Craig Platt Apr 10 2014 at 4:00 PM

For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

Empty beaches, no tourists, laid-back locals ... just don't tell anyone about Huahine, writes Craig Platt.

The trouble with paradise is everyone wants a piece of it. Whether it's for a holiday, a landmark event in one's life (a wedding, a honeymoon) or an escape from the rat race to find a more simple life, the reality is the more beautiful a place is, the more people want to be there.

It's happened to Bali, Phuket (in fact large swathes of Thailand's beaches) and even in more difficult-to-reach places such as Tahiti and Bora Bora in French Polynesia.

This latter collection of islands in the South Pacific has been labelled paradise since the 1700s.

It was the French that created the myth. As Paul Theroux writes in his epic travelogue The Happy Isles of Oceania, the arrival of Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and his crew in the islands was greeted by a naked young girl paddling out to meet them in a canoe and, without a hint of modesty, climbing on board a ship filled with 400 lonely French sailors.

"In that moment the myth of romantic Tahiti was born," Theroux writes.

So, I wonder as I wade out to snorkel crystal-clear waters just a few steps from my bungalow, the whole beach to myself, why aren't the tourists hordes to be found in French Polynesia's Huahine?

The small island is only a short 35-minute flight from Tahiti's largest town and French Polynesia's capital, Papeete, and features stunning scenery, beautiful lagoons, beaches and great diving and snorkelling.

Excerpt from:

Home alone in paradise