Island Magic (Easter 2006)
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Cheap airfare led me south, into the Pacific islands for Easter break of 2006: French Polynesia beckoned. In Moorea I luxuriated in two of the most enchanting hotels I’ve ever stayed at in my life. The first (Linareva Beach Resort), had bungalows on the west coast of Moorea which rested about 60 feet from the shore, across smooth, cool, white-coral sand. Each morning I was brought a bowl of fresh fruit, yogurt and French bread, all of which I would eat leisurely, in the shade, looking out over the calm lagoon where I would be spending most of the day snorkeling if I were not in a hammock, reading. In the evenings, un diner français was available on a boat which was anchored in the lagoon a mere 500 feet from my bungalow. The French seafood cuisine was exquisite, especially the shellfish in garlic sauce. The bread was ever fresh and just crisp with the classic flakey crust concealing a soft and warm center which always beckoned to be hit with a healthy slab of cheese, touched with a spread of light cream butter, or dunked into the sauce from the seafood. Though I only stayed there three or four days, it felt like a paradisical eternity. Island Magic!
The next lodging was only for two nights but was without doubt the most expensive hotel room I have ever stayed in. It was a part of a resort-hotel I had conspicuously avoided. I was travelling during Holy Week and I had successfully made advance arrangements for all the places to stay except the last two days. Moorea was a global Easter Holiday destination, and everything had been booked for months for the weekend, except a ridiculously priced $900 a night “bungalow” at a north shore hotel-resort which catered to wedding parties. There was absolutely no way I was going to spend $1,800 for two nights for a bed to stay in. That was half a month’s salary! Ridiculous! I was using an on-line reservation service (Expedia™) which kept shoving this absurd ”Recommended!” lodging in my face every time I went on line to search for a place to stay for the last two nights. I contemplated a campground, private housing, a different island — all to no avail. I bought two different travel books and called all the numbers of hotels listed in them for Moorea, practicing my mauvais telephonic French. No success. Easter weekend is a favored wedding date for French and Americans wanting their wedding parties to come celebrate with them in a tropical paradise. Tahitians themselves use the Easter weekend as a family holiday and had booked up all cheap lodging and campsites months in advance. With only three weeks before my departure I was getting desperate. Where was I going to stay?
In desperation for lodging I was willing to tentatively consider the proffered, perverse waste of capital. But I still felt that such a grotesque expenditure was an economic obscenity. How many starving children could I save for a year, instead, for that price? I asked my parents for their advice. I presented my lack of options, the horrific cost, and my moral qualms. I mentioned all the charitable causes which could benefit from that infusion of cash rather than my spending it on myself — for two nights in a bed, no less! Dad nodded, seeing my ethical dilemma. Mom chipped in with decisive wisdom, “But this is a once in a lifetime expenditure, no? It’s not like you are going to indulge in that lifestyle. Just do it.” Dad swiftly concurred, the parents had given their blessing. I clicked the reservation and experienced the results of my financial fireworks three weeks later.
My bungalow at the Hotel Manava Beach Pearl Resort and Spa™ was a simple affair in one respect: it was just a room with a deck and a bathroom. No antechamber, no separate kitchen (though there was a microwave, small sink, and a refrigerator). But this was an “overwater” bungalow. It was located along a boardwalk a few meters beyond the white sand shore. This always provided a delightfully nautical feel as I approached the room. I felt as if I were about to go on an exotic voyage. Upon entering the room, the first thing to greet the eye (aside from the large comfy bed) was the great glass window looking northwards over the Pacific Ocean, right across the exterior lagoon. The entire time I stayed there, a parade of creatively shaped cumulous clouds minuetted lightly across the horizon, moving ever west, accompanied by a constantly refreshing breeze. From the balcony on the northern side of the bungalow, I could look down at the thirty-foot underwater face of the coral reef’s edge. It was mesmerizing to allow time to dissolve while leaning on the railing of the porch, staring down at the darting fish below. It was likewise entrancing, at night, to gaze at them from inside the room, through the glass viewing table cut into the middle of the floor and illuminated by floodlights. These night-lights brought a constant stream of fish to mill about directly under the bungalow where I could see them through the transparent panel. During the day I sipped cool Pinot Gris, snacked on various French cheeses imported to the island, and ate the crisp, fresh-baked baguettes available at the store across the highway. At night, once I retired from the waters of the day, I sipped reds and nibbled upon various salami cuts, accompanied by the same divine baguettes
But the thing that catapulted the bungalow from a nice vacation haven into an other-worldly Paradise was the combination of the sound system (through which I was able to play the music I had brought) and the ability to jump off the back dock into the lagoon below, and snorkel in the soothingly warm water as I listened to Mozart’s last chamber works. I could immerse myself the achingly cold-suffering opening movement of the Quintet in g minor (K. 516) while surrounded by wrasse, triggerfish, and a glowing wall of multi-colored corals. The two realms: the dark, cool, serene high Austrian Classicism of Mozart and the vibrant, warm, swirling watery jungle of the reef were superficially alien to each other yet, in the moment they melded spiritually into a sublimity which I have rarely seen, tasted, or touched ever again in my life. It was as if the two worlds provided the full spectrum of the rainbow: the cool tones of Mozart met the warm hues of the tropical reef. Nearly two decades later I can still feel my body floating, my head in the water dazzled by at the aquatic marvels before me, as my ears absorbed the poignant strains of strings as the music drifted like smoke across the water.
At the end of my stay I met with a local tattoo artist, consulted with him one day, saw his portfolio, and the next day spent six hours getting a tattoo on my left leg. Like the bungalow, it was expensive. Like my stay in the bungalow, I have no regrets.
You may ask, legitimately, how I can possibly do such a thing — spend hundreds of dollars on a tattoo, spend nearly two thousand on a weekend room? Don’t I feel guilty about it? No. I reflect on the words of my guide in Auschwitz and am grateful. Listening to Mozart while swimming alongside pikefish is a pleasure few on this earth have ever enjoyed, and it only makes me more mindful of how precious this world is — both the “natural” and the best of the human. I am profoundly indebted to the Everything for those moments, and I thank my memory of the coral reef biome and my memory of the music of Mozart, for making me grateful. Visiting Auschwitz should not lead us to despair; it should remind us to fight against the evil of mutilation and separation. Snorkeling in Tahiti or listening to Mozart should not make us complacent, it should refresh us for the battle to come. Such things are the source of beauty upon which our hearts and our world depend.
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If you have not yet taken the time to listen to it, give yourself ten minutes to clear all other activity and sound from your head and listen to the glinting beauty of the glacier-bejewelled Austrian Alps in the Mozart Quintet. Taste, with your ears, the sweetness of light filtering through the Costa Rican cloudforest and sense the scintillating sarabande of the Anza-Borrego desert flowers swaying through the Quintet’s strings. O, touch and see with your heart how gracious the world is… yet remember how precariously it now rests in our careless hands. Those same hands need not be negligent — they can be can religious, caring hands, remindful of the Everything. They can cultivate gardens and perform sublime tributes to engage us in our creativity and potential for harmony and compassion. Here the hands of the Salomon Quartet, joined by Simon Whistler, offer the gift of Mozart’s hands in the form of the first movement of his achingly emotive String Quintet in G minor:
