21 
ourselves. Tane, brother of a taxi driver v!e had employed in Papeete, 
drove a bus here on Bora Bora. He happened to come by, perhaps 
purposefully, with some passengers on the more or less passable road 
tliat ran around most of the island^^ From a village back in the woods, 
the proximity of wliich no one had realized, came folks, young, 
middling, and old, to liave a look at the ^'Ifareva" and the visitors 
from overseas.. We were given a cordial invitation to attend a practice 
dance that very same evening in that neighboring village. If you 
know Tahiti better than we did at the time you xvould know that an 
annual dance festival and contest is held in Papeete each year durihs ' 
the Bastille Day July 14th<-— festivities^ learned of tliat custom 
here in Faanui Bay on April SS, 1957. Each of the Society Islands 
sends a team, in fact ty^o teams, one of men and one of women, to that 
annual evenjj. Prizes are awarded to the best dance teams and the 
Ohftlc Oi»vcl 
best-costumed teamsX There are prizes also for other contests of 
skill and prowess. Bastille Day in Tahiti has Ijsnnae now-a-days^ 
from an all-day and all-night celebration, a colorful, exciting, 
ofheti 
and exhausting affair lasting week and longer . 
The Bora Bora girls had.-.v/on top team honors for women several 
years in succession. How could we refuse to accept an invitation 
to a part of the training program in a village that might contribute 
one or more members to future Bora Bora prize-winning teams? 
At half past eight we went with our Coleman lantern to light 
the Y/ay on the pitch dark road. The dance was held on the concrete 
floor of a former Navy storage shed of vi/hich the corrugated iron 
superstructure had either rusted av/ay or "Y/alked off” in the years 
