In the fray to draw middle-class as well as upscale travelers to garden hammocks, many operators are promoting packages for prices that reach below $800 per person, double occupancy, for a seven-night air fare-and-hotel combination. Pleasant alone is aiming for 10,000 travelers to Tahiti in 2006 but will be competing with the other newcomers and such veteran island tour operators as Fantasy Holidays, Islands in the Sun, Jetset Tours, Runaway Tours, Tahiti Legends, Tahiti Nui's Island Dreams and Tahiti Vacations. Cruises: Radisson Seven Seas Cruises in December will dispatch the new 320-passenger ship Paul Gauguin westward from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Beginning Jan. 31, the ship will offer year-round seven-day Tahitian itineraries, beginning and ending at Papeete, with stops at Rangiroa, Raiatea, Bora-Bora and Moorea along the way.

Fares for the cheapest cabins (without balconies) begin at about $3,550, including air fare from Los Angeles. The line's early booking discount shaves $400 from that price. The Paul Gauguin effectively will replace the less luxurious Windstar Cruises' 148-passenger Wind Song, which is scheduled to leave the South Seas for Costa Rica at the end of this year. Berths aboard the Gauguin started selling in February.

Also, until it sails for the Caribbean Dec. 21, the 386-passenger Club Med 2 offers three-, four- and seven- night itineraries (calling at Papeete, Raiatea, Bora-Bora and Moorea) for rates starting at about $2,500 for the seven-night cruise. Lodging: All of French Polynesia has only about 3,000 hotel rooms, but in the next two to three years, that number is expected to rise by 1,000 to 1,500. Meridien hotels have new properties under construction on Bora-Bora and Tahiti, both expected to open next year. And Outrigger Hotels & Resorts, a Hawaiian mainstay that operates about 20 lodging properties on Oahu and 10 more on neighboring islands, has a hotel going up on Bora-Bora and will take over the rebuilt former Tahiti Hotel in Papeete. Both projects are targeted for 2007 completion.

To board the Commandante Rochei, one of the floating buses of the Amazon, you have to walk the plank. Actually it's a series of narrow planks, laid end to end in a crazy zig-zag maze that marches out over the dark water. Step with care on the ominously bending boards and you just might make it to the boat without a dunking. The locals, of course, can do it walking backward, lugging one end of a refrigerator. I can't take my eyes off them. The Amazon, the greatest of the world's rivers, is at flood stage this month, and a record one at that. The 60-foot stilts that support the wooden shacks built on the banks have disappeared, and the milky water is flowing right through Amazonia's living rooms.

Families have just hung their garden hammocks a little higher, and put the television up on the top shelf, but the dogs look mournful to me, trapped atop the family's gas canister or whatever else happens to still be above water.