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What was supposed to be a romantic honeymoon in Tahiti turned into one of the most chaotic and unforgettable experiences of Robert Erck's life — and 37 years later, he finally put it all on paper.
Erck joined Inside South Florida to discuss his book, Lost in Paradise, a true story that begins with an elopement in Hawaii and quickly spirals into a series of unexpected and sometimes hilarious misadventures across the South Pacific.
37 years in the making
Erck says the story sat with him for decades before he finally committed it to the page.
"It was a story 37 years ago, and it took a while. Life gotten away and I never wrote it, and I finally did, and now it's on paper," Erck said.
The adventure began when Erck and his wife decided to elope in Hawaii, with a boat trip to Tahiti as a wedding gift from her father.
"It was just my wife and myself and a pastor on a cliff in Hawaii with the ocean down below, and I was a bit nervous. I got tunnel vision. It was 70 degrees, and I'm sweating bullets, but I made it through it," he said.
The trouble started before they even arrived in Tahiti.
"When we were landing, I noticed the boat that we were supposed to be on was leaving the harbor, and we were still in the air," Erck said.
Stranded in paradise
Chapter six of the book captures the sharp contrast between the beauty of the setting and the chaos of being stranded — a tension Erck says reflects exactly what he and his wife lived through.
"It was supposed to be calm and normal. Have the wedding, have our honeymoon in Tahiti on a big 400-foot ship. And so there's so many things that went wrong," Erck said.
After landing in Tahiti at midnight, the couple discovered their boat had left early due to an approaching storm.
"We were pretty much at the dock after we landed in Tahiti, there's no boat, and then there was no lights on the town, and we ended up finding one place that had lights on, went in and tried to get in touch with the boat, and ended up being a brothel that we walked into," he said.
Lost in Paradise is available on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, and through Erck's website at roberterckbook.com.
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