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The Beaches of Tahiti, French Polynesia, South Pacific

Posted July 14, 2009 , trackback

I am sick of writing about beaches I’ve actually been to: Northern California rugged, all sweet grass and ice plants, sand the color of wheat, full of fiber and good for you. Today I want fantasy, I want plumeria, pikake, flowers with blooms bigger than my belly. Today I want sand the color of a bleached blonde looking fake and not necessarily good for me. Today I want Tahiti.

//www.flickr.com/photos/tiarescott/33505225/Pretty please? http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiarescott/33505225/

When my husband was ten years old his mom and step-dad pulled him out of school for a year and they sailed to Tahiti. 26 years later they still reminisce about this trip around the dinner table, bring out photos of neon days spent snorkeling and berry brown. I don’t know how they did it: managed the money, life, a boy out of school, but they did and I hear about it all the time. And I want that, too, although I also want someone to manage it all for me. I am nothing if not pragmatic, although something tells me pragmatism and pikake do not a tropical mix make.

//www.flickr.com/photos/anthonyr31/2905452851/My bungalow, my dream. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonyr31/2905452851/

I want beaches spun from sugar, boats that seem as if they are floating on air. I want air heavy with wet and the scent of flowers, I want to stay in a bungalow with a roof made of thatched pandanus leaves. I want this bungalow to sit low over the lagoon, and I want a glass floor so I can watch the sea-life swim beneath me: manta rays and sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, brightly colored fish and dark shadows of what I don’t know. I want a vacation that I could likely not afford, but this is my fantasy beach and here the thought of money or lack thereof is not allowed.

//www.flickr.com/photos/anthonyr31/2905452851/Teahupoo wave, the force of beauty. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonyr31/2905452851/

Like most fantasies, I am not specific. Something tells me I want Bora Bora, but really I just like the sound it makes, booarah booarah, lazy like a long afternoon. I don’t know what beach really, what lagoon, I just know I want Gauguin’s Tahiti and not that of Marlon Brando. In my Tahiti I want to swim, I want to sun, I want to pull tropical fruits from the trees and push them straight into my mouth like a monkey. I want to forget. And something about Tahiti makes me feel as if it would be easy to forget, even if 26 years later I’d still be talking about it around a dinner table of pasta and bread.

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