Huahine: French Polynesia's lesser known island paradise

You know you're in a good place when your tender deposits you on a quay where ukulele players strum, ladies have tiaras of frangipani in their hair and a dog gently snores under a palm tree. French Polynesia's more famous resort islands, which my ship Marina cruise has already visited, are languid enough, but Huahine moves to an even slower rhythm.

I'm on an Oceania 10-day "Sparkling South Pacific" cruise. Only yesterday we were in Bora Bora, the distilled essence of a tropical fantasy getaway. But Huahine is my instant favourite. After breakfast, Marina sails in past sand islands with coconut crewcuts, surrounded by a pale foaming lagoon, and enters a bay ringed by steep jungled hillsides and cartoonish outcrops of rock. Acacia trees unfurl in stunning umbrellas of pale green. Huahine was once an important religious centre and is dotted with ceremonial ruins and old fortifications – one of the largest concentrations of ancient Polynesian architecture anywhere. You can see why. This is a landscape to inspire belief in gods, who might live on the misty mountaintops of this nirvana, where you can pluck crabs from the reef and coconuts straight off trees.

Only handfuls of houses dot the landscape, and no overwater bungalows thrust fingers into the unsullied bay. There are few tourists here. Only 6000 or so people live on Huahine. "But we do have two traffic jams daily," says Dolores with a grin. "At 6am everyone gets their fresh baguettes, and at 6pm we head off to buy beer."

Dolores may be Spanish for sorrow, but our shore-excursion host is astonishingly misnamed. Dolores has a seductive French accent, a face nut-browned by the sun and a sarong slung low on her hips. It would be impolite to guess how many decades she's lived here, but she hasn't lost her youthful enthusiasm. She stops to smell hibiscus blossoms and exclaims at the water's improbable kingfisher colour.

"Oh, how I love to walk on the shoreline in my bare feet!" she says as she hobbles across powered coral. "It's like a free massage!"

Dolores takes us across the lagoon in a tin boat, piloted by a shirtless captain who keeps one toe on the tiller as he strums a ukulele. We wade ashore on a motu, a small reef island lapped in shallow azure seas. Time for a snorkel. Purple corals erupt like lava lamps, slivers of electric-blue fish dart. Bigger fish are patterned like 1970s wallpaper, in orange and yellow circles and stripes.

Later there's lunch. We sit in chairs waist-deep in lagoon water, shaded by powder-blue and pink parasols, and dine on raw fish in coconut juice, and grilled bananas and salads. Dolores offers us beer, though she herself doesn't drink. ("I'm already crazy enough!") Our hosts perform a languorous dance, practically just a Polynesian wiggle. Everyone is happy. The women are flower-decked and sway-hipped, the men shirtless and six-packed. "So tired, so tired of being alone," warbles Dolores in a rich island voice as we set off, sun-kissed and mellow, back towards our ship. "He took my pride and my reason…"

Is all this just a big con? Perhaps. Maybe the flowery tiaras and ukuleles and slumbering dogs are all packed away until the next ship comes along. Maybe in the evenings Dolores wipes off her smile and shouts at her husband. But I don't think so, and maybe it doesn't matter. For a day, I'm utterly seduced by the island fantasy, and as Marina sails away I'm gobsmacked on the deck once more at Huahine's tumbling, verdant beauty.

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