The Way of Wanderlust (32 page)

As on most of my journeys, I didn't know what to expect when I arrived in Aitutaki on assignment for
Islands
magazine. All I knew was that Tony Wheeler had said it was the quintessential South Pacific island, the perfect place for someone who wanted to reconnect with tranquility, sensuality, and a sense of things as they used to be. As a travel writer, I thrive on these uncharted journeys, stressful as they may be. On the one hand, as I'm traveling around the place, my mind is always thinking, “What's the story? What's the story?”—and that's stressful. But on the other hand, my adrenaline is flowing, I'm keenly aware of everything happening around me, and I'm inspired to ask questions and forge connections that I might otherwise be too intimidated or reserved to concoct. On Aitutaki, my desire to understand the essence of the place for my story inspired me to do things I would never normally do—and in retrospect, momentarily transforming into a Cook Islands warrior on the dance floor was one of the best things I have ever done.

FOUR DRUMS POUNDED A DEEP, INCESSANT RHYTHM
through the sultry South Pacific night. A ukulele plunked plangent notes into the air. A smiling-eyed young beauty with copper skin and flowing hair, wearing a palm frond skirt and coconut bra, took me by the hand. “Will you dance with me?” Retire flashed a grin and winked. “You want to be Cook Island warrior, right? This your chance! Go!”

She led me unsteadily onto the sandy stage. I swallowed my pride, and suddenly my legs were doing things they'd never even tried.

An eternity later, the pounding and plunking stopped, the two dozen foreigners watching the weekly Island Night performance burst into applause, and my lovely maiden disappeared with a fleeting smile down the beach.

Retire slapped me on the back. “You make good Cook Island warrior someday! How old you live to be?”

By now I knew Retire well enough to understand what he meant to say: Maybe if I lived into deep old age and practiced dancing every day, I'd finally win the maiden—or at least the warrior's lei.

I'd met Retire four days earlier at the Aitutaki International Airport, a charming one-room, open-to-the-breezes terminal where taxi drivers, tour operators, and resort managers met the two dozen visitors who deplaned on the morning flight from Rarotonga. Mutual friends had arranged for Retire to play reception committee, driver, and tour guide for my five days on the island. I was trying to spot someone who looked “Retired” when a rotund, deeply tanned, thirtyish man in khaki shorts, a blue and white floral shirt, and a broad, beaming smile approached me. “Are you Don? I'm Retire. Welcome to Aitutaki!”

Soon after we had piled my bags in his car and set off on the ten-minute ride to my hotel on the island's northwest coast, Retire turned to me.

“You like diving, right?” Before I could even tell him I wasn't a diver, he continued, “Tomorrow we go deep-sea diving. That good for me. Sharks like white meat!” And he broke into a loopy, high-pitched laugh. Welcome to Aitutaki.

I had come to this tiny South Seas island on a quest, but not one I could easily define. Eighteen hours before, I had been befuddled, beleaguered, bedraggled, and altogether benumbed by 21st-century stress: too many projects, too many deadlines, too many demands. I longed for quietude, simplicity, and a sense of things as they used to be. I was pining for qualities I associated with islands and with the South Pacific in particular: a lush, slow, wild beauty, a barefoot tranquility, a balmy, palmy, sea-scented sensuality.

But did such qualities even exist? I asked the most well-traveled person I know, Tony Wheeler, lifelong wanderer and co-founder of the global guidebook company Lonely Planet, if he knew of such a perfect island. He didn't pause for a moment. “Aitutaki,” he said.

Where? Wheeler explained that Aitutaki belongs to the Cook Islands, a vaguely S-shaped scattering of fifteen islands roughly halfway between Tahiti and Fiji. Rarotonga, with a population of about 8,000, is the main island. Aitutaki, 150 miles north of Raro, is the second most-populated, with 1,500 residents. It's also the second most-visited of the islands, with some 25,000 arrivals each year. Shaped like an upside down fishhook, Aituaki is the clasp in a necklace-shaped lagoon, about nine miles long and seven and a half miles wide, that is set with fifteen idyllic islets, or
motu
, all of which are uninhabited. Aitutaki is compact—it takes less than an hour to drive the paved road that circles the island—but its effect is clearly expansive. “This may well be the friendliest, sexiest, and most beautiful island in the entire Pacific,” Wheeler said.

Late on the afternoon of my first day, I was admiring that beauty outside my thatched-roof hotel hut—a long powdery white-sand beach lapped by crystal-clear waters, with schools of silver fish darting through infinite gradations of blue and green; tall palm trees slanting over the sand, fat yellow coconuts hanging under their rustling fronds; white clouds billowing in a deep blue sky, and the sun sliding mango-slow toward the horizon—when Retire returned.

“You like to dance, right?” he asked as soon as I climbed into his car. I started to protest, but he cut me off. “Then you are very lucky, my friend. Because tonight is the Aitutaki Dance Competition! And I signed you up!” Before I could say anything, he plunged on. “But first, we eat!”

As we drove, Retire gave me a crash course in the island's history: Aitutaki was settled around 1,100 years ago by Polynesian Maoris who sailed from present-day French Polynesia. According to legend, the first settler was Ru, who arrived with his four wives, four brothers and their wives, and twenty royal maidens. Ru divided the island into twenty sections, one for each of the maidens, and completely forgot his brothers, who stormed off to settle New Zealand. As other settlers arrived from throughout the South Pacific, they had to be accepted by one of the twenty maidens or their descendants to be able to live on the island. This family system of land ownership, where plots of land are accorded by birthright and bestowed by family consent, and where money never changes hands, continues to this day.

Fifteen minutes later, on the road to the inland village of Tautu, we stopped at Café Tupuna, a four-year-old eatery under the impeccable hand of artist, chef, and entrepreneur Tupuna Hewitt. Set in Tupuna's glorious garden, with a sandy floor and, as dusk comes on, tiki-torch lighting, Café Tupuna features the chef's own vivid paintings of island scenes on the walls and equally artful concoctions from the back-room kitchen, which is hung with well-used pots, pans, woks, and woven baskets. My meal began with a corn and seafood chowder that offered a delicious marriage of tastes—not just corn but other local vegetables like
rukau
and
kumara
, plus generous helpings of shrimp, crab, and mussels. For the main course I had reef fish stuffed with shrimp and onions, doused with a pesto sauce and served with rice. The combination of flavors and textures was exquisite and illuminating, like a master course in island tastes, but I was distracted.

“Retire,” I began, “about this dance competition—”

“Oh, can't talk about that over dinner!” he interrupted and began joking with the kitchen staff.

Tupuna chatted with the diners and Retire traded quips with everyone. When I remarked that it felt like one big family, Retire replied, “That's because it is!”

Tupuna smiled from the kitchen. “Yep, these are all my nieces helping out,” she swept an arm toward the waitresses and the young women cleaning and preparing in the kitchen, “and the food you just ate—I learned those recipes by experimenting in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother.”

By the end of the meal I felt like family, too: When one niece asked if we wanted dessert and I said I was full up to here, indicating mid-throat, she replied, “Good! You can still go up to your nose!”

After dinner, we scuttled like overfed crabs back to the car and hurried on to the main town, Arutanga, a classic sleepy South Seas port with a funky market, a historic limestone church, a scattering of souvenir stalls, the tourist information center, post office, and bank—and the only stop sign on the island.

The dance competition was being held in the open-air courtyard at the Orongo Centre, right on the wharf. This was the biggest event of the year, Retire announced, and would determine which
hura
dancers—
hura
being the Cook Islands Maori word for the islands' singularly sensual dance—would represent Aitutaki in the annual Cook Islands Dance Competition the following month on Rarotonga.

“So you didn't really sign me up, right?” I said.

“No, not tonight,” he said. “But I think you dance before you leave.”

The competition was due to begin at 7:00, but when we arrived at 6:50, a calm chaos reigned. Lights had been strung up and a stage open to the stars and surrounded with green plants had been erected; in front of this stage, row upon row of folding chairs waited, empty. One sumo-sized man in a bright red and white floral shirt was plugging things in, checking wiring and sound systems. Elegant islanders in flowing floral dresses and shirts, wearing green, white, and yellow leis around their heads or necks, were wandering in and out, hugging and joking. Children skidded and screamed gleefully in the background, and to my weary, wondering eyes they were like personifications of the island—their eyes as limpid as the lagoon, their skin as smooth-brown as polished coconut nuts, their smiles as bright as frangipani.

After about a half hour, six musicians appeared with drums and ukuleles, and positioned themselves to one side of the stage. Then one by one lights came on. At about 8:00, everyone bustled into their seats, the lights went down, and the emcee sauntered into the spotlight. The competition began with the youngest group, the Juniors aged 10-13. Next came the Intermediates, ages 14-16, then the Seniors, ages 17-39, and finally the Elders. Each competitor performed two dances—one long and elaborate, accompanied by a singer, and the second a very quick and intense minute of non-stop leg-pounding and hip-shimmying.

The entire island was there, it seemed, and everyone knew everyone. When the younger dancers performed on stage, the children in the crowd mimicked them, and I began to understand how these competitions kept the ancient culture alive, how these
hura
dancers became the freshest link in a centuries-old lineage of legend and craft, designed to pass traditions and tales from one generation to the next. And when the oldest dancers took the stage, the entire crowd sang along with their songs, applauded artful moves, and laughed at their audacious hip-sways. The men enacted tales of fierce warriors, stomping their feet, booming their greeting, telling their story with out-thrust arms. The women were nubile maidens, their arms floating fluidly through the air, their hips swaying and shaking with an intoxicating mix of innocence and sensuality. And at some point as the drums pounded, the hips swayed, the stars sparkled overhead, and the hibiscus-scented breeze blew through, a timeless piece of Polynesia settled like a breeze-blown seed in my soul.

The next morning, well before dawn, I heard a tap-tap-tap on the slatted doors of my hut.

“Good morning, Don! Time for fishing!”

Fishing?!? Oh, right, at one point during the jet-lagged night, Retire had told me he had arranged a fishing expedition. Somehow I'd forgotten that it was for the next morning, and that he'd said he'd come by to get me at 5:30. Ah, paradise.

So I scrambled into some clothes and we set off to a friend's house, where we attached a small motorboat to Retire's car and drove to the Arutanga wharf. Retire and his friend maneuvered the boat into the water, and Retire steered through an imperceptible break in the reef to the deeper waters beyond. When we stopped after a half hour to drop our lines, the sky blazed with more stars than I'd ever seen, and the night was absolutely still. We tried two favored lagoon locations with no luck, but at the third spot, as I was savoring the stars, the rising breeze, and the salty tang of the sea, my pole began to bend.