.. I looked down on the endless black ocean, its surface silvery with the glow of a full moon. Then I spotted a dark ring on the sea — an atoll.... I longed for the island.”
Like countless travelers before her, writer Chris Lee felt the magical lure of the Pacific isles. For if paradise exists anywhere on earth, it may well lie behind a wave-washed reef, along a palm-fringed beach, somewhere in the vast Pacific Ocean.
Blue Horizons searches for paradise among the major island groups of Polynesia, and in Fiji, where Polynesia and Melanesia meet. For several months, three writer-photographer teams explored islands where the names of renowned seafarers still resound: Cook and Bligh, Tasman and La Perouse. They discovered many similarities, but even more diversity: Cultures varied; histories recounted unique pasts; geography and scenery were often strikingly different. But nearly everywhere they found traditions surviving in the midst of rapid change. And as memorable as the beauty of these tropical isles were the warm welcomes given by those who call them home.
In the islands of Samoa — “Sacred Center” for its people — men still wear elaborate tattoos, and slitlog drums summon worshipers to church. In Tonga, Polynesia’s only remaining kingdom, everyone feasts on Sundays, and islanders wrap themselves in handwoven mats to show respect for each other and for the royal family. In Fiji, fire walkers, in religious ecstasy, pass unscathed over red-hot embers, and today cruise ships instead of war canoes ply the waters of the Blue Lagoon.
On Moorea in French Polynesia, artists paint scenes of island life as Paul Gauguin once did. “If I am away from Tahiti for too long,” said one Polynesian woman, “I begin to fade like a flower.” Cook Islanders permit no structure taller than a coconut palm and take pride in the small-town intimacy of their communities.
Hawaii, with its magnificent beaches and spectacular volcanoes, says “aloha” to more than four million visitors a year. Though changed by tourism and statehood, the islands still preserve some of their rich cultural heritage, and memories of voyagers, kings and queens, and missionaries.
Samoa ... Tonga ... Fiji... Tahiti... the Cooks ... Hawaii — many have found tropical Edens in these lovely, bewitching islands. In six evocative chapters and more than a hundred photographs, Blue Horizons: Paradise Isles of the Pacific shows the reader why.