Island Chronicles / Raratonga

Were any of you follwoing along with that couple from LA who went to raratonga?

They didnt make it through the year.. about 5 months and they ended up back in LA

http://boingboing.net/island/

Yeah I saw that. Too bad it was a cool story.

Scotty

For all their talk, they sounded like typical "tourist" types. I didn't get the feeling they became friends with any of the locals or even cared to. Maybe they just didn't talk about it. They certainly didn't "go native." I think they would have faired better without kids. It might be easy for adults to want to get away and be free of modern thingies, but what do you do with kids? If they don't make friends there, they are just bored to tears.

Well, that's why we prefer to realize our tropical paradises in our backyards or rumpus rooms. Too bad I missed this series, being away from LA so much the second half of this year.
I never bought into this drop-out-of-the-rat-race philosophy, I am too much a visual junkie who needs a steady flow of imagery to be inspired. Not only natural imagery, but intelligent stuff, visual concepts, twisted juxtapositions that make me laugh. I always was an urbanite, although lately I have softened and do not appreciate anymore the cold grey stone apartment dwellings of metropolises like Berlin. LA is just the right mixture for me: an urban sea comprised of individual islands, tropical yet civilized. And seemingly limitless in what one can still discover.

On the whole I agree with you Swanky; it really looks like they were tourists on an extended vacation. In fact, their jobs as writers made them passive observers rather than active participants in the life of the island. I would think that if you really want to learn about the people you'd work as a teacher or a nurse or something ...

As far as the kids, it was probably not the wisest choice (aside from pulling the girl out of her own social network) since it doesn't sound like they thought thru the problems associated with tropical living. If you're going to obsess over bugs, fungi, and dirty animals you probably shouldn't take kids. How the kids view the situation, however, is to my own experience quite different. I suspect that given a real opportunity to interact, that the kids would be more adaptable than the adults.

Still, I suppose you can just blame it on the Tiki. A lot of artists and writers actively seek new experiences and inspirations - Melville, Gauguin, Twain, and Hemingway spring immediatly to mind. And it seems that they DID have an adventure of sorts, so the experience isn't lost.

I found this particulary interesting because I've been thinking about this "rejection of society" lately, and trying to figure out where the origins of the problem lie. I wrote a bit about it just a few days ago if anyone is interested:

http://www.cybertiki.com/blog1203.html#121703
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I felt that although they didnt research the place as much as they probably should have (the last time they had even been to the island was 10 years prior) they didnt do things a whole lot different than anyone else would.. they made friends with some of the people there. But let me tell you- showing up on an island like that you don't always get the glad hand everywhere you go. People are people no matter where you are, and there's friendly types and not so friendly types.. I felt a bit for those two- having recently moved from the west coast to a small town here in the south. Now it's not as drastic a change, but let me tell you, culture shock was a reality I definitely had to deal with. It seems every beautiful wild place has its equal share of oddness.

They did their best, and imho did the right thing coming back. Their baby was risking pneumonia, and thats not something you want to deal with on Raratonga. The local people there have generations of immunity to things that could level one of us.. and vice versa.

The big mistake they made was thinking they could pull it off with a newborn. That made me think they were looking at it a bit with rose-colored glasses. Solo adults, yes.. you can just deal with things as they come, but with a young child- that child is going to get sick, and then what do you do when you are used to the luxuries of modern medicine?

When I read how young those two girls were, I thought they were really taking a big risk.

But hey, they tried it. Alot of people gave them a really hard time about it, it was probably destined to fail, but at least they tried it.. thats more than the naysayers can attest to.

On 2003-12-19 21:02, fatuhiva wrote:
I felt that although they didnt research the place as much as they probably should have (the last time they had even been to the island was 10 years prior) they didnt do things a whole lot different than anyone else would.. they made friends with some of the people there. But let me tell you- showing up on an island like that you don't always get the glad hand everywhere you go. People are people no matter where you are, and there's friendly types and not so friendly types.. I felt a bit for those two- having recently moved from the west coast to a small town here in the south. Now it's not as drastic a change, but let me tell you, culture shock was a reality I definitely had to deal with. It seems every beautiful wild place has its equal share of oddness.

They did their best, and imho did the right thing coming back. Their baby was risking pneumonia, and thats not something you want to deal with on Raratonga. The local people there have generations of immunity to things that could level one of us.. and vice versa.

The big mistake they made was thinking they could pull it off with a newborn. That made me think they were looking at it a bit with rose-colored glasses. Solo adults, yes.. you can just deal with things as they come, but with a young child- that child is going to get sick, and then what do you do when you are used to the luxuries of modern medicine?

When I read how young those two girls were, I thought they were really taking a big risk.

But hey, they tried it. Alot of people gave them a really hard time about it, it was probably destined to fail, but at least they tried it.. thats more than the naysayers can attest to.

I would aggree with you, but I am told otherwise.

I spent time with a man who goes to the islands at least twice a year. He has done so for the last 35 years. He's been to all of them pretty much. When I asked his suggestion on where to go if you are gonna make it maybe once, he said the Cook Islands because it is not crazy expensive like Tahitit, but for natural beauty, it's like Tahitit made over by Disney. They speak English. The culture is intact. But he also said they are very friendly. He told me about arriving at 2AM on a plane and finding a crowd of people there to meet the plane. Why? Because there's not a lot to do on the island and that's what they do. VERY friendly people.

So if the man that has been to all the islands says Cook Islanders are perhaps the friendliest of all the islands after talking for hours about the incredible hospitality of all of Polynesian, it means something.

But, I think if you move there like you are moving to Boise, it will not work out. You really need to move there and become involved.