Our new best friend is a volcano. We have been anchored inside it, between the reef and the island, all day—a wonderful day that has given us the opportunity to explore this amazing mountain from above and below. We have strolled through a lovely town under the shade of flowering trees, met the people living there and learned about their history and their thriving black pearl industry. We have climbed to the summit of the precipitous fang of basalt that is the high point of the island and dropped into the cool clear waters around it to wander through the coral gardens and meet a few of the exquisite reef fish that make their home there.
This beautiful and remarkable place is the Gambier Islands, the southeastern most group of French Polynesia. The islands themselves are the remnants of the caldera of an enormous volcano, built on the sea floor by a series of eruptions approximately 10 million years ago. At the climax of that process the peak of this mountain stood much higher above the sea than it does now, but ceaseless erosion by the winds, waves, and tropical rains of the Pacific have slowly carved the island down into the dramatic pinnacles and knife-edged ridges we saw today. At the same time a beautiful coral reef has developed, beginning on the shores of the ancient mountain and growing upward, keeping pace with the erosion and subsidence of the volcano as the corals maintain their place in the sunlit shallows they love. Today the reef rings the remaining islands of volcanic rock, enclosing them in a lagoon that protects them from the swells of the open Pacific and gave us a very pleasant calm anchorage for the night.
The largest of the islands within the lagoon is Mangareva, the site of the village of Rikitea, where we landed in the morning. As so often happens on the warm and welcoming islands of Polynesia, we were greeted with the exciting rhythms of drums and a performance by a troupe of athletic dancers. Some of us were off immediately for the very demanding hike up Mt. Duff, the high point of the island. Others chose more leisurely strolls, up the hills close to town or just along the shady main street to St. Michael’s Cathedral. The dramatic façade and cool, spacious interior of this beautiful building belie the cruelty and cultural destruction of its construction, but nonetheless we found it to be a lovely place with excellent opportunities for photography.
Inside the reef that defines the ancient shore of the volcano the trade winds were pushing up some sharp choppy waves. This might have prevented us from any snorkeling or diving, but for the quick thinking of our captain and expedition leader who consulted the charts and found a beautiful little cove in the lee of Taravai Island. In just a few minutes they had brought the ship around to a new anchorage there and we were soon out in the Zodiacs again, happily dropping into the clear blue water for a close look at the lovely fringing reef that stretched across the little bay. This site featured a wonderful variety of corals, particularly table corals that made a beautiful shallow maze for us to explore.
It’s good to have friends in high places. When your new best friend is a volcano that offers wonderful experiences from the heights of spectacular pinnacles to the delights of a coral reef, life is very good indeed.
