French Polynesia Beyond the Postcard

French Polynesia has been selling a rather compelling vision of paradise for a very long time.

Blue lagoons. White beaches. Palms leaning toward the water. Mountains rising dramatically behind beautiful resorts. Breakfast overlooking a sea that appears to have borrowed its colors from a paint chart.

The appealing thing about the fantasy is that most of it is true.

The problem is that it can become the whole vacation.

Stay at a resort, enjoy the lagoon, take a van tour around the island and you can see quite a bit of French Polynesia.

Only see it.

Experiencing it is another matter.

Beyond the tropical vision is a land, a culture, a cuisine and a way of life. There are villages and gardens, churches and roadside fruit stands. People are fishing, farming, going to school, cooking dinner and getting on with everyday life in surroundings that look anything but everyday to those of us who came halfway around the world to see them.

For us, that is where a bicycle comes in.

Sometimes curiosity is enough

You are riding along and notice a tree beside a house covered with strange pear-shaped fruits. Hanging from the bottom of each is something shaped a little like a crescent moon.

What on earth is that?

So you stop.

Grandma is sitting in the shade in the backyard and notices the curious cyclists looking at her tree. She calls her grandson out of the house and sends him over to pick some fruit for you.

The mystery is quickly solved. It is a cashew tree.

That crescent hanging beneath the fruit contains the cashew nut. One fruit, one cashew. Which suddenly makes a handful of cashews seem considerably more impressive.

Then comes the second discovery. The fruit itself is edible.

Most of us know the nut but have never given much thought to the fruit attached to it, much less tasted one. Fresh from the tree, it is sweet, juicy and tasty.

A few minutes earlier you didn't even know what was growing beside the road. Now you know where cashews come from, you've tasted the fruit, and you've met the grandmother whose tree provided the lesson.

All because something strange caught your eye and you stopped.

Sometimes the best reason to stop is simply, "What the heck is that?"

The ocean comes along for the ride

Cycling French Polynesia does not mean abandoning the tropical vision that brought most of us there in the first place.

Quite the opposite.

For much of the day, the ocean parallels our route. Lagoons stretch away in improbable shades of blue and green. Mountains rise sharply inland. There are stretches where the road turns away from the coast and carries you through forest and lush vegetation, then brings you back alongside the water again.

The scenery accompanies you rather than waiting at the day's attraction.

And so does everyday island life.

You pass homes and gardens, small shops and churches. Fruit grows beside the road. Fishing boats sit along the shore. People wave. Something cooking catches your attention. A roadside stand gives you a perfectly good reason to stop.

French Polynesia turns out to be remarkably well suited to bicycle speed.

You travel far enough to watch the island change around you, but slowly enough to notice what is happening along the way. And when something catches your curiosity, stopping requires little more than putting a foot down.

The route itself becomes part of the experience.

Paradise has people living in it

Experiencing the islands locally also means contributing to their local economies.

We stay in locally owned resorts and hotels, eat at locally owned restaurants and ride locally owned bicycles. Our guides are from the islands. The businesses providing services along the way are part of the communities we visit.

As a consequence, more of what we spend during a trip stays with island businesses and the people providing those services.

That matters.

But it is not the reason to spend the day exploring by bicycle.

The reason is much simpler.

It is more fun.

You get the lagoon and the mountains, the beaches and the palms. But you also get lunch somewhere you might never have found on your own. You discover foods you have never tasted. You learn that a cashew grows in a place you never imagined it did, attached to a fruit you never knew existed.

You begin to recognize that the islands are more than scenery.

They are home.

And none of that diminishes the French Polynesia of the postcards. The lagoons really are that blue. Mountains really do rise dramatically behind the coast. Hibiscus blooms beside the road, palms lean toward the water and colorful pareo flutter in the breeze.

The tropical fantasy is still there.

The backdrop isn't too shabby.

It just turns out there is a lot more happening in front of it.