I know what you’re thinking … we’re off on some safari in the Serengeti. Sadly, not true—but the title’s relevant, I promise, even if this post is really the long preamble to the adventure.

We’ve been missing our besties from the States. They have this annoying thing called work—I jettisoned that two years ago, and highly recommend the heave-ho. We wanted to meet them somewhere tropical, and eight months ago we finally settled on French Polynesia in July. Yeah!

Susanne and I decided to make a proper trip of it and see a few other islands while we were out there. My favorite part of any big holiday is the planning—flying around on Google Earth, digging through blogs and Airbnbs, dreaming up the trip before it exists.

As an aside, Susanne and I have what ecologists would call an interspecific association. Now I know this sounds dull and generally unromantic, but let me explain. Cue the zebras and the wildebeests.

Wildebeests and zebras share a mutually beneficial relationship, most famously seen during the Great Migration across the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem. The two species often graze together because they have complementary feeding preferences: zebras eat the taller, tougher grass stems, while wildebeests prefer the shorter grasses and leaves left behind, which reduces direct competition for food. Zebras also have sharp eyesight and are more alert to predators, while wildebeests have a strong sense of smell and hearing, so traveling together improves overall predator detection for both species.

Nerd citation, for the curious: Anderson, M. et al. (2024). “Interplay of competition and facilitation in grazing succession by migrant Serengeti herbivores.” Science, 383(6684).

It works the same for us. After a youth of Led Zeppelin at 140 dB, my hearing’s shot—a grizzly could sneak up behind me, and I’d never know. Susanne’s eyesight has her reading every label twice … or not at all. So she does the hearing, I do the seeing. I’m the zebra, she’s the wildebeest, much to her chagrin.

It also helps in vacation planning.

I’m the big-picture adventure guy, convinced “she’ll be right, mate”—though I do sometimes chase shiny things that turn out to be sunlight off a beer can in a garbage dump. Susanne’s the one asking “where will we eat,” “are there heaps of mosquitoes,” “why does every reviewer compare this place to a septic tank.” All the small, insignificant stuff.

This interspecific association helped with this trip; let’s just say we had a few SNAFUs despite our best efforts.

We picked Moorea for a week with Jason and Cynthia—great Airbnbs, simple logistics. Then came flights: no matter how we sliced it, we needed an overnight somewhere, and we landed on Nelson–Christchurch–Rarotonga, then on to Papeete the next day. I also found a home exchange apartment at the Tahiti Beach Resort for a few chill days beforehand—brand new to the platform, and we were its first booking.

The next big challenge was which other islands to visit? Most people think of French Polynesia as Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora. Let me tell you, it is way more than that.

French Polynesia is made up of 130 geographically dispersed islands and atolls that stretch across an ocean area of more than 5.3 million square kilometers. Wowzaa.

There are 5 main archipelago groups (Society Islands, Tuamotu Archipelago, Marquesas Islands, Gambier Islands, and the Austral/Tubuai Islands). The famous and most populated islands (e.g., Tahiti) are located in the Society Islands. When the first Europeans started sailing around these waters, they couldn’t figure out how there could be people on them. Maybe there had been a big flood, and they got stranded? It was beyond their comprehension that the Polynesians were amazing sailors, navigators, and nautical engineers. If you want a great book on the topic, check out “Sea People” by Christina Thompson.

After lots of research, we decided on Tikehau in the Tuamotu Archipelago and Raiatea in the Society Islands. We added Raiatea for a lovely home exchange, and because it’s the spiritual heart of Polynesian history.

Then came Air Tahiti’s “inter-island pass,” meant for our route: Rarotonga–Tahiti–Moorea–Tahiti–Tikehau–Tahiti–Raiatea–Tahiti. Their website was a disaster—I booked the wrong ticket, tried to cancel, got hit with a 50% fee eight minutes later, and could only sort it out by email over several months. Lovely people, in the end. Just firmly on island time.

Air New Zealand was easier: Nelson–Christchurch–Rarotonga, landing at 9pm. I booked a hotel too—for the wrong night, as it turned out, since you cross the date line and land the day before you left. By the time I caught it, that hotel was full on the 26th, and so was most everywhere else. After a wee panic and scramble, I did find somewhere new.

Once we had all of this booked, we looked for our return flight. Our choice was Air New Zealand leaving at 3:50 AM or Air Tahiti leaving at 8:30 AM. Negatory on the 3:50 AM. The only hitch was that Air Tahiti didn’t fly on the 15th, so we would have to leave on the 18th. Poor us. I tried to find another home exchange on Tahiti, but the choices were limited. I finally found one that looked decent, so we booked it.

The trip consisted of three home exchanges, one Airbnb, and one lodge. It was a nice mix of places and saved us a bunch of coin with the exchanges. All seemed in order—we had a suitably nerdy folder and spreadsheet to track it all.

A week before we were to leave, I got an email from our Raiatea home exchange telling me they had to cancel. Ack! Now what. None of the other available exchanges got back to me, so I booked a little Airbnb. Whew. Of course, I then got a positive response on an exchange. Luckily, I was able to cancel the Airbnb, and we were back in business with an exchange.

The last and final disaster came when I discovered that (a) the automatic chicken door had failed and (b) the pukekos had figured out the automatic feeder and were eating me out of house and home. I got a new door the day before we left—one problem solved. The other I had no real fix for, so I just shoved the feeder into the coop and hoped the pukekos wouldn’t follow it in. Best I could do on short notice.

On the 27th, we headed to the airport and were off on our 3-week tropical holiday.