Five-star resorts in Tahiti offer luxurious getaways, but for backpackers wanting to explore, Helen Raine explains the best way to make your way around the French-owned country scattered across the Pacific.

You’ve heard of Tahiti and Bora Bora. You’ve probably come across the Marquesas Islands.

What you might not realise is that they are all part of French Polynesia, an archipelago that is vast and tiny at the same time, covering millions of square kilometres of the South Pacific Ocean but with a total land mass much smaller than Sicily.

This sundrenched collection of atolls and islands has the classic tourist paradise specifications: blue seas, powder-white sands, standard-issue luxury bungalows on stilts over the ocean and infinity pools galore.

But scratch below the package tour surface and a more engaging country emerges, one that resisted the more po-faced missionary preaching and instead mixes French joie de vivre with a hedonistic Polynesian Island approach to life. Here’s where to find it.

Getting there

You’ll fly into the international airport of Papeete on the island of Tahiti. American Airlines has flights from London from around €2,000. From there, you can island hop easily by air or cheaply by sea to the different chains of islands within the archipelago.

Air Tahiti charges around €390 to hop five of the Society Islands (Tahiti being one of them). A flight to the Tuamotus is around €230 each way.

There are also passenger ferries between the Society Island groups – Tahiti to Moorea is €12.50 – and supply ships will take you further afield (often deck class only).

The Aranui 3 is the most famous and has tourist facilities, while others require you to take your own bedding and find a space between the crates. Ask at the port.

Costs

Got a few thousand euros to spare? Good – you can book into a luxury resort with a jacuzzi spa and a kids’ club.

Failing that, you’re going to be staying in a ‘pension’ or ‘fare’. These are as local as you can get, with coral rock floors and a palm roof; the air-conditioning is essentially a hole cut in the bungalow wall. The best will be right on the beach.

Forget about the tiled pool and could-be-anywhere buffet breakfast – you’ll have way more fun in these local B&B&Ds; breakfast, dinner and a roof over your head will set you back €68 as opposed to about €350 in a resort. Avoid summer and Christmas holidays when French families visit en masse and prices go up.

Where to go

Tahiti

After your (very) long international flight, you might not want to island hop immediately. Luckily, you can head to Teahupoo on Tahiti’s southwest coast.

It’s a genuine local village and one of its greatest draws is a famously surfable wave. Not for beginners, it’s nevertheless a good place to watch the pros and recover from your jetlag.

Despite the global surfing hype, villagers still spend their time fishing and the mood is relaxed and fun.

Try Vanira Lodge (www.vaniralodge.com) to stay in a fare that costs around €60 or just ask around for a room in someone’s house; they go for as little €15.

The scuba diving is incredible, with shallow reef dropping away to 80 metres in hallucinatory clear water.

Further inland, Tahiti Nui (meaning ‘the bigger part of the island’) has dramatic volcanic mountains like the dominant Mount Orohena and Mount Aorai that lurch two kilometres into the sky.

Before you head to the wilder island chains further away, make the most of Tahiti’s top-notch tourist facilities

Around every ridge, there’s another waterfall and pool and if you strike out on your own, you can find plenty of basins mercifully devoid of other tourists.

Tahiti Iti (small) has the lower mountains of Ronui and Meirenui.

The Te Pari cliffs here are accessible only by boat or by guided hike; you’ll discover the Devil Pass, the Giant Umete of Taapeha, petroglyphs (rock engravings), ancient archaeological sites and famous hollow rocks named the Honoura Drums.

Take a day to strike out to the nearest neighbour of Moorea. The high-speed catamaran ferry takes just half an hour. Highlights include mountain views in the Opunohu Valley and snorkelling with gigantic manta rays at Hauru.

You can also go on a quest to find spinner dolphins with marine biologist Michael Poole, who has been studying a pod of 150 animals for many years (www.drmichaelpoole.com/tours.htm).

Before you head to the wilder island chains further away, make the most of Tahiti’s top-notch tourist facilities: snorkelling, parasailing, deep-sea fishing, surfing, sailing and horse riding.

The Tuamotus

The Tuamotus chain is east of Tahiti and is made up of dozens of coral atolls. Locals dry coconut and dive for black pearls to make a living and reside in the kind of whitewashed houses covered in shell art that beg to be photographed; energy tends to be solar.

There are still some super-sleek resorts, but plenty of hidden places for an off-piste budget traveller to explore, particularly if you enjoy the ocean.

Base yourself in Fakarava, where local life is very much alive, and you can lose yourself for days in the lovely lagoon of the same name.

For divers, Rangiroa is a good choice. It’s the largest of the atolls and the Avatoru and Tiputa passes are world-renowned for tidal-drift diving with incredible marine life in the two deep channels, including sharks; it’s not a dive for the fainthearted.

It’s also fun to play the pearl lottery at Havaiki. You swim out from the dock at the pearl farm, then dive to choose an oyster.

Back on land, your guide will prise it open and you get to keep whatever is inside. Mostly, you’ll find a black one (they’re still lovely) but if you get a green one, you’re in the money.

There are plenty of places where you can snag a cabin on the beach for next to nothing, but a novel way to spend the night is to get a boat to drop you on one of the sand islets perched on the coral. String up a hammock between two palms and you’ll have the universe to yourself for free.

The Marquesas

To get even more off the beaten track, finish up at the Marquesas islands. Some remained almost untouched by western influences and their isolation has fostered a unique language and culture (the mellifluous Marquesan dialect can be traced to Maohi, an ancient Polynesian language).

The interiors are virtually unexplored and few of the islands have a population over three digits.

If the flight costs are deterring you, hop on the freighter Aranui 3, which cruises the Marquesas 15 times a year (you’ll have to plan around it).

Nuku Hiva is the largest and perhaps most visually arresting island in the chain with towering, spire-like peaks soaring out of a mountain range.

Some of the bays are so deep, they are almost like fjords and waterfalls plummet for so long that much of the water evaporates before it hits the basin below.

You’ll see archaeological treasures such as the huge Polynesian stone tikis (statues), which predate those of Easter Island, and me’e, stone temples that are often in ruins but retain their pre-Christian mystery.

It’s possible to take truly incredible hikes and the government is working to open more trails using natural materials such as coconut tree bridges.

Poet Jacques Brel and artist Paul Gauguin are buried on the island of Hiva Oa, at one forever with wild, intense landscape that inspired them.

Gauguin’s house is still here, although the pornographic pictures that used to adorn it are gone.

He was not terribly popular locally during his life, but his paintings catapulted the island into popular imagination as the ultimate paradise on earth.

If you make it to Tahuata (the only transport options are the ferry from Hiva Oa or disembarking from the freighter Aranui 3 on one of its four annual stops), your arrival will be heralded as a social event by its 600-something islanders.

And really, that’s the attraction.

If you make it to Tahuata, your arrival will be heralded as a social event by its 600-something islanders

Yes, there are beaches and coves and waterfalls, but the warmth of the local population and their openness to your presence will be what you remember most, along with the lack of any commercial pressure.

Do it under sail

Adventure seekers may prefer an even more exciting way to explore this incredible string of islands. The 36-metre sailing expedition vessel Infinity is described as a “revolutionary ocean voyage powered by an international community”.

The 24-strong crew (that’s you) sail the boat and also carry out projects including beach clean-ups and filming a documentary to “capture and share personal perceptions from the islanders of the Pacific”.

The company is looking for new members to crew from Papeete in Tahiti through some of the most beautiful atolls of French Polynesia’s Tuamotu archipelago and costs are a reasonable (for French Polynesia) €59 per night room and board for a double or triple cabin, plus of course, you’ll have no transport costs except your initial flight.

Infinity is also a SSI diving school. Visit www.infinityexpeditions.org for details.