FLOATING PARADISE

It’s 7 a.m., and from outside our cabin we can see the peak of a small mountain looming in the distance. Our ship glides effortlessly over the deep blue water, a salty mist lightly enveloping our senses. Soon the green mountain’s craggy features come clearly into view, becoming recognizable as Mt. Pahia, the defining geographical feature of the French Polynesian island of Bora-Bora.

I briefly imagine that it’s 1769, and Capt. James Cook is poring over his sextant and crude maps, trying to determine where he is. I wonder if the island looked much different then, when Cook and his crew became the first Westerners to sail into the clear lagoon that surrounds it.

As I lean out over the balcony railing, I think how cruising re-creates the adventure that the European explorers must have experienced. But a knock on the door yanks my mind back.

“It’s breakfast, honey,” my wife, Leslie, calls out from inside the cabin. “He wants to know if we’re going to eat in the room or on the veranda.”

She is referring to our impeccably dressed waiter, Manny, who awaits our dining decision. So, as I have done every morning for the past few days, I mentally pinch myself. But yes, here we are, aboard a luxurious new cruise ship, about to anchor off the coast of one of the world’s most legendary islands.

This all came about because, luckily, my mother is very generous--and can afford to go high end. In the summer of 1997, she took me, my brother, his wife and his two sons on a 12-day cruise up Alaska’s Inside Passage on a 1,000-passenger luxury liner. To celebrate her 75th birthday last September, she invited us to go on a cruise again. This time she preferred something “warm and elegant,” and her travel agent suggested the Paul Gauguin, a smaller (320-passenger) ship launched last spring by Radisson Seven Seas Cruises.

The Paul Gauguin espouses the virtues of casual elegance. Unlike the big cruise ships, it offers no black-tie dinners, no midnight buffets, no wide-screen movie theater and no Las Vegas-style theme shows. Nor does the ship have bingo, a video arcade, shuffleboard, paddle tennis, climbing walls, golf lessons or pianists playing Chopin in the lobby. (Tradition being tradition, there is an occasional ice sculpture.)

The family accepted mother’s invitation, with little arm-twisting required. It was the same group that had accompanied her to Alaska, plus my wife and a couple who are old family friends. The husband is also my mother’s doctor, and to quote her on the subject, “Jimmy, you just never know.”

After an 8 1/2-hour flight from Los Angeles, we landed at around 5 in the morning in Tahiti’s capital, Papeete, and boarded a charter bus with about 25 others for the Beachcomber Parkroyal Hotel. There was just enough light to throw a golden halo around the jagged peaks of Moorea, 12 miles across the channel.

Rather than board the ship right away with a severe case of jet lag, we had elected a three-day “pre-cruise” package, which allowed us time to relax on the hotel’s fine private beach and begin the process of slowing down our internal clocks and getting a start on our tans.

Papeete probably is the best place to shop for Tahiti’s famed black pearls. As a matter of fact, it’s where you should do all your shopping, obligatory or otherwise, because there isn’t much on the other islands (sorry, all you port-side hawkers in Moorea and Bora-Bora).

But the flip side is that Papeete, with a population of more than 100,000, is like any urban port: It has little in common with the unspoiled islands and personalities that captured the imagination of Paul Gauguin. The great French Impressionist, who lived on the islands on and off between 1891 and his death here in 1903, said upon arriving in Papeete that it “filled me with horror.” So he quickly left and moved into a bamboo hut on the south coast with his 14-year-old model. We couldn’t do that, but we could depart on the ship that carries his name--and carries it rather well, at that.

As we set sail late on a Saturday afternoon, downing our rum punches around the swimming pool, the sun setting over Tahiti to our right, Moorea looming darkly on our left and Bora-Bora a destination in our imaginations, Leslie and I took stock of ourselves and shared a hearty laugh. This was great good fortune, and not even the live band’s corny pop music could sully that feeling.

We were beginning a journey that would include one or two days at each of four ports of call: Huahine, the twin islands of Raiatea and Tahaa, Bora-Bora and Moorea--all part of the Society Islands, one of five autonomous island groups that make up the territory of French Polynesia. With a population of 216,000 residents, the territory has about one-fifth the population of the San Fernando Valley.

Because the Gauguin’s designers envisioned a life of intimate island-hopping, they gave the ship a shallow draft so that it could thread the lagoons formed by coral reefs and islets, or motus, that surround many of the Polynesian islands.

The effect is that you are anchored literally a stone’s throw from paradise, the same paradise that in 1789 seduced the crew of Capt. William Bligh’s HMS Bounty and led to one of the world’s best-known mutinies. Perhaps Bligh’s men would have stuck it out had they been on a ship like the Gauguin, which has a retractable sports platform that flops out from the stern, creating a sort of mini-marina that supports snorkeling, scuba diving, kayaking and water skiing.

The Gauguin appears to be a well-timed response to a chorus of cruise industry predictions that the upscale baby boomer market would create a demand for shipboard intimacy and informality. With an average cruise price of about $4,200 per person (not counting air fare), the Gauguin carries its maximum 320 passengers in mahogany-and-mirrored suites, about half with private balconies. Our family booked all four of the ship’s category A suites, which are 300 square feet, with 58-square-foot verandas. Each had a king-size bed, plenty of drawer and closet space, handsome bookshelves, a sitting area with couch and chairs, a television with VCR, bar area and a bathroom close to hotel size. An assortment of fresh fruit and pastries arrived in our room each evening. These felicities were no doubt helped along by the ship’s crew-to-passenger ratio of nearly one to one (there were 216 crew for 266 passengers).

Our room was so comfortable that Leslie and I usually were loath to leave it. Our party of nine often gathered in one of our cabins for cocktails, and we never felt cramped.

We noted that many of our fellow passengers--heavily 40- to 50-year-olds--were confirmed island-hoppers who were not new to French Polynesia. We met two couples from Southern California who owned property in Hawaii and were frequent travelers to this part of the world. Others were regular cruisers to the Caribbean who had been on the smaller, more casual ships that travel between those islands, but were now looking for something that combined outdoor activities with the high-end accommodations provided by the Gauguin.

Barbara, from New Orleans, left “Big Jack” at home to take her daughter, Karen, on a cruise to celebrate her graduation from Tulane. Bill and Darcy are world travelers who had already stayed at resorts on Bora-Bora and Moorea, and wanted to revisit the area by ship. Julie, a psychologist from Arizona, figured this was a safe way for a woman to travel alone. In general, the passengers seemed to be a well-heeled, well-traveled lot, mostly from North America, who had been there, done that, just about everywhere.

The Gauguin was built in France, and its captain and several of its top administrators are French. The rest of the staff is mostly European or Asian. And while you can take the ship out of France, you can’t take France out of the ship, meaning that the food is heavenly. To ensure that its kitchens and restaurants got off to a good start, Radisson enlisted Mario Valera, its fleet-wide executive chef, who normally sails aboard the Radisson Diamond.

For L’Etoile, the ship’s main dining room, Valera devised a nightly menu that featured something Polynesian, such as spicy lamb curry or Chinese noodles sauteed with vegetables, chicken and shrimp; something vegetarian, such as a vegetable lasagna or stir-fried Sichuan tofu with black bean sauce; something exotic, such as crepes stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese topped with a “sunrise” sauce; and the usual steak, prime rib, lobster, baked salmon and a variety of local seafoods. There were delicious surprises, such as an appetizer of caviar on a soft baked new potato. A complimentary wine was always offered, plus a full wine list.

The second dining room, La Veranda, offered evenings devoted exclusively to French or Italian dining, with menus featuring samplings of appetizers and entrees. Then there was the nightly grill, set up around the pool, which featured sushi, sashimi and seafood. You could always ask for something to be delivered poolside, or anywhere else for that matter.

No jacket and tie, or dress, was required in any of the ship’s dining areas, and there was only one designated seating, at assigned tables.

While there’s usually a burst of energy following dinner on the megaships, the Gauguin is fairly quiet in the evenings. For one thing, there is no large area in which to congregate. Instead of glitzy Vegas-style shows, the ship’s Grand Salon featured local dancers and musicians, who generally performed in the afternoons. Among our after-dinner choices were the Connoisseur Club, reached by spiral staircase from the middle of the main dining room, and billed as a place to smoke a fine cigar. It was almost always nearly empty, except when set up for private parties. There is only one bar/lounge, La Palette, at the stern, which serves afternoon tea and at night switches between offering a pop pianist and a deejay spinning records for dancing.

There is a card room with games and puzzles, a boutique that caters more to immediate personal needs than gift shopping, a small but eclectic English-language library, a small but respectable gym and a spa offering beauty treatments for face, body and hair.

As hiply pampering as it is, the Gauguin experience would be nothing without the splendor of the South Seas, and the ship does a good job of providing a variety of island excursions. On Bora-Bora and Moorea there are shark- and ray-feeding trips for snorkelers, deep underwater cave trips for scuba divers, and helicopter and off-road vehicle tours into the mountains. At Raiatea, the yachting center of French Polynesia, we took a delightful four-hour catamaran trip to a motu off the neighboring island of Tahaa, where we dropped anchor and went snorkeling.

On Moorea we went on a land tour into the mountains, from which we had a commanding view of the two bays that bite into the north half of the island. On Bora-Bora we went swimming, then drove to Bloody Mary’s, the legendary restaurant that really does serve an incredibly tasty Bloody Mary.

The ship’s tenders run about every half-hour, and Leslie and I learned that it was sometimes best to wing it. On Huahine, for instance, we rented a couple of mountain bikes for $9 each. We rode in a light rain through an agricultural stretch of land, passing an ancient religious site and a small building in which a cockfight was being staged. We also met an American who has lived on the island for 20 years. He invited us into his house, offered us beers and told us about raising his family on a small island.

Later, riding the tender back to our ship, Leslie and I met a couple from New York who were on their honeymoon, one of 20 honeymooners and 11 wedding anniversaries among the passengers.

My mother didn’t sample many of the outdoor activities. She was too busy relaxing in her room, taking naps on her patio and having afternoon tea in the lounge.

“This is my idea of paradise,” she told me. Who could argue?

Indeed, as we approached the harbor in Papeete, the lights of Moorea fading in the distance, there already was a sense of paradise lost. We were going back to America, a country founded in the same year Capt. Cook was sailing on his last voyage to Tahiti. I hoped it wouldn’t be mine.

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GUIDEBOOK

Pampered in Polynesia

Booking the Paul Gauguin: Seven-day cruises such as ours begin every Saturday from Papeete, Tahiti. With early booking (at least four months in advance), brochure rates for 1999 begin at $2,895 per person (assuming double occupancy) for a 200-square-foot cabin without balcony; the same cabin goes for $3,295 per person for later booking. Cabins with balconies begin at $4,195 per person; larger staterooms and verandas, $5,195.

Our family booked all four of the Gauguin’s category A suites (300 square feet, 58-square-foot verandas) for $5,395 per person--a discounted inaugural fare. The same room now starts at $6,195.

Depending on season and demand, you may be able to get fares below brochure rates. See a travel agent who specializes in cruises.

Air fare from Los Angeles is $295 additional; port fees are $99. A three-day pre-cruise add-on package in Papeete costs $495 per person; one in an over-the-water bungalow in Bora-Bora is $1,124 per person.

The Gauguin is expected to sail these islands for five years before being repositioned. Currently no other standard cruise line sails this exclusive itinerary, although a number of lines, including Silversea and Princess, make port calls in this part of the Society Islands. Renaissance plans to put a ship on the same itinerary sometime this year.

For more information: Radisson Seven Seas Cruises, telephone (800) 285-1835.