Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Highlights of the Society Islands
You know you've been spoiled by the South Pacific when Bora Bora just isn't good
enough. Or when you have to drag your protesting child to snorkel with “just another”
manta ray. Your floating home rests in one beautiful, placid lagoon after another, with the
sound of distant waves on the reef like a lullaby each night. If this isn't the good life, what
is?
So where exactly does one find this paradise? Before visiting, I have to admit to having
rather vague notions of what constituted the Society Islands. Tahiti and Bora Bora were on
my radar, but the true gems, places like Maupiti, I had never even heard of. The following
is a cruiser's primer to the destination of many sailors' dreams, named by Captain Cook in
honor of the Royal Society, a scientific body spearheading the Age of Enlightenment in
eighteenth-century England.
Tahiti is just one island, the administrative capital and gateway to the Society Islands. The
archipelago is made up of two loose clusters: Tahiti and Moorea lie at the eastern, or wind-
ward edge of the group, two towering beauties separated by a mere twenty miles. From
there, it's a good ninety miles to the nearest island of the leeward group, made up of Hua-
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