By Michael H. Kew

Last night my hotelier phoned a fisherman who offered to launch his skiff into a small channel off the white beach at Vele, near Futuna’s airport, and scoot me 1.5 miles south to the postcard-perfect sand of lush little Alofi. This sand fronts what appears to be a mushy wind-sheltered right-hander.

But the man is not where he is supposed to be and none of the fishermen present grok a phrase of French I crudely attempt. Among the thick coconut and pandanus, they busily prep tackle. For an hour I wait, binoculars trained on the backs of orderly whitewater lines as they approach the isle. Rounding the top of the reef, the waves shed chop as they slowly slide toward a white cross atop a pyramid-shaped rock in the inner lagoon. This is Alofitai, the beach where I’d planned to rest post-bodysurf. I can see the white Sacré Cœur (Sacred Heart) church and a few fales crowned with solar cells. There are no signs of life other than the isle’s fertile mountainscape that lords over plots of kava, taro, tobacco, cannabis.

I watch the fishermen launch their skiffs into this tiny swath of French exclusive economic zone (EEZ). La Métropole enjoys a vast oceanic realm, in size second only to the USA’s. Under the United Nations’ Law of the Sea treaty, any qualifying island can claim a 200-nautical-mile EEZ. With France’s broadly contentious “confetti empire,” the nation is worldwide. Overseas France’s EEZ totals 3,793,661 square miles, 2,702,715 million of those here in the Pacific, compared to just 131,386 square miles in Europe itself. A 2014 report from the Overseas Commission of the French Senate states: “Present in both hemispheres and at all points of the compass, the French EEZ is the only one on which the Sun never sets.”

Soon the fishermen are mere specks on blue against green Alofi. The tide is lifting. The wind is onshore here but, at daybreak, was offshore near my pension at the opposite end of Futuna via the foul road of lumbar torture, of skittish mutts, of oddly impatient drivers. And, today, a checkpoint.

Fronting the gendarmerie, standing in the middle of the road, a large sweaty uniformed Futunan gestures for me to stop. Pointing at my unfastened seatbelt, he mumbles something in French.

“Je ne parle pas français,” I reply.

Vincent, one of the two white officers, approaches. He resembles Rodney Dangerfield.

“Monsieur, bonjour. You are speaking English?”

“Oui.”

“Ah, okay.” He points to my seatbelt. “Here in France, you must put your seatbelt on, please. You are stopped because you haven’t got it on.”

“Sorry.” I fasten it. “I will wear it from now on. I’m Michel.”

“Where you from, Michel?”

“États Unis. You?”

“The north of France, near Belgium. Lille. I am just here until 2019. Possible for me to make two years more, and after, I must go back. I am gendarme in Lille.”

“Any crime on Futuna?”

“No. Is very calm here. The phone never ring. I have been here for one year. No murder, no crime. Nothing. Only small interventions.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Four. Well, we are four gendarmes and five guards. The guards stay here for a long time. They live here. My friend and I are here for three years.” He points to the other white guy. “He’s the chief.”

“Do you see any tourists?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“There is nothing. Well, there is some beaches. You can walk, go up mountain, but nothing else. No shopping, nothing interesting to see.”

“Expensive to live here?”

“Yeah. Very. Everything is the freight. The boat is very expensive from France, New Caledonia, New Zealand. There is only one trade company to serve the South Pacific islands. It’s called Pacific Direct Line.”

“How did you get this job amongst all the overseas French territories?”

“I was in France last year. In May the government was looking for people to come here, so I make a paper. They said ‘okay’; I’m agreed to come here and I’m here since July last year. Here is very calm compared to Lille. Very good.”

“What do you do when you’re not working?”

“I’m swimming on the beaches near the airport. There is beautiful beaches, so I can swim. I go to Alofi, and after this I take a friend’s boat and we go fishing.”

The other gendarme mutters something in French. Vincent reaches to shake my hand.

“Okay, Michel, thank you very much. I must be working now. Please keep your seatbelt fastened.”

The farther I drive up the leeward west coast, the more the ocean smooths and sparkles. Near Toloke, past a group of yelping young men playing volleyball, I park in a grassy turnout at a beachfront cocogrove where there is a clear view of a reef pass I’d studied. After wrapping around the bottom of Futuna, southerly swells are bumping into this volcanic groove where their faces are brushed clean by the light wind. There is a nice left and an abrupt hollow right, both separated by a narrow channel that leads up to this quiet beach, a delight it is, with fine white sand and football-sized lava rocks.

Small ferns beard around a cave in the low bluff. The sky is azure with scattered clouds. The dipping sunlight warms my face. The relaxing whoosh of surf is pierced only by solitary birdsong. The surf looks small but fun. Access: easy. Crowd: zero. Boardshorts and swim fins: oui.

Across the road, from inside a jungle-swarmed cinderblock house, a barefooted barrel-chested timepiece of Old Polynesia appears. His stained bluey yellow lavalava is wrapped high and tight. A small Christian cross hangs from his neck. His forearms are smudged with faded tattoos. He has wild gray sideburns, a wide flat nose, serious squinty eyes—a warrior’s gaze. Waving me over, he looks intimidating but welcoming as he speaks to me in Futunan. Surely I sound incoherent to him, so finally he mimes drinking.

“Café?”

I smile and nod.

“Oui, s’il vous plaît.”

He raises an index finger, suggesting I wait. I look back at the water. Intimate waves riff off both sides of the pass. The tide is almost at peak high and is certain to kill the surf.

A half-minute later the man reemerges from his home with a white teacup of strong lukewarm coffee. He smiles and resumes speaking in Futunan, gesturing from the glittery ocean to his papaya and banana trees to the bumpy road. Then he waves at a slow-moving pickup as it rattles past, its cab emanating the classic swinging melody of UB40’s “Red Red Wine,” its bed full of happy teens. In the palms above us flit Polynesian trillers and Fijian thrushes, hyper songbirds accenting the crickets. At our feet are fragrant white frangipani blooms. The man is monologuing and, dearly, I wish for a translator.

It’s now or never.

I finish the coffee and hand the cup back to him, pointing to the waves and circling my arms in a forward paddling motion. He seems confused—Futunans do not voluntarily swim in the ocean.

I shake his hand (“Merci pour le café, monsieur!”), cross the road, and step over the black rocks down to this magnificent Sun-flooded beach. To the south is Sausau Church, now a small red-and-white triangle backdropped by emerald slopes. To the north are the rocky windswept wilds of Pointe Fatua. To the east are heavily forested hills layered up to 1,720-foot-high Mont Puke which faces the jagged and cocopalmed north coast, where there are few buildings, no pavement, no surf spots. But the silky little lefts at this reef—I’ll call it Passe Café—are clean and punchy, short and shallow. It is pure pleasure. Indeed, when you bodysurf, all waves are overhead.

Plucked from Rainbownesia, available globally via Amazon.