Paradise Found

Twice a day the tide changes here on this South Seas atoll, and when it does, 8- to 12-foot-tall waves churn through Tiputa Pass, creating a thunder of clashing water, riptides and whirlpools that can kill an unwary swimmer. But the bottlenose dolphins of Rangiroa revel in it. Twice a day, the pass becomes their playground, a place to soar and dive and frolic.

The dolphins' acrobatics are so well known here that crowds gather to watch. I joined a group last April, gazing spellbound with others on a veranda suspended over the sea. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was being welcomed to the French Polynesian atoll of Rangiroa by its most famous residents, a school of dolphins that lives in the pass that separates the atoll's lagoon from the Pacific Ocean. I had arrived at Rangiroa (pronounced Rain-GHEE-ro-ah) just a few hours earlier, flying northeast about an hour from Tahiti to the Tuamotu Archipelago, a string of nearly 100 coral atolls.

Millions of years ago each was an island, but when the volcanoes that formed them became extinct and subsided, all that remained were these coral-encrusted islets rising a few feet above the water. Most are so small they look like dollops of sand strewn across the surface of the sea.

Rangiroa dwarfs the other atolls. Its hundreds of islets stretch more than 110 miles, encircling a deep lagoon. One of the largest atolls in the world, it is so big that the city of Los Angeles could nearly fit within its lagoon.

But it has little else in common with the City of Angels. Cars are few in Rangiroa--it has only about 10 miles of paved roads. Far from the traffic jams, pollution and edge-of-the-seat anxieties of daily life in a megalopolis, Rangiroa drifts in a sea of sublime simplicity.

"It's easy to live here," said Rangiroa resident Moana Estall, who spent several years in Tahiti. "If you want to eat, you go fishing. In Tahiti, if you want to eat you go to the market and buy fish, and it's expensive and not so good."

The atoll is almost unknown outside the scuba-diving community, which prizes it for its crystalline waters and abundant marine life. Its anonymity has preserved an authenticity that is disappearing in a South Seas world of faux realities.

A friend who was sailing the South Pacific told me years ago about Rangiroa. It sounded like a rainbow chaser's dream, so I tucked it away in my mind, hoping to visit one day. My chance came last spring, when I tacked it onto a trip to Tahiti and Bora-Bora. After visiting both, Rangi--its nickname--seemed like Paradise Found: a slow-paced haven for travelers who wonder what Polynesia was like before the hotel industry discovered it.