Swimming in paradise with a pink whipray

You know you are heading for a special destination when the Pacific Blue flight attendants, with whom you are sharing a taxi to the airport, ask your destination and then exclaim: "Wow, you lucky things!" It had been a common response from anyone who asked where we were heading for our week-long Pacific jaunt.

Tahiti has enjoyed a special, rather mystical quality ever since English sea captain Samuel Wallis became the first European visitor in 1767 and encountered a relaxed and friendly people living on an island paradise. The Society Islands, of which Tahiti is the main island, quickly became so popular with seafaring Europeans that the crew of HMS Bounty mutinied after being forced to leave Tahiti and its many delights.

Because it's part of French Polynesia and further from New Zealand than our near-neighbours Fiji, Vanuatu or the Cook Islands, Tahiti is less familiar to most Kiwis. This probably explains the surprise expressed by friends when you reveal your destination.

We arrived in the capital, Papeete, with our minds saturated with travel brochure images of gently swaying palm trees and crystal-clear lagoons ringed by an azure sea. We got it part right. We got saturated.

It was teeming down when we transferred from the airport to our overnight hotel but we weren't too disappointed. It was the rainy season after all and the travel books assured us that even during this period there was still plenty of sun to be enjoyed.

However it was still raining the next day and as we transferred to the ferry that was to take us to our destination, the island of Moorea, we got absolutely drenched. It was still pelting down when we disembarked half-an-hour later so Jill headed for the Avis office to pick up our rental car while I waited for our luggage to be unloaded from the ferry.

Because of the French influence, driving in Tahiti – as in Vanuatu – is on the right-hand side of the road. We had decided in advance that because Jill had previous experience of driving on the right, albeit in the United States two decades earlier, she should be the designated driver. When I arrived at the Avis office 10 minutes later Jill had dripped so much water on to the documentation she was filling in I decided not to add to the soggy mess by signing up as an additional driver (or maybe that should have been diver).

It was a decision I was glad to have made as Jill attempted to edge our unfamiliar vehicle into a stream of traffic in the midst of the heaviest tropical downpour you can imagine but she did a sterling job and our journey to the hotel was relatively uneventful.

However, because the indicators and the windscreen wipers were on opposite sides to our own car, I knew when Jill was going to turn because she would unwittingly turn off the wipers and we couldn't see a thing, a factor that added a frisson of excitement to our journey.

Despite the continuous heavy rain our spirits were still not dampened. The temperature was pleasant and we were delighted to discover we had been allocated an overwater bungalow directly overlooking a lagoon. I contemplated the fact that if the downpour continued our accommodation could rapidly become an underwater bungalow but we were hoping for better things to come, especially as the view from our bungalow resembled a huge bowl of oxtail soup rather than a reef lagoon.

We weren't disappointed. The weather rapidly improved and soon we were able to sit on our deck watching brightly coloured tropical fish swimming around the coral surrounding our bungalow – there were electric blue fish, yellow and black fish, aquamarine striped fish and chocolate fish (not the edible variety). It wasn't long before the water cleared enough for Jill to join them but I, as a non-swimmer, remained firmly parked on my sun lounger, perfectly happy to watch from a distance.

But my resolve to stay out of the water was well and truly broken a couple of days later when we took a boat trip for a picnic on a nearby motu (island). By now the sky was cloudless and the sea was a brilliant palette of blues, ranging from sapphire to cobalt.

The "highlight" of the trip was to be an opportunity to swim with sharks and stingrays, which as you can imagine delighted my wife but appealed to me as a non-swimmer as much as a ticket to a Winston Peters meeting.

How wrong I proved to be. When our boat arrived at the designated spot, I couldn't resist the opportunity to wallow in chest-deep tepid waters amid a bevy of reef sharks and rays. I was standing watching the sharks cruising past when my arm was brushed by a fellow swimmer. I turned to discover it was not a person but a large, friendly and completely unthreatening pink whipray. It was an unbelievable experience.

My unexpected desire to join sharks and rays in the water was as surprising as the fact that during our stay in Tahiti the locals celebrated Missionary Day (March 5) to mark the arrival of the first Bible-bashers.

Having witnessed Tahitian women giving a hip-gyrating display of their exuberant and sensual traditional dances, I'm amazed the locals still look so favourably on those Europeans who found their dances provocative and immediately clamped down on the Tahitians' easy-going lifestyle. It is perhaps a reflection of the Tahitians' warm and welcoming character, still so evident today.

Our Tahiti trip was so memorable I was hoping to meet our Pacific Blue flight attendants when we arrived back in Christchurch so I could advise them to urge their bosses to add French Polynesia to the airline's schedules.

Derek Burrows visited French Polynesia courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme , Air Tahiti Nui and the Moorea Pearl Resort and Spa.

- © Fairfax NZ News