Mark's Pages

"We climbed back in the fun car and motored past elegant boutiques, black-pearl shops, and gated resorts. At one, we poked inside just long enough to watch bare-chested men paddling canoes filled with flowers and fruit to $700-a-night bungalows perched over the water. Puttering on, we reached Bora Bora's eastern flank, a terrain as abject as the western was luxe. The one path we followed toward the water ended at a trash dump. Many of the homes were little more than shacks, lacking even windows. Their inhabitants, perched in door-frames, waited for a breath of wind, stared sullenly out, and didn't bother to return our waves. Bumping behind them in the fun car, dust and exhaust trailing behind us, I felt alien and voyeuristic: an intruder from Bora Bora's tourist 'paradise.'"

— Tony Horwitz, Blue Latitudes