A Bustling Welcome
The outline of Hiva Oa emerged prior to dawn. We pulled in to Taha Uku, a small harbor within Taaoa Bay, or the Bay of Traitors. At the end was a rocky, palm-fringed beach where horses grazed on shoots of grass along a freshwater stream. Merely over a headland is the city of Atuona, where regarding 1,500 people live — a Marquesan metropolis. Behind Atuona, Mount Temetiu rises to 4,000 feet. The tight quarters and incoming swell needed that we anchor bow-and-stern in the slim cove adjacent to the supply-ship dock.
We wandered ashore on Hiva Oa, immediately feeling welcome. Right off the bat, people pulled over to provide the four of us a ride in to Atuona. In the tidy city hub, no larger compared to a city block, we found a bank where we could obtain French Pacific francs. A woman selling vegetables from her truck piled free develop onto our purchases. We strolled through a small grocery store, delighted at the selection, frightened by the prices. We checked in along with the gendarmerie, passed a crêperie/Internet cafe, and met a French farmer and at last replenished the egg supply that had dwindled to nothing on our passage. Amazingly, on Fatu Hiva, wild chickens were constantly underfoot, yet along with so numerous various other delicacies at hand, no one cared to consume them or tried to harvest their eggs.
The French painter Paul Gauguin gained his estate on Hiva Oa. So did the Belgian singer Jacques Brel. Both men were buried in the cemetery. We found the museum that celebrates their works and has actually a reproduction of Gauguin’s home. Dedicated admirers make pilgrimages here, yet as this modest museum is perhaps the largest tourist-drawing element, we found few various other tourist amenities. There are no big resorts, and the single airport accepts only small planes that fly in from Tahiti, 850 miles away.
In a sense, every visitor to the Marquesas is an explorer, discovering a place that is exactly what it is, for lack of a much better phrase, absent any false vibe that comes from being catered to. Later, as soon as we reached the island of Tahuata, I asked a brand-new friend we’d gained regarding the meaning of the intricate tattoos that adorn the arms, legs and even faces of so numerous Marquesans.
“There is none. It’s Merely for beauty. It’s regarding art and our heritage, ” he told us.
On these islands, we found that an appreciation for beauty runs deep. Women and even some men wear a gardenia or hibiscus flower behind an ear as section of their day-to-day life. (They bloom year-round and lose from trees adore leaves in a Northern Hemisphere fall.) Public spaces on every island are scrupulously clean, and art — paintings and weavings and woodcarvings — is everywhere, incorporated even in to points adore public benches.
There is a pride in place and culture that booms from the Marquesans I spoke with. The Marquesan people live on land that provides. A lot more meals compared to anyone can easily consume falls from trees, runs wild through the bush and swims offshore. Fresh water gushes day and night from overflowing cisterns. Perhaps it’s this bounty that somehow encourages and allows the Marquesans to preserve their rich culture alive. Ahead of the annual Polynesian Heiva competitions, we saw people everywhere rehearsing for dance and music and outrigger rowing competitions. Women sat hunched over their tapas, applying ink to the pounded-out bark paper. Men carved pieces of rosewood and sandalwood by hand and along with Dremels.
The Marquesan people are few in number and live on a group of islands that is not only in the middle of the Pacific, yet a four-day sail from the nearest neighboring island group, the Tuamotus. They speak their own language (actually two, North Marquesan and South Marquesan); they have actually a history distinct from various other Pacific Island groups; and for years, they’ve strained to break free from the political chains of French Polynesia. I got the feeling that there is a conscious effort to steer clear of their culture from turning in to a mélange of the dominant Tahitian and French influences. Say bonjour to a Marquesan, and despite the reality they’re fluent in French, you’re pretty likely to be corrected: ka oha.
Village Life
We topped off our fuel and water prior to setting sail for Tahuata, a sparsely inhabited island across the 3-mile-wide Canal du Bordelais. On Tahuata, we spent our initial week exploring an isolated anchorage that Eric Hiscock ranked among the three most beautiful in all of French Polynesia. Hanamoenoa Bay is estate to a Marquesan known merely as Steven, that lives a hermitlike existence. He fixes visitors along with an intense stare, yet get hold of on his good edge and he’ll most likely reveal you exactly how he cultivates tomatoes Merely above the high-tide line and sets elaborate traps for wild pigs and chickens. Apparently fowl holds A lot more appeal in this corner of the Marquesas.
We spent time anchored off the villages of Vaitahu then Hapatoni, each along with a stunning church and several of the most sincere, open people we’ve met in our travels. In Vaitahu we spent a couple of days getting to know Jimmy, his wife, Tahia, and their kids. They welcomed us in to their estate and took us on a hike to their property in an adjacent valley, where they chosen tons of meals and filled bags along with eggplant, coconuts, mangoes, grapefruit and oranges for us to take spine to the boat. Our youngsters and theirs hit it off, and Tahia’s English was good. Strolling past the local school, she explained that it only serves youngsters up to age 10. At 11, Marquesan youngsters leave estate for boarding school on Nuku Hiva. Throughout the upper grades, they’re gone from estate for two-month stretches, returning for two-week visits in between.
In Hapatoni, we carried ashore photos taken by a cruiser friend that visited here in the early 1970s. The daughter of the late chief gasped as soon as she saw them, recognizing family that were no longer living, and of whom she had no photos. She showed us carvings her husband gained for export to Tahitian tourist markets, and filled bags for us along with fruit from her trees while her youngsters and ours played along with a litter of puppies. We said goodbye and took off at sunset for an overnight sail to Nuku Hiva.
A Last Stopover
Nuku Hiva is the largest island in the Marquesas and boasts the most populous town, Taiohae, estate to regarding 2,000 people. Taiohae sits beside a large, picturesque bay in which 100 boats could anchor. adore most Marquesan anchorages, it’s subject to a lot of roll-inducing swell. The bay is said to be contaminated along with agricultural runoff, so we didn’t swim. After watching fishermen dump fish remnants in to the water near the dinghy dock one morning, and witnessing the ensuing thrashing frenzy of habituated sharks, we decided it was Merely as well.
When our Taiohae requires were met (food, fuel, water, butane), we skirted about to nearby Taioa Bay, much better known as Daniel and Antoinette’s Bay. It was to be our last anchorage in the Marquesas.
What a finale. The bay, nicknamed for a couple that were renowned friends of cruising sailors, is one of the most protected anchorages we visited in the Marquesas. Peaks and ridgelines wrap about it, staggered in their placement, exaggerating perspective and luring us ashore to travel a well-trod course along a freshwater river and up the Hakaui Valley to the falls. Daniel and Antoinette are long deceased, yet family still lives in this primordial setting.
The worst thing regarding the Marquesas is exactly how nature and nations conspire to preserve visits brief. We left after 42 days, lamenting the reality that we didn’t have actually A lot more time to spend on the 5 islands we visited and the 10 we skipped. We wondered regarding the many anchorages we never saw and wished for A lot more time along with the people we met. yet the French enforce a 90-day visa limit for all of French Polynesia — 5 island groups stretched over 1,200 miles — and they make getting a visa for a longer remain difficult. The Marquesas are remote, deep in the trade winds that blow in only one direction. Once a sailor continues west, a return quest isn’t trivial.
But that’s not to say it wouldn’t be worth it. We’ll be back.
Michael Robertson is currently exploring Tonga along with his family aboard their Fuji 40, Del Viento.
from Golden Land Travel http://ift.tt/1Xj9frm
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