Polynesia's beating heart — the market, the mountains, Teahupo'o, and Gauguin's memory
Tahiti is what visitors to Bora Bora fly through but rarely stop in, which is their loss. Papeete's dawn market is one of the great Pacific markets — tifaifai quilts, monoi oil, fresh tuna, vanilla pods. Teahupo'o surf break (the heaviest wave in the world, hosting the 2024 Paris Olympics surfing event) is at the island's southern tip. Tahiti was the place that changed European consciousness: the Bounty mutiny, Gauguin's exile, Robert Louis Stevenson. All packed into an island 45km long.
Polynesian settlement dates to around 500 CE. European discovery by Samuel Wallis in 1767 created the myth of paradise that reshaped European Romanticism. France declared a protectorate in 1842, full colony in 1880. Paul Gauguin arrived in 1891 seeking a primal world the Europeans had largely already destroyed; his Tahitian paintings became some of the most influential art of the 19th century.