Seas Glamour
p. 80 · Read in the full issue
In Search Of South
Luxury American Yacht on Cruise
From Our Own Correspondent SUVA. July 25. 11HE American luxury yacht “Corsair” is to cruise to the Islands and New Zealand in October, the itinerary in cludes calls at Honolulu, Hilo. Pago Pago, Apia, Suva, Auckland, Wellington, Raro tonga, Raiatea, Papeete and Nukahiva (Marquesas).
The “Fiji Times” went to town this week over the elaborate brochure de signed to lure American millionaires aboard the “Corsair” at anything up to 5,000 dollars apiece.
The brochure paints the Islands pretty much as they may have been in the days of Captain Cook and makes a strong point of semi-draped damsels and others peer ing from behind palms at ‘this shining liner and its strange-looking passengers.”
To this last the “Fiji Times” acidly retorts: “The inescapable conclusion here is that the passengers may well look peculiar when they are confronted by reality in the form of the Suva port area...
The curio-sellers at least are unlikely to do any hiding behind non-existent coco palms”; and adds that only two of the ports of call —Raiatea and Nukahiva —are slightly off the hard, beaten track of tourism.
Admittedly there are remote corners of the South Seas which, as the “Corsair” brochure so elegantly puts it, are “still unspoiled by the inroads of civilisation,” but even there trade goods and corru gated iron have long been entrenched.
There are some amazingly unspoiled places in the Fiji Group, but the thought of tourist-cruises exploiting new terri tory forbids this correspondent (and a number of others) even to publicise them.