Dream Trip 2009

Great Travel Moment

Wherever life may take me, I'll always hold this view from a breezy Moorea clifftop in my mind's vest pocket. Fulfilling my childhood dream of seeing the South Pacific, my husband and I took a weeklong Tahitian cruise. After days of snorkeling in crystalline, bathtub-warm water through canyons of purple and blue coral, beach picnics heaping with exotic fruit and fish, and nights sipping sticky drinks under the stars, we wanted to see more local life. Our driver for this shore excursion was born in the village below. With us and a Brazilian couple loaded into the back of his ancient pickup truck, he roared up a near-vertical knife-edge ridge, dodging tethered goats and wandering chickens until we jolted to a stop on the hilltop. "It is paradise, isn't it?" he said, wiping his machete after cutting up a platter of sweet jade-green grapefruit for his cargo of awestruck tourists.