Tahiti's shy sibling

Vanira Lodge is a work of art. Picture / David Riddell

There is not one Tahiti but two. Tahiti Nui (Big Tahiti) and Tahiti Iti (Little Tahiti) are connected, like a dividing amoeba, at an isthmus.

More tranquil and less visited than its larger sibling, Tahiti Iti is an island of mountains, valleys, rainforests, streams and rivers, villages and a sublimely beautiful coastline. It's also much more Tahitian than French.

The service town of Taravao sprawls over the isthmus. From there, one road leads along Tahiti Iti's south coast, another along its northern shore, but, unlike Tahiti Nui, its smaller sibling is not encircled by a road. The northern road stops at the village of Tautira; the southern road at Teahupoo.

Tahiti Iti is riddled with history, both Tahitian and European. Ancient petroglyphs and the remains of a marae, in the Vaiote river valley on the east coast, mark the place where the island's chiefs held councils of war.

Off the northern coast, opposite the mouth of the Vaitepeha River, James Cook anchored Resolution on August 8 1773. The place is still marked on local maps as Mouillage (anchorage) de Cook. One year later some Spaniards from Peru, led by a Captain Boenechea, came to Tautira and set up a mission station.

It failed, but beside the door of the lovely old Catholic church in Tautira, there's a plaque commemorating Boenechea and his compatriates. On the morning I visit, elderly women are decorating the church interior with tropical flowers. Hesitating at the door, I'm beckoned inside keenly by a bent, toothless, but smiling woman. "Entrez, entrez M'sieur."

Tautira village is built across a plain, bounded on one side by a sweep of black sand beach. Wandering through the village, I call in at a much newer, spotlessly white Protestant church and its graveyard, where the scent of frangipani is everywhere. This Eglise Evangelique is a reminder that the English and Protestantism eventually prevailed here, Cook returning in 1777 to triumphantly replace the Spaniards' cross with one of his own. The French didn't take control of both Tahitis until 1847. Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson also stayed in Tautira in 1888 and described it as "the most beautiful spot, and its people the most amiable, that I have ever found".

Driving from Tautira across to Teahupoo, I call in at Vaiufaufa Viewpoint (600m), on the Taravao Plateau. The view north from here, of both Tahitis' coastal plains, lagoons, reef and mountains, is one of the finest in the South Pacific.

Teahupoo is to surfing what Wimbledon is to tennis or Lords is to cricket. At a pass through the coral reef a few hundred metres out from the shore here, reef, wind and ocean collaborate to produce waves of phenomenal size, some of the world's biggest surfable waves.

A local tells me, "In California and Hawaii, when they see on the weather news that conditions are right for the Teahupoo waves, they jump on a plane and flight straight here". Every May the Billabong Pro Tahiti surf contest is held here, part of the world series.

Eating my lunch of poisson cru (raw fish) at Snack Hinerava, beside the lagoon, I study the surfing posters on the walls and the shots of board riders shooting the almost unbelievable tubes thrown up out on the reef. Some posters have been autographed (Dah Snack Rulez) by the visiting Hawaiian surfers.

At Teahupoo the road ends, but it's possible to continue on foot, across a footbridge over a stream, then along a track which follows the coast, first past gardens, then into the rain forest and along cliffs high above the lagoon. The going here is rugged, crossing mountain streams and up slippery rock faces.

After a gruelling couple of days, the track reaches Tautira. There's also a track right through the middle of the island which can be taken, following river courses in the shadow of Mt Rooniu (1332m), the island's highest peak. Both hikes require a local guide.

Vanira Lodge is just outside Teahupoo village. Following a roadside sign, I drive up a precipitous, curving, one-way driveway. Then the land opens out onto a broad terrace, in the centre of which is a pond covered with water lilies. Four plump white ducks squat on a little island in the centre of the pond. The drive passes the pond, approaches the mountainside, and there before me is my accommodation.

This is different. My thatched bungalow stands on tree trunk piles, hard up against the mountainside. It has wooden floors and an open-fronted living-dining area providing a panoramic view of the terrace below, Tahiti Iti's reef and the ocean.

There's a cooking area, at the rear an open-roofed shower and bathroom, and up a steep staircase whose treads are made from timber rounds, a mezzanine floor with a big bed covered with a tifaifai quilt and shrouded with a mosquito net.

What fascinates me is the design of the bungalow's interior. The framing is made from the branches and rough-sawn trunks of rainforest trees, split down the middle, and long saplings. Boughs and trunks, laid at crazy angles, are used for railings and bracing. The walls are made of round stones, taken from Tahiti Iti's rivers, or from an adobe-type plaster made of sand, mud and cement. Other walls are made from vertical lengths of giant bamboo. The result is a work of art, an eccentric, unpredictable, crazy but brilliant work of art. Everywhere I look there's a branch, a knot or a plank to stare at. There are four such bungalows here.

The owner of Vanira Lodge is Karine La Valle. A vivacious woman in her late thirties, Karine is originally from Paris. She sailed to Tahiti via Africa with her boat-builder husband, 10 years ago.

She explains how her lodge's architectural peculiarity came about. A French builder, Jean-Claude Michel, began constructing these bungalows about 20 years ago, first at the pension he and his wife Monique built near Taravao. It was called Fare Nana'o. The design and construction skills of Michel have been passed on to local builders, who deployed them in the building of Vanira Lodge.

The results are minor masterpieces of architectural eccentricity. And one of them makes the perfect base for discovering the secrets of Tahiti Iti, Tahiti Nui's shy sibling.

Checklist

* Getting there

Air Tahiti Nui flies to Tahiti from Auckland three times a week.

* Where To Stay

Vanira Lodge 

* Further information

Visit Tahiti's official website.

* Graeme Lay flew to Tahiti with Air Tahiti Nui as a guest of Tahiti Tourisme.