Search results for "polynesia"

At the very center of Polynesia, Upolu and Savaii are the twin islands that truly fulfill the South Seas vision of palm-lined, white-sand beaches and blue ocean beyond the reef. And in the capital of Apia, which has at least some of the trappings of a modern city, you’ll also find a slightly timeworn, sultry townscape out of the old South Pacific. Until 1997, the country was known as Western Samoa – long famous throughout the South Pacific for Fa’a Samoa, a way of life in which traditional customs (dance, a love of kava, and the art of tattooing among them) and strong community ties shape ...

It's never been all that easy to get to Hiva Oa – and that was part of the attraction for the likes of Paul Gauguin (who came here to escape the "Western influences" in the Tahiti of 1901), and Thor Heyerdahl (who, a decade before sailing Kon Tiki across the Pacific, came here with his young bride to live the "simple life. " And some things haven't changed – particularly the drop-dead natural beauty of the Marquesas Islands. The most northern island group in French Polynesia, (nearly a thousand miles from Tahiti), the Marquesas are rugged volcanic islands: There is no barrier reef ...

Stand on the rim of the volcanic crater at Orongo, a thousand feet above the sea. Look around the endless Pacific Ocean visibly curving along the horizon. Ask yourself how those early Polynesian navigators ever found this isolated volcanic rock surrounded by thousands of square miles of empty sea. And then ask yourself what drove them here – and what happened to them? Easter Island (known locally as Rapa Nui) is the original mysterious island. The islanders developed the only written language in Oceania, but the meaning of the script has been lost. The island itself is best known, of cours...

Tahiti, Otahiti for the first Europeans, the "Island of Love", the "New Cyther" for Bougainville, the myth of paradise, of Rousseau's good savage, all those names to describe the same beauty of this island, symbol just by itself of the entire French Polynesia. Two volcanos emerged from the waters compose the island of Tahiti : 3-million year old for the Tahiti Nui (the Big Tahiti) volcano, and only 500,000 years for the one of Tahiti Iti (the Little Tahiti) also called the Peninsula (Presqu’ile)