There’s this crazy kissing thing they do on Moorea. For one fleeting moment, I got caught up in it too. As I look back over my year’s travels, I realize it might well be the only kiss I’ll ever have in Tahiti–Moorea is sister island to Tahiti, and that still counts–so it’s worth the telling.
Like everything else in the South Pacific, I had to pay for it. A lot. Like the 17 1/2 hours in transit from Chicago, for starters. Then there was the $68 excursion fee. And the sunburn after it was all over.
I’ll tell you right now, I’ve had better. But it was different.
I had signed up for a group tour they sometimes call the motu picnic, and sometimes the shark feed. It left first thing that morning by motorboat, led by two hunky guides with Polynesian tattoos tugging across their buttery-bronze skin. The water was gem-colored, peridot then emerald, aquamarine then lapis as we pulled out of Cook’s Bay into the lagoon and headed west, giving the over-water bungalows of the Sheraton Moorea a wide berth.
We didn’t go to the usual spot.
“See how high the surf is breaking over the reef?” Hunk No. 1 asked as he pointed to the lacey stuff. “That means the water in this part of the lagoon will be too rough,” he answered himself for our benefit. So our boat sped onward past the mouth of Opunohu Bay to the Inter-Continental Beachcomber, where we buzzed the private, over-water bungalows nearest the hotel’s Dolphin Quest attraction in hopes of spotting one of the marine mammals, or maybe so the hunks could survey a particular topless guest on her suddenly-not-so-private over-water balcony. After that, we made for a spot yet more west before anchoring near two other tour boats in the lagoon’s chest-deep water.
Even before we were out of the boat, rays were swirling, gliding, slipping their flat gray-disk bodies through the clear-as-sunshine waters beneath us. They seemed primed for the encounter, though some of us in the boat had begun to lose a little of our brass.
The rays outnumbered the sharks by maybe 20-to-1, just my guesstimate considering it was inadvisable to attempt a census while climbing down a boat ladder. Unquestionably the rays were the more aggressive creatures, more so than the sharks, more so than those of us adventurers who’d come out to pet them. The things would swim–or maybe flutter is a better way to say it–through the water right up to us and slide along our legs or arms or backs.
It reminded me of the way cats nudge and rub against a person’s legs. Some rays even raised themselves half out of the water in an awkward, rubbery sort of bear hug, begging to be fed. Amid a chorus of multi-pitched human yelps, screams and eeeeeeyews, one of the hunks would position a squirming ray, about a yard in diameter and snorting seawater out its gills, so that anyone who wanted to kiss it could.
I recoiled on the first attempt.
Snorkeling is a great way to look busy while regathering one’s courage. I observed bright-hued fish grazing among the coral, and watched a 4-foot shark, not 10 feet from me, gracefully patrol the lagoon’s sandy bottom.
I tried again.
It was a wet kiss. Salty, quick and warmer than you’d think.
And slimy.
I shuddered. The ray splashed great waves into the air.
Eeeeeeyew!
I’ll never know which of us thought the act more revolting, me or the ray. But we each recovered sufficiently to dine afterward: the ray on a snack proffered by the tattooed hunks; me and my boat-mates during a cookout at a mini island, or motu, on a beach overrun by wild chickens.
Some people collect cup-and-saucer sets when they’re on a trip. I collect the odd moments. So, during 2004, I:
– Experienced weightlessness with my body suspended in a mud bath in Calistoga, Calif.
– Photographed oil wells–can you imagine?–in Los Angeles.
– Happened upon the showroom for Abbey Caskets (made by monks), in the gift shop at St. Meinrad Archabby, in southern Indiana.
– Tried out an automated water-massage table in Milwaukee. Twice.
– Lost badly at Ping-Pong, played beside the Nile in Luxor, Egypt, on a rose granite table so polished that it reflected the hills above Thebes on its surface.
– Spied on a green sea turtle sunning at a deserted beach on the island of Lanai in Hawaii.
– Walked the medieval village walls of Germany’s Rothenburg ob der Tauber in weather so cold I couldn’t feel my legs.
– Swam under a waterfall in Maui.
It wasn’t all fun in the sun. In Moorea I accumulated innumerable mosquito bites and a flu-strength cold. In Hawaii I suffered a sprained ankle in Maui’s temperamental surf. In Germany I spent the lion’s share of my first four days visiting German toilets instead of Christmas markets because my digestive system strongly objected to Nuremberg sausages.
Neither was it all wacky or weird.
For one transcendent hour on Moorea, I sat in a church service conducted entirely in the Tahitian language. The breeze coming through the open windows brought the sound of the surf breaking on the reef and children’s laughter from the parking lot. It fluttered the lace flounce of the pillow upon which rested a Bible in Tahitian. The women wore bright-colored dresses trimmed in lace and flowers in their hair. The men wore fresh floral leis and tropical-print shirts. No one wore a suit or anything in black.
Their Tahitian hymns rose, clear and loud, a capella at first, then accompanied by ukuleles. The two men playing them wore crowns of palm fronds and deep smiles. Communion was held with coconut water and breadfruit.
After the service, a Tahitian woman took the crown of yellow hibiscus from her own head and placed it on mine in a heartwarming gesture of maeva, the Tahitian word for welcome.
Some time after Moorea, I was on the other side of the world in Egypt. I sat in a pavilion on a moonlit beach beside the Red Sea, but I wasn’t alone. While we were sharing hot tea and small talk, he was gathering his courage. Hot tea is good for that.
We played a game of guess-what’s-in-this-hand that ended with an engagement ring.
Then . . . then . . . weeeeehoo!
Now that’s what I call a kiss.
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When she isn’t traveling, Toni Stroud spends countless unglamorous hours on the desk side of travel reporting: research, note-taking, phone calls, meetings and writing, writing, writing. She welcomes interruptions to her routine by e-mail at tstroud@tribune.com.
