Polynesia–Images

Please take a look through these slideshows before showing your kids. Polynesia=beaches. Beaches=people dressed as one would dress for beaches.

Is there any surprise so many images in the Polynesia slideshow on flickr.com are gorgeous? You don’t have to be a particularly adept photographer to coax your camera into taking great pictures when you’re traveling in Polynesia. Just point at the perfect landscape and shoot. If you like, you can get to a slideshow featuring humans more frequently than waves by searching for “Polynesia people,” and through it you’ll see Polynesians getting ready to dance, Polynesian kids wearing flower crowns and Polynesian guys with lots of tattoos.

Photoblogs created by central Polynesians documenting non-touristy daily life on their islands are not be easy to find online. At the same time the travel industry is essential to the economy of most Pacific islands. Polynesian tourist bureaus work hard to entice tourists with images, and in doing so they try to portray themselves as travelers would like to see them–solely as lands of peace and tropical sun. Surely they’re not lying–there is peace in central Polynesia, and there is also sun–but there’s so much conflict and struggle in the history of these islands, and their current politics are far from simple. As you look at photos of “paradise,” where no one has a care in the world, can you help but wonder if there really is such a place? Take the-Cook-Islands.com’s interactive photo tour | Visit timelessTuvalu.com’s photo gallery | TheKingdomofTonga.com offers some big, brilliant images