Between his years of sailing as a deckhand on a yacht and serving as a Contributing Editor at Islands magazine and Conde Nast Traveler magazine, Bob Payne was fortunate enough to see many of the Pacific Islands. In French Polynesia, the long-time travel writer has been to Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Huahine, Raitea, the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, and Raivave. In the rest of the South Pacific, Payne has seen the Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Easter Island, Tonga, New Caledonia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, and Niue, where as far as he knows he is still one of only two lifetime members of the Niue Yacht Club, a distinction that got Payne investigated for money laundering. Off the coast of South America, he’s been to the Galapagos, and Robinson Crusoe Island, or Juan Fernandez, as the Chileans know it. Journeys farther north have taken him to Hawaii, Guam, Yap, Palau, Johnston Atoll, a Weapons of Mass Destruction Depot where when he visited citizens still routinely carried gas masks, and the Marshall Islands, including Bikini Atoll, where, as one of the first civilian divers to visit since the atomic testing ended, Payne came to rest, at 120 feet, against what turned out to be a rack of unexploded depth charges. Where’s left? Plenty of places, at the top of the list Kiribati, not for the sex J. Maarten Troost exploits in The Sex Lives of Cannibals, but because who wouldn’t want to visit a tropical island he called possibly the worst place on earth?
Read some of your travel articles, Deborah? Ha! I hardly have time to read my own. But point out a favorite, and I’ll try to take a look. Bob
Wow, Bob, sounds like you have had quite the amazing and adventurous life that most of us only dream of! I’m not sure if I would like to discover unexploded depth charges (I probably wouldn’t have survived to tell the story!) I would be thrilled if you’d come to read some of my travel articles some time, I have been a lifetime fan of Conde Nast Magazine! So nice to “meet” you and I look forward to reading more of your writing, I especially love the humorous side of travel!