26 FEB 2018: It’s the 15th anniversary for Oceania Cruises M/S Marina this year, but the first time the ship has offered their own custom designed culinary adventures in French Polynesia. Thus my husband and I happen to be the very first customers for the new flavour packed tours. Serendipitous to be sure for me, and a unique perspective on the daily life of the locals.

Tahiti and her islands, in the middle of the South Pacific, make up the largest marine territory in the world, spread out over an area of 5.5 million square kilometres with 118 islands and five archipelagos. Our first culinary tour took place on Nuku Hiva the largest of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. It was this island where author Herman Melville deserted his ship, the whaler Acushnet, and for a short time lived among the Typee people.

Nuku Hiva was also the site for Survivor: Marquesas, the fourth instalment of the CBS reality TV show. Our tour featured food over hardship taking us first to the honey bee farm of Joseph Foucaud, a relative of our tour guide Ani. On this island of just 3,000 people, many are related and at the very least they all know each other. When we were almost swiped off the road by an oncoming car, Ani recognized the woman driver and told us she would be calling her later in the day to scold her.

After we learned about honey production and had a taste of the intensely floral flavoured honey, which the bees produce (they have many flowering plants to collect nectar from on the island), we continued on to a small farm growing taro and manioc.  There we learned how the locals grow these tropical plants whose roots form an essential part of their diet. The tools they used were hand formed from local trees and plants – all they needed provided by the land itself.

At this farm we got to sample cane juice, mangos, bananas, taro and manioc from their land. Then we set off for the Taipivai cultural site, rebuilt to be representative of an ancient ceremonial ground. On the drive there, Ani told us about the animals that they eat on the island. Chickens run wild, and anyone who wants to catch one for dinner can do so. Goats are also often wild and more rarely pigs, a cross between the Polynesian pig brought by the first settlers and wild boar brought by Europeans. More often pigs are reared and so belong to someone.

Another staple in their diet is breadfruit (which they call uru), a starchy fruit that’s protein and nutrient rich, which grows in abundance on trees. A single tree can produce more than 200 fruits. At the cultural site they roasted breadfruit and showed us how using a banana leaf to protect their hands from the heat, they peeled the fruit and made it ready for a dish called ka’aku, breadfruit mashed up with coconut milk. Delicious.

There was also a traditional underground oven called an Ahi Ma’a, where they were roasting a pig for us on hot volcanic stones under a cover layer of thick banana leaves. This cooking method is commonly found in the South Pacific and imparts a unique earthy flavour to the food cooked within it. After the cooking demos, we sat down to a feast.

For appetizers we had crabs freshly fished from the river and served raw. (We were taught how to suck out the sweet tasting flesh from the legs.) We also had a raw clam-like creature called mama, that clings to the sea rocks and the ka’aku. Then came poisson cru (raw tuna mixed with lime juice and coconut milk), purple bananas and wild goat stew all cooked in coconut milk.

Our second culinary tour was on the island of Raiatea, the second largest of the Society Islands, after Tahiti, in French Polynesia. The island economy is mainly agricultural with exports of vanilla, pineapple and coconut. We started at the local farmers’ market in Utoroa where we saw piles of local produce such as avocados, mangos, taro root, manioc, breadfruit, bananas, pineapples, coconuts, passion fruit, hot peppers, and more for sale.

Then we visited a vanilla farm and learned about growing the species of orchid that produces vanilla pods. The vanilla plant takes three to five years to bloom and when they finally do, the flowers only stay open for one day and have to be carefully pollinated by hand within 12 hours of blooming. No wonder those aromatic pods are so expensive.

The finale of the tour was a cooking demonstration and lunch at the Raiatea Lodge Hotel. We learned how to make poisson cru, the favourite raw fish dish of French Polynesia, and how to grill mahi mahi perfectly and prepare a vanilla coconut sauce to go with it. Those dishes were also prepared for our lunch accompanied with local Tahitian white wine from grapes grown on the island of Rangiroa.

Vin de Tahiti was a surprise to me. Apparently the first vines were imported in 1992 and about 30 varieties were tried out to determine which were best suited to the local climate. The Blanc de Corail which we had, was made from Carignan, Italia and Muscat de Hambourg grapes. It was quite dry and crisp tasting with floral, citrus and mineral notes.

The third culinary adventure, a fancy dinner at the world class Lagoon by Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the St. Regis Bora Bora was cancelled because only four of us had signed up (it was expensive and only promoted online about a month before the cruise.). However Oceania Chef Noelle Barille who lead us on the other two tours, told me that there is no doubt that going forward all the tours will sell out.

Oceania does culinary tours in 50 ports around the world and 95% of the time they are sold out before the cruise begins. Only Oceania’s Marina and Riviera offer them (sister company Regent’s Explorer does too) and they have proved to be very popular. The company’s Chef Kathryn Kelly personally designs them with help from Chef Barille and others. To keep them intimate they max the numbers out at 18 to 22. These latest ones cooked up in the South Pacific are sure winners.