I’ve been thinking a lot about the South Pacific this week. Perhaps it’s the frost on the windshield of the car this morning forcing me to deal with Father Winter or flee to the tropics. The South Pacific is like Africa, one of those places that gets under your skin, coaxing you to return as often as possible. Unlike the majority of the Caribbean isles, which can only boast about their stretch of sand, the South Pacific isles are jaw-dropping jagged peaks rising straight up from the ocean and bathed in emerald green overripe foliage. It’s as close as paradise gets for me.

I wrote my first travel article, “Learning to Scuba Dive in the Cook Islands,” almost 20 years ago. Soon, I would make the South Pacific my area of expertise, returning as often as possible. This is especially true of French Polynesia, a mere two hour flight past Hawaii. Perhaps, I was fed too much Fletcher Christian as a boy and wanted to follow in the footsteps of Captain Bligh. Or maybe it was the languorous women Gauguin painted after entertaining them in his House of Debauchery.

All I know is that when I first arrived on the island of Tahiti and its bustling city of Papeete, I would have been happy to be back in Boston scraping the ice off my sidewalk. There were traffic jams, pollution-spewing cars, far too many uptight Frenchmen, and tuna sandwiches at $20 a pop. If Fletcher Christian saw present-day Tahiti, he might have returned with Bligh.  Their major site, The Gauguin Museum, had no original works by the artist (another ironic twist is that Gauguin’s masterpiece, Where Do We Come From?  What Are We?  Where Are We Going? (1897-98), is right down the road from me in Boston). Across the way, the Harrison Smith Botanical Gardens, a collection of tropical plants from around the world founded by a former MIT physics professor, was not in the least bit memorable. I wanted to get lost in raw nature, not take a walk through some manicured garden.

Then my wife and I made the wise move to head to Raitea. For me, authenticity in travel often goes hand-in-hand with a solid connection to the people of that community. Within 15 minutes of paddling on a winding river that snaked through Raitea, we came upon a group of kids diving off a tree swing into the water. They were so excited to see us that they insisted on showing us the small thatched huts they lived in, sat us down on a mat, and served us fresh papaya from the fields behind them.

On another trip, a 16-day cruise aboard the freighter ship Aranui brought us the Marquesas. 750 miles north of Tahiti, the Marquesas are the most remote islands in the world, farthest from any continent. Immense green mountains pierce the clouds overhead on many of the twelve islands, retaining the savage beauty that inspired Gauguin to live his final years and be buried on Hiva Oa. A young 22-year-old sailor named Herman Melville was so enraptured with the island of Nuka Hiva that he chose to jump ship and live with cannibals rather than continue his voyage. You can read about it in his first book, Typee. One of the most stunning natural sites I’ve ever seen was the Bay of Virgins on the island of Fatu Hiva. Towering, storm-worn basalt rises from the ocean’s depth forming a v-shaped buttress that’s illuminated by the sun. In the distance, serrated ridges and impassable gorges stand as a monument to the centuries of volcanic fires that formed this fantastic landscape.

When I returned from my trip to the Marquesas, I met a couple who spent their entire honeymoon solely on the island of Tahiti. It made me want to cry. It reminds me of a backpacking trip I took to Newfoundland, where we went off the trail less than 100 yards to look straight down at a magnificent fjord. Our guide knew it was there, but unfortunately none of the other hikers did and kept on walking. My hope for writing this blog is to steer travelers in the right direction so they don’t spend their entire time in French Polynesia on the island of Tahiti.