Beauty on a Budget / TAHITI : TWO OF THE PACIFIC’S MOST BEGUILING DESTINATIONS ARE PLACES YOU CAN’T AFFORD. OR CAN YOU? HERE’S HOW TWO VACATIONERS DID IT.

After the Paris stock exchange crashed in 1883, a stockbroker named Paul Gauguin found himself without a livelihood and decided to indulge in his true love: painting.

“I shall soon be leaving for Tahiti, a small South Sea island where it is possible to live without money,” he wrote to an artist friend. “I am determined to forget my miserable past, paint freely as I like without thought of fame, and in the end die out there, forgotten by everybody here in Europe.”

Gauguin proved wrong on two counts.

His brilliantly colored paintings of Tahitian women and landscapes led to a lasting fame. But for most of his years here, he was in desperate need of money. Even in his day, Gauguin was surprised to find that Tahiti was more developed--and considerably more expensive--than he’d imagined.

As my husband, Jim, and I discovered during a visit to Tahiti and neighboring Moorea last month, paradise on two of the South Pacific’s most legendary islands still comes with a hefty price tag: refreshing pineapple daiquiris ($7), luncheon buffets of grilled mahi-mahi and salads of local papaya and grapefruit ($40), lush tropical terrain to explore in a rented Jeep ($55 for a half day; you buy the gas at about $3.75 a gallon) and fish of bright blues and yellows to observe from over-the-water bungalows (upward of $300 per night). Residents of Tahiti, Moorea and the approximately 115 other islands that make up the territory of French Polynesia pay no income or property taxes, but the French government compensates by slapping steep tariffs on imported goods before they reach the market.

But the things that had lured us to French Polynesia were free: Warm, blue-green lagoons that lap blinding-white beaches and a romantic history chronicled by writers from Herman Melville to Paul Theroux.

And unlike Gauguin, we had planned our trip with Tahiti’s high costs in mind.

We weren’t into lugging sleeping bags across the Pacific and camping under mosquito netting, and we wanted more luxury than we’d get at a shared-bath pension for $50-per night.

And while we’d read that it was more economical to buy a hotel package that included meals, we figured we’d never eat or drink enough to make an all-inclusive, $1,630 per-person, per-week package at Club Med worthwhile.

We wound up with what seemed like an ideal compromise: A week-long package for $899 per person, including hotel and air fare from Los Angeles (which, if booked separately, would cost at least $598 round trip). The tour was offered by Islands in the Sun, an El Segundo-based operator, and featured coach seating on a French airline, AOM; garden-room accommodations for six nights at Moorea’s Bali Hai Hotel and one night at the Tahiti Country Club, ground transfers and inter-island flights. (A $100 airline surcharge is added at high season.) With meals, day trips and souvenirs for two, we would spend about $2,750 in all.

After our eight-hour flight, we checked into the Bali Hai Hotel--opened in the 1960s by three Orange County ex-patriots who still run the place today. We came prepared, unpacking a jar of peanut butter and two boxes of granola bars from our luggage, along with plenty of mosquito repellent and sunscreen (two of the islands’ most expensive tourist staples; a bottle of Coppertone is about $20, bug spray about $16.)

Fellow travelers we met through a computer bulletin board had told us about a small grocery store a short walk west of the hotel, down Moorea’s only main road, which circles the island. We were intrigued by the assortment of odd fruits. We asked a Polynesian woman behind the counter for a breadfruit, the booty Capt. William Bligh was after when he sailed the HMS Bounty to Tahiti in 1788. Only later did we discover that what the clerk handed us was a pamplemousse, a sweet, green grapefruit. The pamplemousse, a few ripe papayas, two liters of water, a loaf of French bread and some Brie totaled just $12--and made our breakfasts over the next few days a bargain.

For the price we’d paid, our bungalow at the Bali Hai Hotel wasn’t on stilts over the lagoon (where guests can watch fish from a window in the floor), or even facing the beach. But our view of lush Mt. Tarai twice was accented with stunning rainbows, and we fell asleep each night to the muffled applause of the pool’s small waterfall. The room was spacious, with rattan chairs, a table, a desk and two day beds that could sleep another couple or a few children. And our large, red-tiled bathroom included a small indoor garden, making us feel as though we were showering each day in a tropical rain forest.

Over the next few days, we found plenty of ways to avoid Gauguin’s Polynesian fate of falling into debt. At $2 per person per day, our rented snorkeling gear was perhaps the best bargain of all. No matter where we put our face masks, we found clouds of dark-blue emperor angelfish, yellow Moorish idols, and florescent blue-green putters. Right in front of the Bali Hai, a coral wall drops straight down several yards into cool, deep-blue water, where one guest said he spied an octopus.

Instead of shopping for black pearls (which, at the place we stopped, cost anywhere from $50 for an individual, slightly imperfect pearl to $1,000-plus for a necklace), we picked up a blue and green tie-dyed pareu , a rectangular cloth that you wrap like a sarong ($12); and a six-pack of jams in such flavors as mango, pineapple and pamplemousse ($9).

Instead of taking the $30-per-person motorized outrigger trip to a motu (islet), we paddled around in one of the hotel’s free outrigger canoes.

We did book the beach-picnic excursion ($37) and rode the hotel’s thatched-roof catamaran, the Liki Tiki, to a pristine patch of beach beyond Cook’s Bay. Ringed by jagged peaks, it’s a popular haunt of windsurfers and visiting cruise ships. Our picnic featured all-you-could-drink rum punch, beer or wine; and a deliciously fresh, all-you-could-eat barbecue of mahi-mahi cooked in coconut milk, hamburgers, salads and fresh pineapple.

Rather than rent a car to explore Moorea, we opted for a $20-per-person tour of the island in a small bus. The move was a smart one--the first stop was a pineapple plantation and cannery with a tourist kiosk that serves complimentary shots of strange Tahitian brews, from premixed mai tais in a carton to 60-proof pineapple liqueur. There was no pressure to buy the $70 bottle of pineapple rum, inside which was an entire pineapple, or even the $14 gift set of cordials. And as we settled on the exotic jams, the kiosk manager kept refilling our plastic cups. Again and again and again.

Lunch on the tour was more of a challenge. As we walked into Le Bateau, a restaurant on a turquoise lagoon, we were disappointed to find a menu featuring only $10 appetizers and $20 entrees when a sandwich would have sufficed. Compromising, we ordered the tuna steak in tomato-garlic sauce and a huge Greek salad. With two baskets of crusty French bread (included at every restaurant we visited), it made for one of the best meals on our trip.

We learned to economize at other meals, too. Since some restaurant prices were several dollars less at lunch than at dinner, we planned most of our major meals for the middle of the day (one of our favorites was poisson cru, marinated raw fish, for about $8 each.) We also opted for tourist menus which, for about $20 each, included appetizer, a choice of two or three entrees and dessert. At Michel et Jackie, also on Moorea, that $20 brought us a delicious meal of avocado cocktail with fresh shrimp, tuna Nicoise and chocolate mousse. Another bonus: No tax, and tipping throughout French Polynesia is neither required nor expected.

Though the French government lowered the tariff on alcohol several years ago, prices are still high by American standards. So despite the allure of the cool tropical drinks at the open-air bar, we tried to limit our consumption to one Polynesian drink per day--supplemented with bottles of Hinano, the local beer ($3.50 each).

Moorea’s pastoralness was infinitely relaxing--and came free with our package. An 82-square-mile island of only about 9,000 residents, it feels light-years away from the bustle of Tahiti, which looms above the horizon 9 1/2 miles across the Sea of the Moon. Electricity only arrived on Moorea about 10 years ago, but unlike on Tahiti, the wires were placed underground, helping retain the island’s primitive feel.

After four days of relaxation, though, we needed some excitement. Jim and I had wanted to visit Tetiaroa, a coral atoll 40 miles west of Tahiti, ever since we saw “Mutiny on the Bounty” and learned that Marlon Brando has owned it since the 1960s. It’s a necklace of 12 small, stunning islands surrounding an unimaginably blue-green lagoon. Most of the islands are protected as a bird sanctuary, and several tour companies offer access from Papeete, Tahiti, by air (about $250 per person for a day trip) or by small boat ($160 per person for the day). The boat ride seemed a smart choice.

And, until the return voyage over rough seas, it was.

The ride to Tetiaroa from Papeete (a 30-minute, $13 hydrofoil ride from our Moorea base) was uneventful, and we stopped just outside the reef surrounding Brando’s atoll. The 14 of us on board were ferried to shore four at a time in an inflatable jet ski. The beach was made of baked, crushed white coral--making footwear de rigueur-- and rimmed with fallen coconuts and towering palm trees. We hiked around Turtle Island (no turtles), and waded through a waist deep, bath-water-warm channel to Bird Island, where a guide pointed out a great frigate bird nesting in the underbrush and a red-footed booby perched high in a tree.

As the sky darkened, and the usual quick afternoon shower set in, our boat headed back to Tahiti. The rough seas sent the boat tossing like the S.S. Minnow in the opening scenes of Gilligan’s Island. Jim leaned over the railing, pale from seasickness, and a young French woman discreetly deposited her lunch in the sea.

For once, we wished we hadn’t taken the cheap way out.

Our tour ended with a night at the Tahiti Country Club, about a 10-minute drive south of Papeete. Turned off by the big-city traffic and motorcycle exhaust fumes, we decided to splurge by renting a Jeep for a half day and heading 30 miles south, along the coast, to visit the Gauguin Museum.

For an admission of $4.50 each, we expected to find at least one of the artist’s original paintings. But the model of his home, entries from his diary, and evocative photographs of his life in the South Pacific--not to mention the museum’s spectacular waterfront setting, at the narrow point where two ancient, eroded volcanic cones meet--made it worth the price.

And so, we decided, was Gauguin’s adopted homeland itself.

GUIDEBOOK: Touring Tahiti

Getting there: Air France and AOM (Air Minerve) offer three flights weekly from LAX to Papeete; Air New Zealand and Qantas two flights per week. Round-trip fares begin at $696 low season, $796 high season (June 1-Sept. 15), 14-day advance purchase. Corsair, a French charter (telephone 800-677-0720), has one weekly flight from LAX to Papeete and a second beginning the week of June 20; $598 round-trip fare, $698 Dec. 11-24.

Tour packages: You can spend anywhere between $699 and $3,000 per person, double occupany, for a weeklong stay, meals not included. We used Islands in the Sun (2381 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 325, El Segundo 90245; tel. 800-828-6877 or 310-536-0051). Other Tahiti specialists include: Brendan Tours, 15137 Califa St., Van Nuys 91411; tel. (800) 421-8446 or (818) 785-9696. Island Vacations, 2042 Business Center Drive, Suite 202, Irvine 92715; tel. (800) 426-1713 or (714) 476-6380. Jetset Tours, 5120 W. Gold Leaf Circle, Suite 310, Los Angeles 90056; tel. (800) 4-JETSET (453-8738) or (213) 290-5800. Jet Vacations, 1775 Broadway, Suite 2405, New York 10019; tel. (800) 538-0999 or (212) 247-0999. Qantas Vacations, 300 N. Continental Blvd., Suite 610, El Segundo 90245; tel. (800) 641-8772 or (310) 322-6359. J & O Holidays, 3131 Camino Del Rio N., Suite 1080, San Diego 92108; tel. (800) 377-1080 or (619) 282-3131. Newman’s Vacations, 6033 W. Century Blvd., Suite 1270, Los Angeles 90045; tel. (800) 421-3326 or (310) 277-6401. Tahiti Nui Island Dreams, 15375 S.E. 30th Place, Suite 350, Bellevue, Wash. 98007; tel. (800) 359-4359 or (206) 643-8180. Tahiti Vacations, 9841 Airport Blvd., Suite 1124, Los Angeles 90045; tel. (800) 553-3477 or (310) 337-1040.

Where to eat: Le Bateau in the Residence Linareva, lagoon side of Moorea’s main road; local tel. 56-1535. Michel et Jackie, next to Hotel Bali Hai on the north side of Moorea; tel. 56-1108.

For more information: Tahiti Tourism Board, 300 N. Continental Blvd., Suite 180, El Segundo 90245; tel. (310) 414-8484.