Dick Johnson came to Tahiti and never left. He liked the idea of wearing a suit to work. A Speedo suit.
Decades change. The allure doesn't. There sits Tahiti, halfway between California and Australia, landscaped by palm trees, volcanic rock and coral reefs, doused by sunshine and trade winds, surrounded by the blue Pacific Ocean maintained at a temperature just below bath water. The kind of place you'd escape to if you could. The kind of place you'd escape to if you couldn't.Especially if you're from anywhere to the north.
Historical examples abound, beginning with:
- The crew of the Bounty.
And followed by:
- Marlon Brando, Gauguin, the "Bali Hai Boys," Roger the Sailor, Ted Cook and the Dick Johnson mentioned above, who we'll meet in a minute.
These and dozens, if not hundreds, of others are responsible for Tahiti's reputation as a laid-back, casual, wear-what-you-want-or-don't-want, play-your-ukelele-under-the-palm-tree kind of place one might leave skyscrapers, freeways, eight-plex Odeons, ESPN, the Crown and fast-food burritos for.
It's possible that Captain Bligh would never have had to deal with the mutiny if it hadn't been for the attractive alternative offered by Tahiti to the crew of his ship, the Bounty. Likewise, if Brando, a Nebraskan by birth, hadn't gone on location to Papeete to star in the movie about the mutiny on the Bounty he might never have bought an entire Tahitian island (Tetiaroa), built an estate there, bought thongs, bought a yacht,married a native and moved out of Beverly Hills altogether.
As for Roger the Sailor, consider his story: Roger Gowan was on his way around the world. He'd left his native England in a sailboat, determined to circumnavigate the globe. He sailed past Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Horn and Pitcairn Island, no problem. But when he sailed into the port at Papeete and hit a reef, both he and his vessel were goners. He built a restaurant, the Restaurant Musee Gauguin, on the big island of Tahiti and to this day can be found at the bar, telling you the mahi-mahi is fresh.
Ted Cook's story is more of the same, although he came from Los Angeles, as did the "Bali Hai Boys." Cook was a geologist who visited Tahiti on a vacation in 1964. He saw Moorea, he saw Bora Bora, he saw Raitaie. He returned to L.A. and couldn't get them off his mind. He quit his job and started a travel agency. Today he is the leading booking agent of tours to the Tahitian islands. His brochures will tell you that Tahiti is Hawaii the way Hawaii used to be before tour guides got ahold of it. Tahiti gets as many visitors in a year as Hawaii gets in 10 days.
The "Bali Hai Boys" have a similar story that predates Ted Cook but postdates Christian Fletcher. Jay Carlisle, Hugh Kelley and Donald McCallum were three type-A, college-educated, future Amway salesmen in L.A. when they took a fraternity-style trip to Tahiti. Owing to obsessive behavioral tendencies, they were lucky to get back to L.A. long enough to quit their jobs and fly back to Papeete. In the neighboring island of Moorea they married Tahitian wives (like Fletcher), they bought a vanilla plantation, determining they'd eat their share and sell the rest. Discovering the vanilla market was in a down cycle, however, and that they knew nothing about vanilla ranching, they eventually settled into the hotel business, building the Bali Hai chain of hotels that feature thatched roofs, over-water bungalows and ceiling fans that now dot the Tahitian Islands and make Carlisle, Kelley and McCallum the Conrad Hiltons of French Polynesia.
Dick Johnson's story is the same as all of the above, only different. He came to Tahiti from the United States as a research assistant with a National Geographic shark-studying expedition. He studied sharks until the study was finished, stayed around to write a book on the subject, lived off the royalties until they began to dwindle, and then, hopeless to break the magnetism, talked an ocean-front hotel in Papeete into starting up a water-sports program. Every morning he shows up to work in a flowered shirt and his Speedo, ready to rent you a speed boat, an outrigger canoe, a snorkel or a scuba tank.
"Tell all your friends," said Johnson, seated in his office last summer.
And then there's the story of Paul Gauguin, the French painter who came to Tahiti in 1891 and, you may have heard this before, didn't want to ever leave. Only he thought Tahiti was too crowded. He set sail for the Marquesas Islands to the north, where he lived with almost no modern conveniences except oil paints and painted himself into a legend until he died with a terrific tan. They say there are worse ways to go.