My 1993 trip to Hawaii did something dangerous to me.
It did not calm my travel fever. It made it worse.
Hawaii had opened a door, and behind that door was the South Pacific — that endless blue world I had dreamed about since childhood. Suddenly, all those old images came back to me: the silhouette of mysterious islands, the stories of Captain Cook, and of course the Mutiny on the Bounty movies.
I had first seen that dreamlike island world as a child in the old Hollywood movie with Marlon Brando. Later came the newer version with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, and even later a mini-series about the voyages and discoveries of James Cook in the South Pacific.
Those islands had always lived somewhere in the back of my mind.
Tahiti. Moorea. Bora Bora.
Names that sounded less like real places and more like magic spells.
After Hawaii, they suddenly felt a little closer. Not close, of course. This was still the Pacific Ocean, not a weekend trip to the Bavarian Alps. But they were in the same ocean as Hawaii, about 5,000 kilometres farther south.
“Only” 5,000 kilometres.
The Pacific has a funny way of making distances look harmless on a map.
Still, the fire was burning again.
I wanted to go to French Polynesia.
Planning a South Pacific Dream Before the Internet
Today, planning such a trip would be easy. You open your laptop, compare flights, read hotel reviews, watch videos, check maps, and after a few hours you know more about a place than some people who actually live there.
But this was the early 1990s.
There was no internet as we know it today. No booking platforms. No travel blogs. No online hotel reviews. No street view. No quick messages to guesthouses on the other side of the world.
If you wanted information, you had to search for it the old-fashioned way.
So I bought travel guides.
But not the small glossy ones full of beautiful photos and big promises from tour operators. Those often felt more like marketing brochures than real help. I wanted practical information. Useful information. The kind of information that could actually help someone who wanted to travel more independently.
Lonely Planet was different.
Those books were colourful on the outside, but inside they were full of the things I really needed: transport, small hotels, island connections, prices, maps, warnings, and tips for people who did not want to spend their whole trip inside an expensive resort.
I also bought travel magazines, but again not the shiny luxury ones where every beach looked as if it had been polished by angels. I preferred the thinner magazines for individual travellers. Less glamour, more reality.
And somewhere inside one of those magazines, I found what I needed.
A small advertisement.
Or, as we say in German, an Inserat.
It was from a German man who lived in the Fiji Islands and organized more individual South Pacific trips for German travellers.
That sounded perfect for me.
I wanted something more personal than a standard package tour, but I was not yet brave enough to organize every flight, island connection, and hotel completely on my own. My English was still in a rather poor condition at that time. Let’s say it existed, but it was not ready for complicated phone calls with hotels on tropical islands.
So I contacted him.
By good luck, he was in Germany at that time and even called me in Munich.
I told him what I wanted: French Polynesia. Especially Moorea.
He listened and then said something I never forgot:
“Oh Andi, Moorea is beautiful. But be careful. It can make you addicted.”
At that moment I smiled.
Later I would know how right he was.
The Coral Route
He also told me about a special route by Air New Zealand called the “Coral Route.”
It sounded almost unreal: French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and finally Hawaii again.
For me, these were not just destinations on a ticket. They were names from maps, books, films, and childhood dreams. But at that moment, one island stood above all the others.
Moorea.
That was the place I wanted to reach first.
The German organizer asked me how much I was willing to spend on accommodations. I gave him my budget, and he said he was sure he could recommend places that would fit. Not luxury resorts, of course. I was not travelling as a honeymoon millionaire. I was travelling as a man with a childhood dream, a limited bank account, and a growing problem with island addiction.
A few days later, a letter arrived.
Inside was the offer.
The whole four- to five-week trip would cost no more than 5,500 Deutsche Marks, including airfare and all accommodations.
I could hardly believe it.
That was about the same amount I had paid for my two-week Hawaii trip in 1993. Of course, the whole journey would cost more in the end. Food, local transport, small adventures, unexpected expenses — all these things have their own way of saying hello to your wallet.
But the essentials were covered: flights and places to sleep.
That was enough.
I booked the offer.
And then came the hardest part.
Waiting.
One Year of Planning, Saving, and Dreaming
The planning and saving took almost one year.
A year can be very long when your mind is already sitting under a palm tree in the South Pacific, but your body still has to go to work in Germany.
Finally, at the end of April, the day arrived.
I headed to Frankfurt am Main to catch my flight to the South Pacific.
The route was familiar at first. Like on my Hawaii trip, I flew from Germany to Los Angeles. But this time, after Los Angeles, the plane would not continue west to Honolulu.
This time the course turned southwest.
To Papeete.
To Tahiti.
Eight more hours across the sea, into the centre of the South Pacific Ocean.
I had already spent about twelve hours in the air when I arrived in Los Angeles, and another eight hours were still ahead of me. Strangely, I was not tired at all.
Excitement is a powerful drug.
Much stronger than airplane coffee.
Los Angeles Without the Ashtray Atmosphere
My first stop was Los Angeles, where I stayed in transit for my next flight to Papeete.
And then something unexpected happened.
The transit lounge was clean.
No blue clouds of cigarette smoke. No ashtray atmosphere. LAX no longer felt like a smoking room with airplanes attached to it.
Smoking was prohibited, and the warning signs made it very clear that huge fines were waiting for anyone who ignored the rules.
What a miracle.
Only two years earlier, Los Angeles Airport had felt to me like one giant ashtray. This time, I could actually breathe.
Outside, a Boeing 747-300 was waiting.
This aircraft would carry me across the ocean to Tahiti.
To the South Pacific.
To the dream.
Landing in Tahiti
I landed in Tahiti in the middle of the night.
And still, I was not tired.
How could I be tired? The biggest dream of my life was becoming real. My body may have been confused by time zones, but my mind was wide awake.
I was brought to a hotel in downtown Papeete called the Prince Hinoi Hotel. I quickly understood why this hotel fitted into my travel budget, but that did not matter.
It was only for a few hours.
Papeete was not my real destination.
My destination was Moorea.
The island just across the sea, visible from Tahiti like a promise.
I hardly slept. Maybe I did not sleep at all. Tahiti is in the same time zone as Hawaii, and somewhere far away in Munich it was still early afternoon on the other day. My inner clock had probably given up and gone home.
Before sunrise, I was already standing at the dock where the ferries to Moorea departed.
My ferry was around six in the morning.
And there it was.
Moorea.
Slowly appearing in the sunrise.
I stood there and watched the island come out of the darkness. The mountains, the silhouette, the colours of the early morning. It felt unreal. Like a movie scene, but this time I was not sitting in front of a television in Germany.
I was there.
I will never forget that moment.
The Salty Welcome of the Pacific
Around six o’clock, I entered the fast ferry to Moorea.
It was a catamaran, and of course I chose a seat on the top deck under the open sky. I wanted to see everything.
At that moment, I did not know I would also feel everything.
Especially the sea.
The Pacific was rough that morning, and I received a very personal demonstration that the ocean is, in fact, extremely salty.
The catamaran was almost flying over the waves. Up, down, up again, and then suddenly down into the valleys between the waves. Sometimes all I could see in front of me was water.
A lot of water.
More water than necessary, in my opinion.
It was exciting.
It was beautiful.
It was also a little scary.
The crossing took only about thirty minutes, but it felt like a small ocean adventure. Wind in my face, salt on my skin, Moorea in front of me, Tahiti behind me.
The Cook Islands, Fiji, and Hawaii were still waiting somewhere ahead of me across the ocean. But first came Moorea.
And Moorea was not simply a stopover.
It was the island that would prove the warning right: paradise can be addictive.
Arrival on Moorea
And then, finally, we arrived.
I stepped off the ferry.
After years of dreaming, planning, saving, waiting, and flying halfway around the world, I put my feet on Moorea.
For me, it felt like holy land.
I was welcomed at the dock in Vaiare and brought to my hotel on the other side of the island. After a while, I reached the Moorea Village Hotel, where I would stay for the next nine nights.
Nine nights on Moorea.
The German from Fiji had warned me:
“Moorea can make you addicted.”
I had only just arrived, and I already suspected he was right.
The island had me.
And I had not even rented the bicycle yet.
That would come next: tropical heat, island roads, a bicycle without gears, and my completely unrealistic idea that paradise would always be easy on the legs.
The South Pacific Story Has Only Just Begun
This is the first chapter of a small South Pacific mini-series.
I decided not to put the whole journey into one long article, because this trip deserves more space — and honestly, nobody should have to cross half the Pacific in one single blog post.
Over the next articles, I will continue this story island by island, with all the small moments, surprises, mistakes, and memories that made this journey so unforgettable.
The next part will stay on Moorea, where the real island experience began.
So if you enjoyed this first step into the South Pacific, I hope you will come back for the next chapter.
The dream had become reality — but the journey had only just started.
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