Not Everyone

Likes To Travel

In Le Truck

By a Staff Writer

Some buses which take cruise passengers on tours in some Islands ports came in for criticism in a Sydney daily

newspaper recently.

ONE man, who made a half-day tour of Tahiti in “comfortable utility-type trucks with the interior converted with seating,” said he still had vivid recollections of the punish ment he took on that occasion.

He said, too, that apart from three stops early in the trip, the whole thing was carried out non-stop at 45 mph; and that when the passengers asked the Tahitian driver to stop at scheduled places they were ignored.

In short, he was not amused by the traditional, Tahitian style of transportation le truck —which some people think is romantic.

Another reader said that, by con trast, he had travelled in a luxury bus in Tahiti, with an English speaking driver who stopped at all beauty spots and historical sites and even went off the main road to take in more.

This reader’s complaint was about Tonga where he had fallen for hard, converted truck-type travel.

Both readers came to the con clusion that if they had got together with three or four others, they could have hired a drive-yourself car or a taxi for the same cost.

So they could, of course. But with the exception of Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island, there is not an in exhaustible supply of taxis anywhere in the Islands, and drive-yourself cars are even harder to come by.

When a cruise ship, carrying 1,000 to 1,200 people descends on any of these places, transport resources are strained to the limit and it is inevitable that someone will have to travel in le truck.

It is one of the penalties of mass travel that you must now make ar rangements long in advance. This takes some of the spontaneous joy out of discovering new places, but for those who don’t want to be dis appointed, it is the only way.