The Great Navigators

"No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its garland crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.”  Mark Twain

The Marquesas are not the typical south sea isles of your dreams. There are no coral reefs here, as the waters are too cold and anyway, the shores of most of these islands are steep cliffs, which continue straight down into the deep blue sea. They are very rugged, much like the Na Pali coast of Kaua'i or the north shore of Molokaʻi.   They are very sparsely populated, with most islands having only one or two thousand people. There are very few roads, as it is so rugged that it would just be impossible to build many roads.  Only a few islands have runways, as there are very few flat spots long enough for even a small prop plane to land on. There are very few nice beaches and many of the nicer beaches are infested with the notorious no nos, insects that, if you are bitten by them, will truly ruin your vacation. Because of all this, the Marquesas will never have mega resorts, or even many hotels and will always be a place for the more adventurous tourist.  In the 9 days we were traveling here, we saw only a couple of tourists, and those were in the bigger towns.  It takes a commitment to come here, but those that do are rewarded by seeing the most beautiful islands in the world. 

Ua Huka is a barren island in the northern group. We were to first come into Vaiapee Bay, a very narrow bay with a small village. This is where we were told to be on deck at 6am to see an "interesting maneuver". Interesting indeed!

I really don't understand why we should be surprised that the Polynesians make great sailors. After all, they were sailing across thousands of miles of empty ocean, finding small islands along the way, when our ancestors were living in mud huts and barely moving 20 miles in their lifetimes.  What the captain of the Aranui did here was to bring his ship up to a certain part of the bay, dropping his anchor along the way, so it was on the sea floor behind us. Then, because the bay was so narrow and he couldn't back out all the way, he did a 180, like on a pivot. Using his one front thruster, the ship just turned, with only a few feet to spare between the bow and the rock wall, and the stern and the rock wall. It all took about 4 minutes and we were soon facing out to sea. But the Aranui crew wasn't done yet. With two whale boats on either side of the stern, 2 crew members in each boat brought the big tie ropes to two huge bollards, large metal posts sunk in the rock. With very challenging waves of 4 or 5 feet, one of the crew carefully jumped on the rock with the big rope and slung it over the bollard., while the other coaxed his whale boat right up to, but not touching, the rocks. The whole thing looked like a beautiful ballet and it showed how good this crew was. 

Getting on the barges, which hold about 50 passengers, can often be a challenge, too. You first walk down the metal staircase gangway of the Aranui. At sea level, a large, very tattooed Marquesan sailor is waiting for you. When you are on the bottom platform, he lifts you up to another tattooed sailor in the whale boat, who lifts you up from the first sailor and deposits you on the floor of the barge. I have seen this work perfectly over 100 times until once, under very heavy seas, a young French  woman somehow missed one of the hands of first sailor and fell partway into the sea between the platform and the barge. But as fast as you can imagine, the first sailor lifted her out of the sea and onto the barge. This was the only time I have seen the least look of fear in the eyes of these Marquesan sailors. 

It was here in Vaipae`e that Steven, one of our guides and a member of the Aranui band, told me I should buy my Tahitian ukulele. The uke maker here not only made the typical 8 string ukulele, but also a 10 and 12 sting model. When I got to the craft shop, there were 6 ukuleles hanging on the wall. I strummed each one and they all sounded nice (for Tahitian ukes). But my eye and ear caught a 12 string model that had nice carving all over it. After showing it to Steven he agreed that it was a good one. I then went outside, where three musicians were about to play some local songs for the passengers and they invited me to sit with them and play along. Lucky for me, all the songs were in the key of C and had only 4 chords!  But I hung in there and played 4 songs with them. 

From here, we drove over some amazing countryside along the coast of Ua Huka, and down into the village of Hane, where we had another delicious buffet of Marquesan delicacies: roast pork, sashimi, bananas with coconut cream, fried chicken, poisson cru, etc. after lunch we hiked up to a me'ae, an old temple. There wasn't much left except some really great old tikis. 

Here's Dieter with Amy along the Ua Huka coast...

And the me'ae...

That night, it was Polynesian night where we have a big buffet on the back deck of the ship and the staff, and even some passengers, do a talent show. Amy danced Kimo Hula and I accompanied her on the ukulele.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it. There was lots of great food, including two whole roasted pigs! The dessert table had an amazing amount of pastries. 

The legendary Aranui bartender, Yoyo, and Steven. 

Alexandra, Ouiza and Amy

Jacob and Moana

Ua Huka turnaround

The last Monday of the trip we woke at dawn to see the captain enter the extremely narrow canyon where the boat must unload, where due to the shallowness of the little narrow necked bay the boat must pivot on itself and back in and still anchor far from shore.  The Aranui 3 was specially built to have a shallow draft so it can get into the atoll lagoons and tiny bays but even this beach is a stretch.  The turnaround is thrilling.  The narrow, twisty canyon has low rocky ledges under sheer cliffs, the waves surge up to the ledges which are only out of the water at lower parts of the tide. The Aranui arrives at a time the ledges are exposed, and someone has sunk severally pylons into these rocks, a mile from shore.   the two whale boats are lowered each with a steersman and a sailor to leap onto the rocky ledges carrying the lines of the Aranui.  The sailor has to tug the heavy loop of the line to the front deck of the whaleboat, attach a lighter line so he can leap over the gap onto the slippery wet ledge, tug the loops to the pylon and voila. But not so easy! One of our sailors leaped successfully but the lighter line came loose so he had to leap back on and off. Meanwhile, the helmsman is having to gun the outboard just enough in time with the surge to bring his sailor within a safe leap to the rocks and still not ram the whaleboat on the rocks. Scary!

Then once the line is secured the Aranui backs and turns swinging so the prow is out to sea.  Amazing in a tiny spot.  On our boat as passengers were several retired navy guys, Rolly of the Snow family especially, and he kept oohing and aaahing and explaining to us how technically difficult all the Aranui endeavors were. 

Of course it's not just thrilling its an extremely beautiful spot. 

On this stop there is a tiny village Vaipae`e that has an exceptional museum. Apparently Marquesan pieces of extreme quality from the past collected by the Hawaii missionaries were furnished to the local carver over the last twenty years and he made exact copies. Nowadays The wood carvers make grooves To create designs but The harder more beautiful way is to carve in reverse having the lines of the designs be raised. And these carvings -- stilts, paddles, war clubs-- were all done this way. Unfortunately we wiped these pictures by mistake. There was also a gorgeous piece of Tongan tapa and a lot of actual stone and wood artifacts from the site.  This island had a not very successful mission but the missionary wife made exquisite drawings of the local women's tattoos, the only drawings that exist of what women looked like. 

The other great thing here was the ukulele maker.... Which Craig has written about...

This island also has beautiful red lava and our crew says it looks like the Grand Canyon,  well we hated to disillusion them so we didn't. But it was very very pretty.   We crossed a ridge and came down along shallow lagoons where down in the water our driver could see turtles. We could see squat but we trusted him,  

We saw one of the best me'ae here.  We hiked high high up a mountainside, only about thirty of us, I think I wrote about this already.  

And the last fun was getting back to the boats in the whaleboats through the surf.... Out past the rocks with the birds.... And a sunset journey to Nuku Hiva and our Polynesian night festival. 

Sunday Services on Tahuata

"The beach followed the semi-circle of the small bay, and was hemmed in on both sides by massive black rocks, above which rose steep mountains covered with verdure.  The narrow valley itself sloped upward on either hand to a sheer wall of cliffs.  In the couple of miles from the water's edge to the jungle tangle of the high hills were thousands upon thousands of cocoanut palms, breadfruit, mango, banana, and lime trees.... The tiny settlement was beautiful beyond comparison.  A score or so of houses, small, but neat and comfortable, wreathed with morning glory vines and shaded by trees, clustered along the bank of a limpid stream crossed at intervals by white stepping stones.  Naked children, whose heads were wreathed with flowers, splashed in sheltered pools, or fled like moving brown shadows into the sun-flecked depths of the glade as we approached."

                                              --- Frederick O'Brien, "White Shadows of the South Seas", 1919

i'm writing this Sunday, in the airplane, but wanting to remember Sunday sept 29 a week ago, when at dawn we found the Aranui in the lovely cliff shore by the village of Vaitahu on the island of Tahuata.  Such an amazingly beautiful valley and bay!

This was our second Sunday, and another Catholic Mass.  The entire town was in church and the service was mostly music.  Men shouldering babies, ladies who had dressed up to sell to the Aranui took time out to come to mass. It was raining and the church is practically open sided so it was fresh and beautiful with a light breeze coming through scented with rain. 

This island had the absolute best of bone and wood carvings, the famous tattoo master Fatty Barcinas and his family live here.  Only, he no longer tattoos due to shaky hands.  We did find some treasures here but the best time was walking upstream and up out of town past yards with friendly dogs and chickens and up into the forest where we could overlook the bay.  Such a beautiful place! 

We didn't stay long in the bay after mass was over for Aranui work, because Most of the Vaitahu deliveries had been offloaded a few days before when we had paused - this was done inttionally so that our boatmen and sailors had less work on Sunday.  It was time for a rest.  for the rest of the day, the whole boat was taken to a lovely white sand beach all to ourselves for snorkeling, barbecue and rest time including many of our sailors. I somewhat imagine on the boat, while we were all ashore, the staff could enjoy some tourist free time. 

At night, after another awesome Aranui dinner and pastry, we watched a video of the maiden voyage of the Aranui 3 ten years ago.  you could see the excitement then of the villages to receive more folks and especially you could see very high quality dances and costumes. A little different from today .... Today's Aranui 3 is no longer quite the novelty as the Paul Gauguin sometimes brings cruise tourists and the dancing seems less polished and though fun, a little ho hum.  I think Possibly its a generational thing.... because the dancers ten years ago were still part of the Polynesian cultural renaissance that the first sailing of Hokule'a and other events had kick started. The younger generation is starting to be caught up in cell phones and many want to depart the Marquesas, which have very little in the way of jobs, the economy relies a lot on France's willingness to subsidize the copra price.   But we know every four years for sure there is a grand Marquesan festival which moves from island to island, for which they restore the old temple sites and they perfect the dances. On the last days of our voyage, we talked a lot with Kate, an anthropologist, about the situation, Marquesa doesn't have a language immersion program, the French have French and Tahitian taught in schools, and she says at home while the men still speak marquesan the women seem to be changing to French.  So many influences... Maire told us that Tahitians love the Mexican telenovelas on TV so throughout French Polynesia the outside world is coming in more and more easily.  So, the films from ten years ago were very welcome to see as they preserve a little bit of the extra excitement Aranui used to provide when it was, indeed, the only source of outside amusement.

We must have waited to get underway until 2 in the morning.... In order to come into Ua Huka at the right time of the tides the next morning for our dangerous entry.... But that's another story altogether... 

Tiki time - Hiva Oa

Today is Saturday, one week since we embarked.

It does seem to keep getting better.  This morning we have gone ashore on the far side of Hiva Oa, at Puamau Bay, which is where ancient Marquesans erected chiefly statues using red and grey basalt, huge figures of important chiefs that are the largest outside of Easter Island.  The temple platforms where they were raised, are up on the mountain slope and just below a striking tall pinnacle.  It's a very captivating place and it doesn't hurt that its in a spectacular bay and that it's a treacherous landing.  Quite a feeling of adventure and spookiness. 

I hope to put a picture here, of the tikis.... 

One of the best things we've done is wherever we come to with the group, high in a mountain or in the back of a town, when the group heads back to town to see handicrafts or explore the beach, we walk higher.  The woods are beautiful, here are many horse trails and hidden springs and secret bathing pools and beautiful plants.  Vanilla orchids wound up around the palms.  It's so worth the extra little  climb, to get into the natural world even more so and to hear the birds and feel what it may be like to live here. 

In addition to the traditional plants and breadfruit and fruit trees and vanilla and noni, Coffee is also grown here, but the locals don't drink it as coffee! They prefer Nescafé, and, for that natural coffee buzz, they take the leaves of the coffee plant and use them to make 'tea.'  

The Aranui is again welcome here. The local roads go steeply up the hills away from the shore and are only one lane wide. You have to have a good strong motor!  Well today someone overestimated things, they loaded their new refrigerator and their other new supplies in their pickup, got two thirds up the slippery steep road.... And ran out of gas.   So we find two strong marquesan guys transferring the freight from one steeply sloped pickup, into the other. Phew! 

The shore here has a great surf rolling onto a black sand/pebble beach. And on the shore were a few good looking local teens... With big noses and sun bleached hair. On a whim we asked them: we've heard some people here are Paul Gauguns descendants, are you?  Yes! 

After we all got off the slippery dock into the passenger barge as it surged, and onto the Aranui steps as it surged, we got another great Aranui lunch. A platter of crudités including celeriac with traditional French mustard dressing, a roast chicken, and profiteroles. Overeating again, we felt like napping through the afternoon, but the coast that we steamed by was so dramatic.  We slipped into a gorgeous valley that goes back for miles, called Hana'i'apa.  The Aranui anchored close to a blowhole. 

This stop not much boat work happened. Mainly it was a chance just to get out and walk, In a lovely village and valley.   Down along the bay along the wide curving black sand bay were tall peaked sheds for the many outriggers, and along the sides of the bay were tall cliffs with caves in the bottoms with many chickens in them and high above were many precipitous shelves above with goats and rams and kids all bleating. Also there were open walled buildings, hale, where folks were hanging out enjoying the breeze wi each other, sitting on the low walls.  Here, a was woman teaching a little girl how to play checkers with little grey beach rocks.  

  As you wound back along the river from the shore there started to be houses, though scattered, and a church with a service going on with lovely harmonies.   the valley was not only exquisite with its plants and horses, and local homes, and outriggers, and the lovely river, but also, the valley floor, which goes back several miles, seems to be full of old stone house sites, big solid stone platforms, reminding us of how many people were living here before the Europeans came.  Also well inland, there was a house labeled as the  "yacht club".  Go figure. We didn't see any yachts...

I don't have a lot of photos I can put here til I have a link to Craig's ipad, but here a few from my ipad

The coast from Aranui with our crane in front: 

The mouth of Hana'i'apa valley: 

The Aranui next to the blow hole: 

The child playing checkers with stones: 

Paul Gauguin Was Here

"Hurra, my lads! It's a settled thing; next week we shape our course to the Marquesas!' The Marquesas! What strange visions of outlandish things does the very name spirit up! Naked houris--cannibal banquets--groves of cocoanut--coral reefs--tattooed chiefs--and bamboo temples; sunny valleys planted with bread-fruit-trees--carved canoes dancing on the flashing blue waters--savage woodlands guarded by horrible idols--HEATHENISH RITES AND HUMAN SACRIFICES"…Herman Melville, Typee, 1846

Paul Gauguin was a pederast. He was also a drunk, a dope fiend and, according to his contemporaries, a real jerk. But he was also one of the great artists of the late 19th Century and so we kind of overlook the bad parts and just enjoy his beautiful paintings. 

He left his wife and five kids in Brittany and headed to Tahiti in order to escape civilization. But he soon found out that civilization had found Tahiti years before in the form of the French colonizers.   So he sailed on, to the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa, and settled here for the last few years of his life.  He made some of his most famous paintings in Hiva Oa and many of the models he used were his mistresses, including his last one, who was 13 years old.  He also left behind many children and you can still see his descendants on the island as most have that peculiarly large Gauguin nose. 

The town of Atuona has a beautiful cemetery looking over the bay. It is here you will see a grave with the simple words, "Paul Gauguin, 1903". It is pretty sure, however, that Gauguin's bones are not here and this grave was put here for the tourists who wanted to know where the great man was. 

We had a nice buffet lunch in Atuona, including things like poisson cru, sashimi, roasted lamb, barbecued chicken, banana with coconut cream and more.   After lunch, Amy did what she does best. Took me up a side road, far away from everyone for an exploration. We headed up a beautiful valley, with a creek beside us. The road eventually turned into a small trail with only the footprints of a pig on it and we knew we were in a place where not too many people came. The cliffs were towering above us and the palm trees were shimmering in the very special light here. After a hour or so we turned around and headed back. 

We hitched a ride with this guy...

A couple of days later, we were on the other side of Hiva Oa, in the town of Puamau, which has the most important archeological site in all the Marquesas, Te I'ipona. There are huge platforms with many tikis. There is, in fact, the largest tiki in the Marquesas here, at over 8 feet high. There is also a very weird looking tiki that, depending on your point of view, looks like a fish or a turtle, or an alien, or in Thor Heyerdahl's case, a frog. He thought that this proved his point that the South Americans came to the Marquesas, as there are no frogs in the islands, the closest being in Peru. But, as with most of Heyerdahl's ideas, he was wrong and this tiki is thought to be a woman lying down and giving birth. 

Our guide, Jorg...

We walked back to the pier to get on the whale boat back to the ship and on the way met a couple of young teenagers with "that nose". When I asked them if they were descendants of the famous painter, they said yes they were. The last child of Gauguin had died many years ago, but they were his great, great grandkids. 

Exquisite torture (hiking on Fatuiva)

Every day in the Marquesas we think we've seen the most beauty and so far every day and every stop is even better. The day in Fatu Hiva, first in the valley of Omoo and then the hike up and over and down into Hanaveve, will probably be the pinnacle of the trip.

Fatu Hiva saw the fewest European visitors all along, and people here speak a soft Marquesan dialect, live in widely dispersed houses surrounded by grassy open space.  Marquesan arts like tapa making and dancing and wood carving were preserved here and from here re-taught to others.  The music is softer and slower than Tahitian.  

It's so fun to be around as the Aranui unloads, it's done so skillfully like a ballet, many of these towns are getting not only groceries and the occasional SUV but also building supplies, the flat barge is lifted off the ship by the cranes and then the sailors help the crane place heavy bags of crushed rock and cement on and the barge barely makes a ripple even though with the wrong move, it'd go down.  One barge we saw was so heavy under its weight it barely cleared the water. This ballet is done against a backdrop of exquisite tall volcanic cliffs with spires, with a dark waterline that has caves and secret beaches with waterfalls.  It's really very magical.  The towns are magical too.  Most folks and kids get around by bicycle, or horse, the kids and women are wearing beautiful flowers in their hair on Aranui day, the men also all wear a blossom on their ear.  To encourage us visitors to see the tapa and wood carvings and seed leis and fragrant oils, there is a local band playing guitar Uke and drums.  I heard them playing Marquesan words to 'Ua Noho Au A Kupa', a Hawaiian melody I know pretty well,wish I knew the Marquesan. 

The language is awesome they drop almost every consonant compared to Hawaiian so it sort of burbles along.  The marquesan for aloha is kaoha but here in fatu Hiva the h is dropped too.  There isn't a harsh sound anywhere the mouth moves like butter around that word the way I heard it said. One of my favorite moments was being down on the sea wall sitting on large black polished stones under a tree next to a big pasture like soccer field with of course the usual grazing horse, watching a nice grandma hold her toddler grandson helping him throw pebbles in the ocean while he oooohd and aaaahhhd at the barges and boats moving back and forth from Aranui. Since the Aranui is the only boat that regularly makes it here, in between things are probably pretty sleepy!  Today some forklifts and some trucks deliver shrink wrapped boxes of this and that to the two small stores in town, but it's hard to imagine much need for motorized vehicles on other days. 

Another aspect of traditional culture that's preserved is pig hunting!  Down in Hanavave, we saw several men with each about nine leashed young doggies walking through town down to the breakwater.  There they put the dogs into dinghys!  The dogs are totally happy about this, that's because they are going around to the back of the island, where goat and pig hunting is the best. Imagine the happiness of your dog when you'd say WALK. Now triple that. The dogs were so hāpou,,,,

So--- where's the torture. 

Ok I'm interrupting this blog to show our current situation at dawn watching this sunrise

Anyway. Yesterday (sept 27th) was the day about thirty of us did the ten mile hike, up from Omoo up the ridges to the top of the hillside and down to Hanaveve. This is one of those up up up then downdowndown hikes. But it was so worth it.  The high mountains were gorgeous, there was Lehua up there and the deep valley we came to, with towering basalt columns and waterfalls and a lovely river that clearly folks still bathe in all the time, was amazing, like a Hollywood set actually.  UN-be-live able. 

Here is where we will be today¯:  The back side of Hiva Oa

So Many Beautiful Places Cannot Possibly Be (remembering Fatu Hiva)

"And then the sun crested the horizon and there lay the Marquesas: like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church they  stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit sign-board of a world of wonders", Robert Louis Stevenson

We are now back on the high seas, on the way to Rangiroa, in the Tuamotu archipelago. The sun has set and for the second time this trip we saw the "green flash". It's been an interesting day so far. Somehow, three blogs that I have written over the last 5 days totally disappeared from my Blogger website. Then, I pushed the wrong button on my camera and the last couple of days of pictures were deleted. Oh well. 

Today was our last day in the Marquesas and our last island was a revisit to the amazing island of Ua Pou. This island is famous for its towering basalt pinnacles, created when the softer rock surrounding this hard rock whittled away over millions of years of rain, wind and gravity. When we first visited Ua Pou, the pinnacles were covered with clouds, but today, just as we were leaving, the clouds parted and there they were in all their glory...

Ua Pou might be the most fantastically beautiful island of the Marquesas, but each island has its unique points.  It's hard to pick a favorite, but surely for me if I had to pick one it would be Fatu Hiva, the southernmost Marquesas. Maybe this is because we got to see it up close, as many of us did a difficult 10 mile hike from the small town of Omoa to the amazingly beautiful valley of Hanaveve. 

We started off with some local villagers giving a demonstration on how to make tapa. They showed us how to strip the bark off the tree branch and then pound it so it is very thin. There were many nice pieces of tapa for sale and we bough a nice turtle with a Marquesan cross for $10. Nearby, was a nice craft fair with really well done wood carvings. We bought a beautiful bowl from a highly tattooed man named Noel. 

At 10am about 30 of us met at the church. We then headed up the road, which at first was quite steep. Pretty soon, there was a long line of us going up the road and we were all spread out quite a ways. Amy and I would make several stops to rest and see the view, but we noticed that especially the Germans kept up their own pace and would not stop, no matter what. Apparently, the German way to hike is that you find your own pace and keep to that pace, neither slowing down nor speeding up and never, ever stopping to look at the view, even though that view is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life, you will never see it again and you travelled thousands of miles and paid thousands of euros to see it.  Stop and smell a tropical flower?  No, sorry, we are German and must keep walking. Look at the Aranui sailing 2,000 feet below us to our next destination?  No, sorry, we are German and this is the way we hike. 

After 2 hours of climbing up the road, we reached the top at 2,000 feet elevation. The Aranui staff brought us up a nice hot lunch including fish, chicken and lamb. Before long, however, Amy and I were ready to head down. The road went into the beautiful valley of Hanaveve, which looks very pre-historic and you think a dinosaur will pop his head around the corner any minute.   The road at times was incredibly steep, but the views into this ancient caldera were incredible.  Giant ribs of basalt encircled the valley and far away you could see tall waterfalls. Way up on the top of one of these ridges was a hole and you could see the blue sky through it. Long ago, teenage Marquesan boys would climb up to this hole in the basalt cliff, thousands of feet above their small village, to prove their manhood. 

After 2 more hours of hiking down a very steep road,  we were in the little village of Hanaveve and were treated to a dance by the locals. This village is located on the Bay of Virgins and there is a story behind this. On both sides of this valley there are many huge basalt pinnacles, which look very much like a certain male body part. So it was called La Baye des Verges, which in French means the Bay of  Penises. Well, when the missionaries arrived you can imagine they didn't think too much of that name.  So some brilliant priest came up with the idea of inserting an "i" and you suddenly had La Bay Des Vierges, or Bay of the Virgins. Problem solved. 

Once back on the Aranui, we had a party on the back deck to enjoy the famous sunset in this beautiful bay. The sunset on this bay is even mentioned in Lonely Planet. Indeed, it was beautiful as all the hillsides turned yellow-orange and we all got to witness the "Green Flash".