At the edge of the world

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This was published 11 years ago

At the edge of the world

Craig Tansley discovers it's entirely possible to escape modern life on one of the world's most remote islands.

Splendid isolation ... Mangareva's turquoise water.

Splendid isolation ... Mangareva's turquoise water.Credit: Craig Tansley

Mangareva surely straddles the edge of the world. It's an island whose nearest landfall - of any real note at least - is the South American continent more than 6000 kilometres to its east.

Even Tahiti - hardly a metropolis, but the closest thing to it - is more than 1700 kilometres to its west and can be reached only by propeller planes that must refuel first on another island lost at sea, such is the distance of the journey.

If you make it here - travelling first to Tahiti then flying a further five hours across a stretch of ocean larger in size than western Europe - the isolation you'll feel will be enhanced by your inability to communicate. There are no Australians on Mangareva - only a handful have ever ventured to these shores; hardy yachties, mostly, on trans-Pacific voyages.

The Eglise Saint-Raphael on the island of Aukena.

The Eglise Saint-Raphael on the island of Aukena.Credit: Craig Tansley

The thousand or so tourists who come to Mangareva in a year arrive from countries that teach little English in their schools, so speaking English on Mangareva never made much sense.

Instead, communication involves quickly invented pantomime skits incorporating simple English and the rudimentary French you manage to recall from high school.

If being stranded on the edge of the world tickles your fancy and you don't care for bars, restaurants, hotels, cafes or shops on holiday, Mangareva may well be for you.

Communication involves quickly invented pantomime skits.

My entry to Mangareva comes by way of a tiny, makeshift airport balanced precariously on one of the world's largest lagoons - it is perhaps the only place on earth a traveller can count black-tip reef sharks while they wait for their bags at the luggage carousel. A launch, whose tattooed Polynesian skipper waits while staff pack up the airport and ride with us, will deliver me to the tiny fruit-tree-fringed town of Rikitea.

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The journey takes 40 minutes across a turquoise lagoon fringed by towering jungle-green and black-rock mountains that seem to tumble straight into the sea. There are the inevitable coconut palms waving their fronds on the warm afternoon breeze, but in places Mangareva appears as rugged and dry as Australia, with bare, brown, grass hillsides and crumbling, rocky escarpments. We pass simple pearl farms (the Gambier Islands, of which Mangareva is one, produce some of the world's highest-quality black pearls) to Rikitea's rough wooden pier, where it seems the entire population of the Gambiers - about 1000 at last count - are gathered to welcome home family.

"Crack, Criek" - a Polynesian woman is screaming out some semblance of my name. She holds in her fleshy arms a forest of fresh flower necklaces. This must be Bianca - owner of one of Mangareva's four simple B&Bs, Chez Bianca & Benoit. She bundles me into her utility and we amble slowly through a steady throng of hugging, hollering, happy Polynesians; Bianca stops to kiss the cheeks of each person we pass, hoisting herself heavily through the utility's side window.

Dusk settles over Rikitea.

Dusk settles over Rikitea.Credit: Craig Tansley

Beside the throngs of locals, a tiny group of outsiders watch on. "Pitcairn Island, they are from," Bianca explains. Mangareva provides the major link to the infamous home of former Bounty mutineers' descendants; it's a two-day, 480-kilometre boat journey from here. "It is so ... petite ... ah, pardon ... small, why you want to go?" Bianca asks. "But they come Mangareva for big place to see, they want, what you say ... faster life for holiday."

The faster life they seek appears to travel no swifter than walking pace along tight, dusty concrete roads with drastic drop-offs that don't allow two cars to pass at once; though this seems of little concern as two cars rarely ever meet in Mangareva, even here in Rikitea. We're forced instead to give way to the goats and pigs that wander around town.

A shock of red hibiscus, white and pink frangipani and coconut, mango, banana and ironbark trees scratch at Bianca's duco, while above Rikitea 441-metre-high Mount Duff stands guard to the heavens. Golden-coloured children with sun-bleached white hair run beside us as we pass through. I've never witnessed such a peaceful metropolitan scene.

A colourfully dressed local.

A colourfully dressed local.Credit: Alamy

As we veer away from town and Bianca drops two gears to climb the steep, winding hill to her B&B, the full majesty of the scene presents itself: an idyllic township of bright flowers and fruit trees balanced on the edge of French Polynesia, built just a few metres from one of the world's finest lagoons - a warm, blue, polygon-shaped stretch protected by a 90-kilometre coral reef - home to 10 volcanic islands and 25 motu (tiny islands), of which all but three are entirely uninhabited. "I love the people here," Bianca says as she stares at the road ahead. "We are rejoint ... pardon ... we are joined here on edge of the world."

A visit to the Gambiers must maximise days spent on and around its glorious lagoon, so Bianca organises husband Benoit to take me out the next day on his powerboat. I wake with the dawn. A fine mist has spread itself across Rikitea 100 metres below me; elegant, long white birds are circling among it while dogs bark and a village full of laughter is already reverberating off the shell-like caldera of Mount Duff.

Benoit's English is almost non-existent but he manages to communicate to me that he saw 10 whales in the lagoon yesterday - they come here to breed every year. We slide across the still water and I curse the noisy outboard trespassing on this peaceful place. We pass countless crescent-shaped bays of chalk-white sand, framed by coconut trees and proud pines. We're all alone on the lagoon.

Several kilometres south of Mangareva, we dock at the island of Taravai. It's home to four families, the island's caretakers. Built on Taravai is a stately Catholic church. Crushed coral and limestone make it ghostly white in appearance but it's a reminder of the Gambiers' blackest period. It was in this remote archipelago that Catholicism gained its first foothold in French Polynesia when a megalomaniac priest, Father Honore Laval, arrived (in 1834) and set about converting every local and building a dynasty marked by sprawling French-style churches.

There are now more than 100 stone buildings from his time - a time in which the population dwindled from 6000 to less than 1000. The whitewashed Cathedrale Saint-Michel in Rikitea took nine years to build and is the most impressive church in the south Pacific (it can accommodate 1200 people, more than the entire population of the Gambiers).

On Taravai we inspect the simpler Eglise Saint-Gabriel, a seldom-used place of worship rotting slowly under a piercing Polynesian sun. But across the lagoon at Aukena I travel to Laval's first architectural victory, the magnificent Eglise Saint-Raphael. It is Sunday morning and the island's tiny population are all in church, stinking of fresh coconut oil that styles their hair and the frangipani placed behind their ears.

We venture further out across the blue lagoon until we find a tiny motu. Benoit prepares freshly caught raw wahoo in lime juice with coconut milk, cucumber, tomato and onion in a dish the French call poisson cru. After lunch I swim in the crystal-clear waters that surround this 30-metre-wide motu, tailing shy reef sharks and colourful parrotfish.

It is best to spend your time like this in Mangareva, lolling in the lagoon, lazily contemplating and comprehending just how far it is to the next landfall beyond these calm waters. Most days I wander around the tiny villages, waving at the locals playing petanque or cleaning freshly caught fish, but I keep the lagoon close by, always. One day I battle the midday humidity to scale Mount Duff - an arduous, slippery climb along sheer escarpments and through prickly pines that rewards me with a view of the entire archipelago laid out in the sunshine.

When I'm gone, the smells stay with me: a salty breeze mixed with the gloriously sweet aroma of frangipani and tiare and another simple fresh fish feast being prepared in Bianca's kitchen.

"It is far to come here," Bianca says one evening as I eat. "No hotel. No bar. But here people wave, people we laugh. Expensive to come but here you family."

Trip notes

Getting there

Air Tahiti Nui offers twice-weekly one-stop flights from Sydney to Papeete for about $1300 return, airtahitinui.com.au. Air Tahiti flies between Papeete and Mangareva twice a week for about $800 return, airtahiti.com.

Staying there

Half board (bungalow, breakfast and dinner) at Chez Bianca & Benoit costs 13,416 French Pacific francs a person a day (about $145). The bungalow alone is 8000 francs , chezbiancaetbenoit.pf.

More information

tahitinow.com.au.

The writer travelled courtesy of Tahiti Tourism and Air Tahiti Nui.

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