The Star Breeze. Photo / Windstar Cruises
Armed with nothing but the Milky Way, the first Polynesians navigated the whole Pacific Ocean - and you can now follow in their wake on a luxury cruise ship, writes Chris Stead.
It’s day eight and a new dawn is spreading joy across the horizon. My hair, curled and dry from days in salt water, blows across my cheeks as wind sweeps off the ocean and over the ship’s bow. My eyes lock on our destination as it emerges into detail. The sun’s rays slowly wrap around Tahiti’s peaks, spreading light down the carpeted-green slopes to the city below.
Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia.
When I left its shores a week earlier, I’d worried the trip would feel too short. That I’d blink and miss it. But now, as Star Breeze, the small expedition ship used as part of Windstar’s Dreams of Tahiti cruise, returned to the city’s harbour, I felt full. This holiday hadn’t flashed before my eyes as feared; instead, it had offered a slow-cooked knowledge feast designed to be savoured.
Island by island, I had pieced together a new appreciation for the past and present of a nation that is the Pacific’s beating heart.
Huahine was the final island of the Dreams of Tahiti cruise and fresh in my mind. Two islands, in truth – big and small – formed when demigod Hiro accidently split the original single island by dragging his canoe across the land.
I’d taken the Sacred Sites & Legendary Places excursion, joining a local tour guide who was a fountain of knowledge. I couldn’t look away as he poured cultural wisdom into my fertile mind on a tour of one of the largest and best-preserved archaeological sites in the region.
“Polynesians come from the mountains of Taiwan,” he has mentioned casually. A statement that’s hard to digest when you compare the mighty girth of a Polynesian male with the relatively petite Austronesians of Taiwan’s central and eastern mountain ranges. But he was happy to extrapolate.
Isolated from the Han Chinese that lived along the Taiwanese coastline, the small Atayal and Amis civilisations came down the slopes between 3000-2500 BC and sailed towards the horizon. After expanding through the Philippines, they ended up in the Bismarck archipelago off Papua New Guinea, becoming the Lapita.
Between 1600-800 BC the Lapita moved through the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and eventually into Tonga and Samoa. It was here we see the first hints of Polynesian culture. It would take the best part of 2000 years for that culture to make its way to Huahine, bringing humans to French Polynesia around 1000AD.
The chickens that run wild across French Polynesia offer another clue. They are the descendants of the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia, brought into the Pacific thousands of years ago by the migrating Taiwanese.
I learn all this standing by the rock formations of Marae Manunu, the island’s main ceremonial site where chiefs met. In your mind’s eye you can see how it must have been. From the ancient fish traps still in the lagoon to the lines of vertical Ahu‘o stones that represent ancestors, it’s breathtaking.
It was back on Moorea, our first stop, where I’d learned about French Polynesia’s importance to Pacific settlement.
On the 4x4 Adventure excursion, we came across Marae Titiroa in the centre of the island. The structure remains distinct despite nature’s reclamation. The outer walls a marvel constructed without mortar, with each basalt stone placed with precision. A large internal dais once a place of sacrifice. It was here grand Polynesian meetings were held, the roofless temple ensuring the gods could bear witness.
Our guide, casually eating nuts from the sacred Mape trees, calls it the cultural central point of the Polynesian Triangle. After populating Huahine and the Society Islands, the ancient Polynesians would venture north to Hawaii (by 1100AD), east to Rapa Nui (by 1200AD) and south to New Zealand (by 1300AD).
These three locations form the points of a triangle, spanning a whopping 16 million square kilometres and home to more than 1000 islands. At the centre, French Polynesia – the natural meeting point for this far-reaching culture to reconnect. It’s hard to imagine the mastery of the ocean, stars and naval architecture required to all converge on such a small island in such a vast space at exactly the right time.
This became even more apparent on Raiatea, where I undertook a cultural cruise to a Unesco heritage site that holds three important marae – Hauviri, Hiritai and Taputapuātea. This vast site allows you to not just walk around the ancient temples, but down the streets between.
Our local guide spoke passionately about the flora, pointing out their use in ancient engineering and medicine. Like tamanu, an oil extracted from nuts and aute sap to heal wounds. We learned how to hit a mape tree in such a way that a deep boom rings out from its buttress roots, allowing tribes to send messages like Morse code.
But what truly fascinated me was the construction of the marae itself. Taputapuātea faces the rising sun to watch creation renewed each morning, but also the passage through the reef, acting as a functional landmark. Taputapuātea’s orientation and stone placements also reflect solar and stellar alignments central to Polynesian navigation – stars, solstice, equinox and seasons.
Their layout is a cosmic map that not only mirrors the rangi (sky) and ao (world), but also po (ancestors).
According to our guide, Taputapuātea’s large vertical centre stone is where the king stood. A powerful symbol of his status, sometimes with a human sacrifice at its base. Even now, locals won’t touch it for fear of bad luck – or remove any stone for that matter. Marae are the mana of living ancestors and to do so would disrupt the cosmic order.
I think I liked Marae Hauviri more, however. A place where voyaging knowledge was exchanged and sanctified before expeditions. Sailors would leave Hauviri in hope and those who found land would return to pass on the directions to the priest. They’d then be given a sacred stone to take back to the discovered land as a foundation for a new marae.
Planting the Polynesian flag, so to speak.
I have, of course, only scratched the surface. There is a deep, modern history tied to French colonialisation, alongside the rise of pearl, pineapple and vanilla farms. Plus, a rich wildlife ecosystem to explore, including swimming with turtles and manta rays, to spying aumakua (ma’o sharks) and puhi (eels) Polynesia’s ancestral guardian spirits.
As I visited Tahaa, Bora Bora and Tahiti, I learned as much about these aspects of Polynesian culture as I did about its ancient roots. Indeed, some long-lost customs are returning. Rāhui, a sustainability practice dating back almost 1000 years, has been renewed. Parts of an island become tapu (sacred) with harvesting banned for a period so nature can rebound.
I can admit now with certainty that I knew very little of Polynesian culture when my journey began. But as the captain of Windstar Star Breeze waved goodbye from the deck, and I stepped off my Dreams of Tahiti cruise for the final time, I felt enlightened and enthralled. Content mentally and spiritually. Connected.
Would I have felt like this without the cruise? I don’t believe so. Chaperoned in luxury, well fed and with good company, from island to island, I got access to more terrain than I ever could have managed on my own. While the Dreams of Tahiti excursions collated the great guides and curated the experiences, it left me free to just immerse.
As a Kiwi, you owe it to yourself to experience the beating heart of the Pacific.
The writer travelled courtesy of Windstar.