who've been to Bora Bora know about the shark tour.  Some grinning guide plays a ukulele and sings while he steers the boat and accelerates with his feet.

(Full disclosure:  this isn't the guy who took us to the sharks, although the schtick was identical.  This guy took us to a lesson on how to make Poisson Cru.)

There's a rope in the harbor.  The tourists stay on one side while huge rays come up and you feed them.  (Rays = the things that killed Steve Irwin.)  Sharks hang around until the guide comes out and feed them as well.  Theoretically, the sharks don't cross the rope - they know the drill.

Then, once all the food is gone, the guide tells you that it's okay to go on the other side.  With no chum in the water, the sharks aren't as dangerous or something.

I'm foolish.  I still believe that there is some kind of logic and control dictating the process.  I swim across the rope.

It's pretty much all cute fish, rays and sharks.  And then one cool big fish swims up.

What some of you may realize, but I didn't, is that this is a six foot long fucking killer Barracuda.

While I'm busy snapping pictures of it like a moron, another tour boat arrives, and that guide starts the drill - feeding the fish from on the other side of the rope.  Of course, now I'm in the feeding zone, and the sharks are fucking everywhere, looking to eat.  According to their rules, I'm fair game.

And the Barracuda decides to show everyone that he's a fucking badass, and darts twenty feet in two seconds, ripping a fish that someone's feeding to a ray out of their hand. 

The guide from the other boat gets real excited real fast.  Arms are waving in another mysterious motion that we weren't taught.  I pop up to see what my guide's doing - he's on the ship, cranking down beers.

(In the beginning of the trip, we brought coolers of beer everywhere we went.  We quickly discovered that the natives were sucking it down as fast as they could, and were drunk about an hour into every trip.  We stopped bringing beer, and the guides retaliated by bringing pot and getting stoned an hour into every trip.)

So, two days, and the basic stoned indifference of our guides almost killed us twice. 

That night promised to be peaceful.  They rented a couple of large catamarans that we'd sail on all night, under the stars.  We'd get a talk about navigation, get some sleep in our cabins, and wake up the next morning on a new island.  Heaven!

Here are the catamarans:

My photographic record of this portion of the trip ends here, because very shortly my only concern was wishing for the sweet embrace of death to release me from my pain.

We had some dinner (Poisson Cru!) and then heard a lecture about how the Tahitians navigated by the stars.  Or, how they might have, because they were all dead and the few bastard children of Tahitians and sailors who had resistance to smallpox just made a bunch of shit up.  "See that constellation?  It's the... um... shark!  And we totally used it get around."

I'm not a huge sufferer of seasickness, but put the patch on anyway.  Certainly I would be fine!  (Foreshadowing!)

I went and checked out the cabin.  Todd and I were sharing what can generously be described as a coffin.  I tested out the bed - the ceiling was inches above my face, and my feet hung off the "mattress." 

But no problem.  I'm a fucking sailor.

Two more quick incidents before we set sail:  first, the French captain gave us a heavily accented safety lecture.  I shit you not that he would end every thought by giving up on translating, omitting the important details, and replacing them with the words "blah blah blah." 

"The life jackets are inside the boat, just look for a cabinet by the stairs, so if there's a problem blah blah blah.  If you see someone fall off the boat, just toss out a life preserver so I can blah blah blah.  Don't open the window because the boat might flip over like this and we don't want the cabins to blah blah blah."

Then the first mate (a charming woman up until this point) gave us a very pointed lecture:  "I am going to sleep in my cabin now.  If any of you happen to get sick, there's nothing I can do for you.  Nothing."

We set out.

The original plan was to sail there.  You know, in our sailboat.  But the same headwind that had provided us with ten foot swells the day before was still blowing RIGHT IN OUR FUCKING FACE.  No way to sail - we would have had to tack back and forth for days.

So they lowered the sail, cranked the engine up to full, flooding the boat with engine fumes, and set out.

I was feeling a tad queasy.  Todd gulped down an Ambien and went below.  I headed for the stairs...  no fucking way.  It's one thing to get sick, it's another thing to get sick in a coffin.  I'd stay on deck and be safe. 

Cool ocean breezes.  Cool ocean breezes.

After about an hour of silently breathing diesel and flooding sweat out of every pore in my body, I decided the fight was over.  It was time to vomit.

I looked at the side.  No way I'd make it. 

I barked out the first noise I'd made in an hour:  "BUCKET!  BEHIND YOU!  NO, THERE!  BRING IT TO ME NOW!"

I proceeded to fill that bucket with the most vile, tarlike vomit ever produced.

Now, I am not aware of this part of the story, but Todd claims that when I threw up, I actually said the word "Bleargh!", enunciating every letter.  And I did it so loudly that I woke him from his Ambien coma, the sound of my "blearghing" making it through the ship, over the noise of the gale we were sailing into.

He appeared above deck, fully awake.  Ascertained what the noise was, went back to bed.

I was just slumped over my bucket of vomit, praying for death.  The smell was horrendous.  I was such a piteous figure that the first mate who had sworn she would not help actually offered to take my puke bucket and get me a fresh one.  I was so ashamed of the volume and color of my puke that I refused - it seemed chivalrous of me to not let her touch it, even though it meant that I would be breathing it for the next eight hours.

We kept traveling.  The boat was snapping and creaking.  I started dry heaving.  Still saying "bleargh!", but with nothing coming out.

That's the thing about throwing up from being seasick - when you eat something bad and throw up, you get some relief.  You feel good for half an hour, even if maybe you get sick again.

But since it wasn't the food, there was no respite.  Just constant pain and nausea and blearghing.  I knew I wouldn't sleep, and honestly didn't know if I would just die from pain.  Someone handed me water, which I just poured on my head while I moaned.

And then the news came - even before I'd thrown up, two or three people on the other ship had puked, and the decision had already been made to turn around.

An hour later, we were back in Bora Bora.  The sea had beaten us twice and sent us home before we got to our destination.

The only incidents of note from that point on are Todd related - after I disturbed his sleep, he popped up and down three or four more times.  He kept talking about sleeping on the deck, then heading back to the cabin.  (In retrospect, maybe I should have stopped a man in a walking sleep state from wandering around a ship in the middle of the ocean.)  Then when I finally felt good enough to go below deck, he popped up and told me about the hallucinations he was having.  Here's a rough transcription:

"It's weird.  I'm almost touching something, and then it's not there.  I was playing bridge, and I bid one club, and the other guy said seven spades, and I said "come on!" and he showed me his cards and he had it."

Then he fell back asleep.  I was too weak from sickness to even molest him, which I consider the largest lost opportunity of the trip.

---

A slight tangent to talk about another writer on the trip, Henry. 

Nice enough guy, I guess.  I ascertained that he had absolutely nothing of interest to say in about fifteen seconds and tuned him out, as I do to most of the people I run across.

And then about day two, Todd pointed out his behavior to me.  From that point on, his mildly retarded Southern drawl bored through the air so it was all I could hear. 

(Anyone here a friend of his?  If so, I'm sorry.  Not for what I'm about to say, but that you're a friend of his.)

(I kid.  I'm sure he's delightful.  Write all of this off to comic exaggeration, even though every fucking word is true.)

Another writer dubbed him The Recapper.  He could keep a steady patter of conversation going... without ever adding any original insight or information.

In a way, it's remarkable.

Here's an example - I'm just making it up, but it could easily be true:

Anyone:  It's hot and humid where I come from.

Henry:  Yeah, the water in the air really makes it seem hot.

Anyone:  Yeah.

Henry:  It's worse when it's hot and humid.

Anyone:  Right.  Dry heat's a lot better.

Henry:  Less moisture in the air.

He was also the guy who asked a lot of questions, even though it's clear that no one could possibly give him any answers because all their ancestors were dead and they were stoned.  "Do Tahitians believe in ghosts?  Who did they worship?  What does a Tiki mean?  I ask these questions because I write about supernatural things." 

That's annoying, but then having him mirroring and repeating everything he was hearing while he was thinking of the next unanswerable question...

Holy fucking shit.

And then he also would try to make jokes in a way I've run across before - the Twenty Five Thousand Dollar Pyramid school of humor.  Basically, it's just throwing out any catchphrases that come to mind on any topic. 

We would be joking about Poisson Cru, and he'd start throwing in phrases like "Something smells fishy!" or "That lunch was quite a catch!"

It's hard for me to even type that, it pained me so to hear it.

And then...

Well, this is delicate.  I don't want to start any rumors.  But here are the facts:

1.  He would attach himself, lamprey like, to any attractive female that was forced to spend time with us. 

2.  His wedding ring would sometimes be left in the room.

(Actual lamprey added for illustration!)

For what it's worth, I'm highly confident that no infidelity went on.  In fact, all he did was assure that no one got laid - one of the single writers was trying to chat up a local, and Henry got in there and started asking questions so he could mirror the answers.  The questions he asked?  No lie:

"So... do you have constellations here?  You know, animals and shapes that you see in the stars?  Do you believe in astrology?"

Building to...

"So, what sign are you?"

The single writer leaned back in his chair and exhaled.  A massive, global cockblock had just been laid down, and the island of Tahiti was dead to him.

---

So, we're now in Bora Bora when we should be in Huahine.  A plane is chartered, and we head off to Tahiti.  After we get to the hotel and check in, we're given five to seven minutes to shower, check email, and nap.

Then it's off to a lunch with a woman who teaches dance.  There were a whole bunch of cute girls and stud boys who served us, talked to us... and didn't dance.  Apparently an activity we might enjoy was forbidden, so we got to hear about some author who'd written some shitty book that I've already forgotten because no one gives a shit who doesn't live in Tahiti.

We then went on a whale watching boat.  First we cruised out through the channel in the middle of the harbor.  It was very narrow - most of the harbor was only three feet deep or so.  And the shallow part was just fucking teeming with locals - they stood there in the water and stared into the distance, drinking beer.  Seriously.  They had a bunch of boats that they'd keep their beer on.  Just boats and people staring and drinking.  I later learned that that was basically the only thing they did for fun on weekends - go to the harbor and stand in water all day.

We got out to sea, spotted a baby whale and his mother.  Pretty fucking cool.  A group of the writers jumped in to get a better look.  I stayed on the boat - I was sure that this would end in nothing but a brush with death.

I made a huge mistake - Todd was one of the ones who dove in, and he was buzzed by the whales in the water.

Here's one bad picture of the whales from the boat:

Back to the hotel for 45 seconds to freshen up, then off to the house of some other dead writer who wrote some other boring shit.  Two fun parts:  the tour was led by his son-in-law, who'd had a stroke and couldn't talk, and I found old original pages from the books that complained about how cheap and hated Jews are, and showed those to Todd.

We got back in the hotel just in time to find that the dancing troupe who didn't dance for us at lunch had just finished dancing there, so we again couldn't see them.

We had drinks with them, witnessed Henry's astrological pickup.  This troupe traveled some, so these people had seen real cities in real countries.  One dancer actually broke down for a second and told me the truth:  she fucking hated it there.  She went to Hawaii once, and all she wanted was to get back and live there.  There was nothing to do here.  Tomorrow promised standing in the fucking harbor.  She was bored out of her mind. 

I helpfully suggested that she try to get knocked up by the single writer, and went to bed.

---

Travel day!

We were going to the Marquesas, which is four hours away.  So three hours on a plane, three hours in the Airport Of The Damned, and then another hour flight.

Here's the airport.  No air conditioning, no internet, bathroom only open sporadically.  Wild horses wandering through.  As horrific as our time here was, there's really nothing funny about it.  We sat in an airport and sweated.    The end.

The tiny plane we were on next.  I don't know why they're not more worried about terrorists grabbing the controls and taking out a hut.

The next airport was as small as something can be and still be an airport.

Baggage claim:

The ticket counter:

Missing?  Walls.

We got to the hotel, and this guy did a little dance...

...and then carried our bags down to our rooms.

I kid.  I have no idea what his real job is when he's not being asked to make up a dance that we're supposed to believe is authentic.

This guy's big move was swinging his club at your head, and then grunting what was supposed to be some kind of scary war cry, but really just sounded like a guy throwing up on a catamaran. 

When he tried it on me, I laughed, and I saw something in his eyes that scared me.  A lot.

We then took a trip to the beach to see how Marquesans really lived.

We found ourselves on a trash strewn beach with boulders instead of sand.  The children ran around playing with wild rabid dogs; the teenagers played a game of volleyball where every point was followed by the ball rolling a hundred feet away down a hill; the men stood there and drank.

By far, the biggest draw was Bingo, which was a woman only game.  Dozens of women sitting in the dirt around the caller.  I tried to follow the game, and as far as I could tell, they would randomly shout "Bingo!", be handed about a buck fifty in Marquesan money, and then move the rocks around randomly on their cards some more.  Lewis Carroll has made up more clearly defined games.

For the first time, I understood their lack of bitterness at having their ancestors killed by smallpox.  If that were my life, I think I would be scanning the horizon, waiting for any foreign ship that might be harboring a disease to sail into my waters, then wade out and stick my tongue down their throats.

That night, we had dinner with the mayor and some old lady that was supposed to tell us how the people on the island felt above love and seduction... before they were all killed off.

They started off by saying that they were nervous about telling some of it, because the cultural differences might seem odd to us...

Todd and I swore we wouldn't judge, and they should say anything.  We were reporters.  We couldn't be offended!

There were some translation difficulties, but basically, they'd make a bikini out of good smelling flowers so they didn't stink and guys would want to fuck them.  And the grandfathers would fuck their granddaughters to teach them how it was done.

I found myself offended and judged them.

The co-pilot on our plane had been a woman, and was at dinner.  Henry attached his suckers to her skin and began to draw her life force out.  I glanced over and thought that maybe I should save her... but heard him say the words "wind shear" and realized I wouldn't survive the attempt.

I went to bed.  Our adventure was nearing a close.  I'd been noticing an uptick in the number of private conversations among our hosts.  I had a feeling that they were surprised they hadn't killed any of us yet, and planned to draw some blood the next day.  I paid a thousand dollars for ten seconds of internet access and told my wife that I loved her, and that if she remarried I'd fucking haunt her to the grave.

---

Day Of Death.

We start off by visiting some old ruins where they used to have human sacrifices.  Hint!  Foreshadowing!

Our chief greeter from the hotel came back with his dance crew. 

(A quick tangent for those who disagree with my assessment of the contentment of the Tahitians as they dance around in their Winnie The Pooh costumes.  The girl in the background?  She went with a group to Manhattan to put on a performance.  Our organizer, William, was there.  After a couple of days in Manhattan, this is the conversation they had, verbatim:

Dancer:  I've decided to stay here.

William:  What?

Dancer:  I'm going to live in New York City.  I'll live with you.

William:  Honey, I'm a big old queen.

Dancer:  I don't care.

The defense rests.)

Now, I know I sound snobby and cynical when I say that none of the shit they were doing was authentic.  But this was the moment when I became stone cold fucking convinced that that was the case.

I know.  You doubt me.  You should.

But let me set the stage:  we're told that the Marquesans were fierce warriors.  That their bravery and struggles were legendary!  (Of course, when asked what they were fighting for, it gets a little fuzzy... because, honestly, there is plenty of Poisson Cru to go around.) 

So they tell us that the warriors are going to recreate their dance for us.  The dance that would whip them up into a violent frenzy.  Wearing their actual battle gear that they wore back in the day.

Just imagine, being in the jungle, hearing a rustle... and having THIS jump out at you:

I honestly laughed my head off the entire time.  I've seen scarier muppets.  In fact, there isn't a muppet that's less scary. 

I feel kind of bad for the guy on the right, though.  He ran out of intimidating leaves and had to wear intimidating yarn.

Not enough for you to believe that this shit didn't happen back in the day?  Check out the flute player:

Yes, he is playing the fucking flute with his fucking nose.  I can still picture a missionary, two hundred years ago, handing a flute to one of the survivors and saying "yeah, I heard that you guys used to blow your nostril into this and make music.  And put on some leaves."

Then all the missionaries would bite their lips to keep from laughing while they'd watch the dance.

But enough fun. 

Back to the hotel to prepare for our trip.  We were to sail to an abandoned valley and camp for the night.  We were told to wear shorts - there was a chance our boat wouldn't be able to dock at the rock pier, and we'd have to step in the water and wade to the shore.  We might get wet up to our knees.

And then, a moment of truth.  The organizer said "anyone who doesn't want to come can stay here at the hotel."  Two people stayed.  I was still stinging from missing the whales, so there was no way I wasn't going.  We spent the first half an hour on the ride over making fun of the two guys who bailed.  Soon, we would consider them gods.  I was seriously ready to erect a Tiki in their honor for their wisdom and foresight.

We pull into the cove - cove isn't exactly the right word, because it implies some kind of shelter from the brutal pounding force of an angry sea - and putter towards shore.  First we see where the "pier" is - it's a few rocks jutting out from a cliff with huge waves pounding against them.  To get near it is certain death - the boat would be picked up and dashed.  To swim to it would be madness.

We're still a hundred and fifty feet from shore, and without warning or instruction, people start shouting at us in French - allez!  Allez! 

We jump into the water and start trying to swim towards the shore.

Two fun factors come into play:

One, the shore is solid, slippery jagged rocks and coral.

Two, the waves alternately push you towards the shore, then suck you back out to sea, assuring you make absolutely no progress... and if you do manage to make any progress, your reward will be to be smashed into the rocks.

The first of us make it.  Pull ourselves to higher ground and catch our breaths while other writers flop around in the water, wondering what the fucking end game of this is.

Finally, we're all safe.  Our leader goes hiking for a bit, comes back and says he's found a perfect campsite. 

A glimmer of hope!

We hike along the jagged rocks, and then find a small area littered with slightly fewer jagged rocks.

The beach:

Our perfect campsite:

The natives had killed a goat at some point, so there were goat parts draped over trees.  Half of us made Poisson Cru (not exaggerating) and the other half strung up hammocks.  The hammocks were highly portable... which basically meant that they were made of thin string.  You'd lay down and have the strings cut into your flesh like a cheese grater.  Then they'd start stretching, until they all resembled the letter "U". 

Of course, below them were just more jagged rocks, so we dragged huge palm fronds over and put them under the hammocks. 

Poisson Cru, goat, whatever fruits they'd found nearby thrown on the fire to cook...  the roar of the ocean pounding on the rocks...  It was a long way from our bungalow in Bora Bora.

I asked Jonathan what would happen in the morning if the seas were rough.  "No problem," he said.  "The seas are like glass in the morning."

Night falls, we can't see our hands in front of our fucking faces.  We head off to our spine bending hammocks and settle in.

An hour later, the rain starts.  Big fucking rain.

A couple of smart people bail for the cliffs immediately.  Apparently there was a small space near the cliffs where you could have an overhang protecting you.  Earlier they talked about having enough room for three or four people there.  I'm at the back of the camp, so by the time I hear the movement of people heading that way, I calculate that it's already full and I'll just end up being rained on and sleeping in the mud.  It's better in the hammock.

I was wrong.

I grab the leaf from under me and lay it on top of me.  I also pile every piece of clothing I have on top of me to keep me warm.  There's no sleep as the rain continues and the wind blows.  I grow delirious, wondering why the leaf isn't protecting me better.  Maybe I should bury myself under more leaves?  No, better to lie here in a pile of wet laundry and shake.  At one point, I find myself repeating the mantra "the leaf is life" in my mind.

Morning comes.

One odd thing - even though we've been promised seas like glass, I can hear the deafening roar of the waves pounding.  

No matter.  I get up and head for the fire.  I promptly slip on a now slick rock and sprain my ankle, going down in a heap and also spraining my wrist.  I lie on the ground for awhile and writhe until I can breathe again.

I hear muttering in French as the hosts look at me.  I am pretty sure they decide to leave me there.

I get up and limp along the beach.  We climb along the cliffs to the "pier," which is the only way out to the boat.  Swimming against those massive waves is apparently too dangerous for even us to attempt.  So the boat comes as close as it can to the cliffs... and then at some mysterious time we don't understand, without direction, people start shouting Allez Allez at us.  We jump to the boat.  People are bashing themselves on rocks, bleeding, crawling across to the boat...

When my turn comes, the boat backs away, so I just dive headfirst and slither onto the ship like a hooked fish.

I'm one of the lucky ones.  Another guy falls in the water as the boat surges towards the rocks and is literally one inch from getting crushed to death.

From then on, everything is a blur.  I'm just trying to stumble forward and ignore the pain from my multiple injuries.  A miscalculation gets us to the airport two hours early; they quickly organize a tour and ship us down to the Gauguin museum.  The security guard is a five year old boy with toy planes that he fires at us.  I may have killed him; things were getting weird at this point.

I make it inside and pay my ten million tahitian francs, or whatever the fuck that play money is.  The museum has quite an impressive collection... a bit of reading reveals that it's photos of Gauguin paintings.

Luckily, they also had films playing on the walls over the fake paintings.  Here's the seating for one popular one:

And the big hit had twice as many chairs:

We were shipped back to the plane, we waited another three hours in the Airport Without Hope, off to Tahiti for a press conference where I'm pretty sure I said that I would never set anything there for fear that someone might make me come back to their god forsaken country, then off to another plane to Los Angeles.

Where I sit now, waiting for my flight home.

I will never leave Virginia again.