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.