Вам понравилось доменное имя tahiti.com.ua? dn@parkdomains.com.ua

Are you interested in the domain name tahiti.com.ua? dn@parkdomains.com.ua


Остров Таити Island Tahiti
Архипелаг Острова Общества Аrchipelago Society Islands
Столица Таи́ти Папеэте Capital of Tahiti Papeete

Island of love - Tahiti is 'in' with honeymooners looking to get away from it all

To most Americans, Tahiti is more an archetype than an actual place. The word immediately brings to mind images of paradise on Earth: An isolated, pristine, romantic spot where any couple - even a couple with jobs, car payments, a Roth IRA and sensible shoes - can run off and become Adam and Eve.

Which is why, perhaps, it has become the hot honeymoon destination in the past few years.

"Couples are getting a lot more exotic, more creative," said Sara Zukroff-Urrea, lesiure travel manager for Bler Travel in Brookline. "And Tahiti's just a paradise for honeymooners."

Zukroff-Urrea said the attraction is not just that Tahiti is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

She said it's also that "You can go there and feel completely alone, like you have your own island. It's like nowhere else on Earth."

Last year, Zukroff-Urrea arranged for Boston lawyer Ken Halpern and his bride, the former Diane Rabb, a school psychologist, to have the Tahitian honeymoon of their dreams.

"It was exactly what we hoped for," said Ken. "It's romantic, beautiful, unique. It's off the beaten track."

And he said, there's also an appealing simplicity to a vacation there.

"I was looking for that simplicity. In a place like Hawaii, we'd be running around a lot, sightseeing, and we wanted time just to spend with each other."

"When we got there I just cried," Diane said, "because it's so magnificent, so beautiful."

"Tahiti" is actually a catchall term for the eight volcanic Society Islands of French Polynesia, which lies approximately midway between Australia and South America, just about in the center of the vast South Pacific.

Though all of the islands have lush tropical vegetation so vibrant and waters so clear and blue that their colors would look more at home in a Disney cartoon than a landscape, Tahiti itself, with an area of 402 square miles, is the most populated and commercialized, and site of the main airport.

Visitors from the U.S. fly to Tahiti via Los Angeles - it's about a 7 1/2-hour flight - with service by several airlines including Air France, Air New Zealand, Hawaiian Airlines and Tahiti's own Air Tahiti Nui.

The Halperns found their paradise in Huahine, a small island about 109 miles northwest of Tahiti.

"Huahine is a place to relax," Ken said. "We stayed in this wonderful over-the-water bungalow, which was very large, about three times the size of a large hotel room. It had a wraparound deck, and a short flight of stairs to the water. And it was all built on this coral reef where the water was relatively calm and shallow."

Diane added the water was so clear the couple could watch fish from the deck.

"You didn't even have to snorkle to get close to them," she said.

For honeymooners looking for action, though, the Halperns said Huahine's not the place.

"Most of the time I was out on the deck, reading. You're in bed by nine o'clock. There was absolutely nothing to do - nothing, except be with each other," Diane said.

"As soon as I saw it I said there's nothing better than this," added Ken.

That sentiment was echoed by Paula and Michael Serafino of Watertown, who called their October honeymoon in the South Pacific "outstanding." They too visited several islands, including a stay in an over-the-water bungalow in a lagoon resort in Bora Bora.

"Exceptional," said Michael, a founding partner of iComponent Software. "It was so private, you forgot there were other bungalows around you."

One of the highlights of the Serafinos' vacation came when they hired a local guide named Pasquale to take them in his motorboat to a few of the or tiny deserted islands, scattered around offshore, where the sand, according to Paula, "felt like it was butter," and there was no one around for miles and miles.

Catered motu picnics are popular offerings in the islands, and it's easy to see why.

"They'll canoe you out, drop you off, then go away and come back in a couple hours. I've traveled a little bit, and no place I've ever been has fostered such a romantic feeling," Michael said.

A consistent theme among visitors to the Society Islands is that the locals are friendly in a genuine way - not merely because they want your tourist dollars.

"Americans can be pretty high-maintenance, but the people there are very patient. They care about you. They aren't putting on a show - this is part of their lives. And you get to live their life for two weeks," said Paula.

Ginny Nissenbaum, owner of Boston's Touraine Travel, agreed that the locals are part of what makes Tahiti special.

"They're not into the rat race thing of getting ahead. They're not terribly entrepreneurial," Nissenbaum said.

That's not to say, however, that a honeymoon in Tahiti is cheap; a two-week trip with good accommodations, usually at a French-managed resort, generally runs about $10,000.

But according to Zukroff-Urrea, the expense is not a deterrent. In the past few years, she said, "there's been a tremendous increase" in couples planning Tahitian honeymoons - though not so tremendous, she notes, that newlyweds will feel as though the islands are overrun with others who are also celebrating their special day. "You're not going to have the crowds that Hawaii has. You feel like it's yours."

Active honeymooners have a wealth of activities choices including biking, snorkeling, diving, sailing and watersports, as well as unusual offerings such as shark feeding. And both the French and Polynesian cuisine gets raves (the islands also boast a good number of Japanese restaurants).

Zukroff-Urrea and Nissenbaum agreed that many couples look at their honeymoon as a once-in-a-lifetime trip, a time to splurge even if it means skimping in other areas. Many see it as a chance to indulge their fantasies - and Tahiti is nothing if not fantastic.

"When you fly in it looks to me like Peter Pan's Never-Never Land," said Nissenbaum. "It looks like someplace where magic happens."

She added, "Tahiti is a place you approach from the heart." And that, perhaps, is what makes it the perfect places for honeymooners to be.

The Boston Herald - April 2, 2000 - Gehrman, Elizabeth

Nature of Tahiti (1911).

The sky above Tahiti is of azure blue; a girdle of luxuriant and intensely green tropical vegetation, gorgeous with gaily coloured leaves and blossoms and golden-hued fruit, encompasses this delightful harbour; while corals, seaweeds, zoophytes, and fish of every possible tint and colour are seen, as in a wild garden, beneath the transparent waters. The surface of the water exhibits every imaginable tint, from the palest aquamarine to the brightest emerald, from the pale light blue of the turquoise to the deep dark blue of the sapphire, and is dotted here and there with patches of red, brown, and green coral rising from the mass below. The harbour of Papeete is large and commodious, the view from it most exquisite, past Quarantine Island to the beautiful island of Eimeo. On landing one finds oneself in the midst of a fairylike scene, bewildering in the brightness and variety of its colouring. The magnolias and yellow and scarlet hibiscus overshadowing the water in Tahiti; the velvety turf on to which one steps from the boat; the white road running between rows of wooden houses whose little gardens are a mass of flowers. The streets of the town are far more like avenues running through a gentleman's park timbered with tropical trees. Under the shade of the trees are built huts and houses of cane or bamboo, so small and so daintily put together that they look more like summer-houses than real dwelling-places. Close by is the Chinamen's quarter, which consists of a collection of regular Chinese-built bamboo houses, whose occupants all wore their national costume, pigtail included. The French Commandant lives in a charming residence, surrounded by gardens full of what to us are the rarest and most exquisitely scented plants. Eound the outer paling is a sort of creeping hedge of stephanotis and vanilla, the mixed perfume.

Coral reef at Papeete (1911).

Wonderful gardens of the deep, the strange creatures moving about and darting hither and thither amid the masses of coral forming their submarine home. There are shells of rare shape, brighter than if they have been polished by the hand of the most skilful artist; crabs of all sizes, scuttling and sidling along; sea-anemones, spreading their delicate feelers in search of prey; and many other kinds of zoophytes crawling, wriggling, and dragging their length slowly over the surface of the reef; scarlet, blue, yellow, gold, violet, spotted, striped, and winged fish, short, long, pointed, and blunt, darting about like birds among the coral trees and plants, which looked like exquisitely coloured palms and ferns and flowers.

The valley of Tia-auru (1911).

The valley of Tia-auru is on the island Tahiti, down which a river flows into the sea by Point Venus. This is one of the principal streams of the island, and its source lies at the base of the loftiest central pinnacles, which rise to a height of about 7000 feet. The whole island is so mountainous that the only way to penetrate into the interior is to follow up the valleys. The woods border each side of the river; and the glimpses of the lofty central peaks, seen as through an avenue, with here' and there a waving coco-nut on one side, are extremely picturesque. On each hand the walls are nearly vertical; yet from the soft nature of the volcanic strata, trees and rank vegetation sprang from every projecting ledge. These precipices must have been some thousand feet high; and the whole form a mountain gorge far more magnificent than anything which I had ever before beheld. Until the mid-day sun stood vertically over the ravine, the air felt cool and damp, but now it became very sultry. A little higher up the river divides itself into three little streams. The two northern ones are impracticable, owing to a succession of waterfalls, which descended from the jagged summit of the highest mountain; the other to all appearance was equally inaccessible. The sides of the valley are nearly precipitous; but, as frequently happens with stratified rocks, small ledges projected, which were thickly covered by wild bananas, liliaceous plants, and other luxuriant productions of the tropics. The first ascent from the valley was very dangerous, for it was necessary to pass a steeply-inclined face of naked rock by the aid of ropes which we brought with us. This ledge formed a fiat spot, above which a beautiful cascade, some hundred feet in height, poured down its waters, and beneath, another high cascade fell into the main stream in the valley below. On every side in Tahiti were forests of banana; the fruit of which, though serving for food in various ways, lay in heaps decaying on the ground, brake of wild sugar-cane; and the stream is shaded by the dark-green knotted stem of the ava. There is the wild yam and there are, moreover, several other wild fruits and useful vegetables. The little stream, besides its cool water, produced eels and crayfish.