While in search of the hippy dream, I spent a number of years rambling the planet and can claim to have visited a good many of the well known island groups. The real test was however to live a back to nature adventure for some months in an isolated valley on the island of Nuku Hiva, heat, jungle and bugs... I learned some important lessons there. After the Marquesas, I had a good set of parameters with which to formulate what I then called the Absolute Plan (1974) broadly speaking the objective of the Absolute Plan was to establish a base camp in a place where: the nighttime temperatures did not exceed 25 C , where there was a minimum of bugs, where it would be possible to buy land and where one could finally establish a autonomous base wherein one could live comfortably without MONEY! (I know now that this is a technical impossibility however it was, at the time, a great inspiration.) Before you start thinking that I am a smug character who claims to have all the answers, I didn't get where I am now without the help of a lot of other people, and in the final analysis even though I had an idea of what I was looking for, a goodly amount of chance and fortunate destiny finally guided me to Tubuai .... Tubuai? where in the heck is that? Tubuai is a small island due south of Tahiti and just inside the Tropic of Capricorn so close in fact that in a few hundred years the tropic will have moved over the Island and a few centuries later we will no longer even be in the tropics. The tropic is moving? Yes a lot of people don't know about this wobble in the tilt which certainly is going to have dramatic effects on the earth's climate. Forget all the pollution and greenhouse theories, if a nuclear winter doesn't get us the wobble will (my prediction, everyone has to have theory!) So of course Tubuai is cooler in fact unusually so, perhaps due to deep ocean currents welling up along the Austral Sea Mount, what ever the reason, the fact is that Tubuai air temperatures in the warmest month are only equal to those of the coolest month in Tahiti which is a scant 360 miles away. On a cold Tubuai winter day, daytime temperatures can fall to 15 C and with a brisk southerly breeze you will be trying to find your old socks and heavy Jacket, people go about with toques and you'll think that it might not be a bad idea to have a fireplace with a chimney in your otherwise unheated home. On the other hand lagoon temperatures never get much below 20 and a sunny day any time of year always seems warm. What about bugs? There are plenty but there are no nono's and you can sit on the beach all day without ever seeing a mosquito or in fact many flies, what's more we have a lot of good clean beaches, but it is strange that when you live next to a beach you hardly ever go and just sit on it, and as for getting a tan.... ...well most of the time you will need to cut down on exposure, especially a stark white Canadian on a visit (ask about Dave's horror story).

l.a.miller@mail.pf