Ocean Watch

I'm alone on the boat in Raiatea this week, cleaning, organizing and enjoying some quiet time until my two friends from Hawaii join me on Sunday.

I'm also having fun perusing my guidebooks. Biologists have written some gems about the fish and invertebrates here, and cruisers convey infectious enthusiasm for local sailing.

A couple of the tourist guides though leave me cold. In them, the authors make the same point over and over: Tahiti is no paradise.

OK. OK. Things are expensive here, France clings to colonialism and the missionaries ruined the culture. But for most people in the world, including me, visiting Tahiti and her neighbor islands is a dream come true.

In centuries past, the big lure to these islands was the promise of easy sex. It began with the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who in 1768 named Tahiti New Cytheria, the mythical birthplace of the love goddess, Aphrodite.

Bougainville's naturalist, Philibert Commercon, wrote that "the Tahitians know no other god than love." He would know.

When Commercon brought his young valet ashore, delighted Tahitians crowded around and soon stripped him of his clothes. The valet, it turned out, was a woman, and the Tahitians, accepting of cross-dressing, recognized it immediately.

A year later, Capt. Cook confirmed the erotic stories. Young girls, he wrote, performed "a very indecent dance while singing the most indecent songs." Cook reported seeing a couple have sex while people stood around cheering them on. The girl was about 14 and, he noted, quite accomplished.

Reports of a tropical island full of gorgeous women and handsome men who treated sex like a good meal made people in London and Paris practically delirious, and the legend grew large.

The Bounty mutiny was about sex, as was Paul Gauguin's move to Tahiti, where he married (and then deserted) a 14-year-old girl.

Today, it doesn't take sex to see paradise in the Society Islands.

Each day, I go snorkeling in a small area off this harbor, and my eyes pop with what I see. Only three feet from shore, a golden anemone covers a rock like a shag throw rug. When I approach, a bunch of baby three-spot damselfish dash into the wiggly tentacles to hide.

Then I move on to visit several pennant bannerfish, a new species for me, nestled among spiky gardens of sea urchins.

Once on my way there, I spotted a lionfish tucked into a crevice. Another day, I came face to face with a needlefish so big, I mistook if for a barracuda.

Coral reefs circle these towering islands like living leis, creating turquoise lagoons perfect for sailing, diving and dreaming.

And among all this tropical beauty are people to match. The French and Tahitians here have been unfailingly friendly, quick to offer a lift or slip a free papaya into my bag of bananas. All day long, smiling people say, "Bon jour, madame," and mean it.

They seem happy. Apparently, they haven't heard they don't live in paradise.