I left New York City in July 2018 to spend five weeks in French Polynesia.  For the first half of my time there, I traveled through the Marquesas Islands, which will be covered as a separate island group on this website.  I took a few days in the middle of my trip to explore Tahiti and Moorea, but my ultimate goal was to explore the Austral archipelago, and in particular to reach the shores of Rapa Iti, one of the most remote and inaccessible islands in the world.  To visit all five of the inhabited islands in the group, I spent my first 11 days in the Australs aboard the cargo ship Tuha’a Pae IV, which gave me one day on each island as they unloaded their cargo.  On our way back to Tahiti, I arranged to spend a further few days on each of two islands, disembarking first on Tubuai and then on Raivavae before taking a prop plane back to Tahiti.  The language barrier was difficult for me, especially once I left Tahiti; my sketchy knowledge of French made conversations often painstaking and frustrating. However, the people that I met were lovely and seemed eager to show me their islands and their culture.  I was touched by how curious and generous everyone was towards me.