Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. There was little chance of sleep with the cabin in revolt. Pens, toiletries and water bottles ricocheted off the floor, coathangers chattered among themselves, and every other minute something metallic (the door to the open safe-box, I later discovered) went clunk.
I was on my way to a remote corner of the Pacific in search of peace and tranquillity, but nightfall had whipped up the wind and stirred the sea. It was early April – autumn in French Polynesia. At this time of year, most cruise lines head north from the capital, Papeete, on Tahiti, to the more equatorial Marquesas, or tootle around the low-lying Tuamotus.
On the Aranui 5, a Polynesian-owned and staffed hybrid cargo-passenger ship, I was headed with about 180 others to French Polynesia’s most southerly island group: the rarely visited Australs. This was a new itinerary for the Tahiti-based line, a dress rehearsal without cargo. One of the reasons, I suspect, that the ship – without its customary ballast – was corkscrewing across the sea.
Rimatara, our first stop, is a tiny dollop 3.5 kilometres in diameter on the western edge of the Austral group. It’s tidy-town neat and rather idyllic, but the water in the main cove was a little scuzzy, sub-par by the South Pacific’s high standards.
I struck out in search of a pristine swimming spot and found it within a few minutes. On the chalk-white beach, I met a local woman named Vailani playing w.