4 days in Ahe, an atoll in the Tuamotus

Everything is bigger and brighter here. Including the sharks.

We’re in a small Air Tahiti plane, the kind with propellors on the wings. Out the window is an atoll, a thin misshapen ring of land with ocean on one side and lagoon on the other. The ocean is a deep, steel grey-blue with white caps. The lagoon is bright turquoise. It’s peppered with darker, royal blue spots wherever a clump of coral make their way to the surface.

The airstrip is uncomfortably narrow. The airport is tiny.

By coincidence, our host, Raita, is on the same plane as us. She’s wearing a hot pink and white floral maxi dress with a matching huge pink hibiscus behind her ear. We pile into her 4WD and head along the coral-covered road to Chez Raita, our pension for the long weekend.

Why Ahe?

It’s one of the lesser-known atolls in the Tuamotus, not usually on the list of islands to visit as a tourist. Perhaps because it’s not full of tourists, it feels very laidback.

Only an hour’s flight from Tahiti, the major drawcard of this tiny atoll of around 500 residents is the beautiful lagoon at the centre. Where we stayed, the land is only around 300 metres wide; on one side, raging ocean, on the other, placid lagoon.

The landmass of the entire atoll is only around 12km², and as very few of the little islands (or motus) are connected, the main mode of transport is to boat.

But the main thing that struck me walking from one side to the other?

Atolls are weird.

A tiny spit of coral in the middle of the ocean, harsh sun, bright colours. No protection from the elements. I can’t help thinking about how it would be to arrive here when it was uninhabited; how did a person survive? Find food and water?

I think this while lying on a deck chair under a coconut tree with a beer in hand as the sun sets all purples and pinks in the distance.

Chez Raita

Situated on the same motu as the airport, our stay at Chez Raita included breakfast and dinner, mostly made up of fish from the lagoon and fresh vegetables grown from Raita’s garden. Raita’s cooking has been featured on the local TV station, and we got to taste her famous flan coco which was a treat.

Big eaters would be advised to bring some snacks or lunch foods to prepare between meals as we didn’t end up visiting the village until the second-last day. I felt like I managed to eat enough without bringing extra, although we did bring a bottle of wine with us and purchased some beers off Raita to enjoy while watching the sunset.

Our bungalow was small and charming, looking out over the lagoon. With a white sand beach and a little pontoon perfect for watching sharks and rays, the place is idyllic.

There’s not much around to explore by foot, but there are paddle-boards and kayaks to take out. I got a bit nervous when we went in the water; the sharks are bigger than on Mo’orea and kept circling us menacingly.

I ended up scratching myself on the corals scrambling back into my kayak!

Fishing and snorkelling

The pension arranged two outings for us while we’re there to try our hand at line fishing and do some snorkelling.

There are great coral pillars that pop up to the surface from the depths around the lagoon. Our guide, Eric, harvested giant clams for our lunch while we snorkelled around the perimeter of the coral. The sight was impressive; a huge ecosystem for vibrant fish disappearing into the deep blue below.

When fishing, I managed to get one or two small fish, but I couldn’t get my line up quick enough whenever I felt a tug. The line was going down 30 or 40 metres to the floor of the ocean; while pulling it up, my fish kept getting stolen by a shark and I’d have to cut the line

Our view from the boat

Martin had more success and snagged a few big beauties. The second trip out we were joined by two avid teenage spear fishers, who came back to the boat with a solid prize. Their mum, Chrystelle, had the same problem as me, except she managed to catch a moray eel by accident!

Lunch was our fish cooked on an open fire, giant clams served raw with lemon, and a dessert of bread-like balls in coconut milk.

The primary forest

One unique element of Ahe is the patch of primary forest that still exists on the island and forms a habitat for a variety of seabirds. All of the coconut trees and palms in the islands were introduced by settlers, and there’s not many places where the native vegetation remains.

We wandered through this old forest made up of Pisonia Grandis with our guide and discovered a little bird who’d gotten a bunch of prickles caught in her feathers and couldn’t fly.

Martin and Eric helped get rid of the prickles (rip, rip, rip!) which she didn’t seem too happy about as she kept pecking them. She did seem happier once they were done though.

I don’t know why but this is what this bird sounds like in my head

Visiting the village

We did go to the little village on our second outing, which takes around an hour and 45 minutes to get to by boat.

It’s quiet, with just two small grocery stores and a few people wandering around. We saw a cute pink church, a woman harvesting copra from coconuts, neat streets and neat houses.

Overall not much to do or see. I feel like the spectacular parts of Ahe are on the water.

The verdict…

Ahe has a wild, harsh beauty to it that I hadn’t seen before. The vibrancy of the sunrises and sunsets, the volume of stars in the sky, the colours in the midday sun so bright they hurt the eyes… it’s a real visual feast!

I’d recommend Ahe to anyone who wants an atoll that feels a bit less visited and a bit more wild than the big players in the Tuamotus.

Free art download for January

To my wonderful paid subscribers, your download for the month is an A4 print of the original artwork above that I made when visiting Ahe.

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