Welcome to the land of volcanoes, wild horses, tikis and warriors!
We arrived, weary but ever so excited, into the bond-villain-like bay of Taiohae, grand capital of the island of Nuku Hiva, itself the grand capital of the Marquesas archipelago, the first archipelago of French Polynesia to be reached after crossing the Pacific. The whole of French Polynesia is a Departement Outre Mer of France and so they are treated just like another French department. The French election was on while we were here and everyone came down to the main town to vote. English isn’t really spoken and the French here has a wonderful accent.
Nuku Hiva has the biggest population of the Marquesas, at an eye watering 3,100.
Around two thirds of them live in Taiohae. So you can well imagine the urban sprawl which greeted us as we set down our anchor, and came ashore to do the paperwork.
We had been warned that, much as it can take a little while to get used to the constant roll and pitch of a boat at sea, it can also take a while to reacclimatise to land, and the curious lack of roll and pitch. Pah, we thought. We are made of sterner stuff.
We were wrong. Our first few steps would have made someone completing a round of pub golf proud. Ironic, considering we’d not touched a drop since we left Galapagos (one of the house rules. Sensible really, given the potential need for acuity and accuracy at any moment.) Thankfully, it was a wide pier, and the weaving slowly abated.
The paperwork was not quick. At the gendarmerie, there was one official dealing with four or five boats, and each boat took a good 30 mins.
We got our passports stamped, and wandered off in search of food. Lisa and I knew exactly what we needed.
A giant tuna steak and a beer later, we were feeling a whole lot better. We have almost certainly forgotten to mention this, but Charlie, Helen and Roo are vegetarians. We are not. But for the time we’ve shared the boat, we’ve joined in.
Imagine, if you can, the taste of beer and (tuna) steak to two sinful meat-eating drinkers after 24 days without.
If that doesn’t quite hit the spot, then consider that the following day, the restaurant was serving cow steak instead (the restaurants here are the kind where they tell you what they have today, and you decide whether you’ll eat it or not).
The cow steak was really, really good!
That same day we arrived, the locals had organised some cultural events, as a big group of boats (‘Oysters’, if you’d care to look them up – the super-yachts of the sailing world) had just come in. We unabashedly hung on to their coat tails, and were treated to some awesome Marquesan drumming, ukulele and dancing, followed by a Haka (‘like a Maori Haka, but plus sauvage,’ said a friendly local next to me), tattoo consultations, wild horse riding on the beach, and pamplemousse all round.
(you’ll have to wait to see who got sucked in to island tattoo culture),
A side note about the pamplemousse. These things are immense. About 3 times the size of a grapefruit you might find in the UK, these are exquisitely sweet and delicious.
Also, they are everywhere. As are the mangoes. Just dropping off trees. The locals have so many they feed them to horses and pigs.
We’ve never envied horses so much in our lives.
And genuinely, the BBQ pig here is immense. Immense.
Another thing you will recall we were looking forward to was getting some outside exercise.
Lisa wasted no time at all in donning her @hoka trainers, and exploring the roads and trails.
First she ran right around the harbour and back again. Next we went up to the harbour viewpoint, along a hiking trail through cocoa trees. It was like running in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. If his factory was built on a crazy angle going up a rock face. Which, to be fair, it might have been. The views were spectacular. More about that getting outside business here.
Whilst running, Lisa met some incredibly friendly locals who invited us to a bring-your-own Sunday beach bbq. There were loads of local families, horses and fun local food (like raw shark…).
We also took the opportunity to spend a few days onshore. We’d been living on board for five weeks by this point, and that’s a long time for six people to spend living in just four (small) rooms. We all deserved a little respite from each other. Anyone who’s spent extended time in close proximity to me (Will) will appreciate that sentiment!
We found a guest house that would take us for two nights at short notice since they had a cancellation. Being so far away from everything, this place doesn’t get a lot of last minute bookings. The bed didn’t move, and we weren’t in the way of everyone else. That’s probably about the best we can say about it, sadly. Within the first hour, the fan in the room broke. Will turned it on and tried to angle the cage, which it took as its cue to implode onto the spinning blades, which shattered.
There were no mosquito nets anywhere, so they were free to roam and feed on the guests.
That our host was not the most enthusiastic hotelier we’ve ever met is an understatement. With lots of muttering under her breath in French (thinking that we couldn’t understand that she thought we were awful young people who didn’t book months in advance,) she agreed to let us stay for a third night. The house was half-full. The majority of tourists here are French and it seems that they don’t mind that the rules of supply and demand mean that you pay $100USD for a mattress on the floor, no fan and cockroaches scuttling over your legs as you sleep (we’re not joking)… Needless to say we will not be writing them a good review.
Desperate to get some bikes, we found a place to rent (only e-mountain bikes that weighed 25kg unfortunately) and set off to explore the island. More about that, and about general training here. The island would be a phenomenal place for hill climbs, if the roads were all completely paved. The views were awesome, but the brakes made quite a cacophony on the descents….
We met up with the boat-Panks and Selkie and had pizza in the incredibly busy pizzeria on the island and the following day we all rented cars and attempted to do a tour of the entire island, taking in the Tiki sites. We got to one site that was closed but had some people near the centre artisanal and so we stopped. They were so pleased to see us, they opened up, showed us round and gave us each a mango.
The plan to see the whole island was scuppered by the fact that about halfway round, the road turned into a 30% gradient quagmire and only 4x4s could pass. We had to turn around in the mud and retrace our tracks around the Western side of the island – but we still saw some spectacular scenery.
Having spent about a week decompressing, and sorting out clothes washing, blog posts, and tattoos in the main bay of Taiohae, we left for a short hop around to another bay (Hakatea bay) just West of Taiohae. We arrived and it was a deserted paradise. As the day went on it filled up until 7 boats were anchored. Lisa went for a quick morning dip round the bay, using Will on a paddleboard as her buddy, and saw a massive turtle pop up in front of her to say hello! Then we hiked to Vaipo waterfall.
It was a lovely hike complete with some proper Indiana Jones-style river crossings (ie, scramble over a branch). We got to a rather disappointing lagoon with muddy water and were just about to go for a dip when we were told by a group of Spanish tourists who were leaving that the actual waterfall was out of sight, under a cave, over a massive boulder and round a corner. Having completed that section of the crystal maze, we were rewarded with a glorious dip in crystal water in a cave with the falls in one corner. Lisa got pincered on the bum by a massive shrimp/lobster-type thing, squealed and got out in a hurry.
It was the birthday of one of the Selkie kids and so we had a beach bonfire with hot dogs and marshmallows under a full moon with some of the other boats. It’s amazing how many boats are travelling with young kids. Maybe those boats all stay together and so we have a skewed view of it but it has surprised us a bit.
When we left the bay to head over to another bay in the North of Nuku Hiva, we saw huge manta rays swimming around. Lisa was glad not to see those whilst swimming. The next bay was Anaho, purported to be the most beautiful bay on Nuku Hiva – and they might be right!
It was lovely – very sheltered with a strip of golden sand and palm trees all the way around,
with shallow reefs to swim through. We arrived in the dark and in the morning when we let down the dingy, there were 4 manta rays that came swimming past. We did some snorkelling, saw loads of baby sharks in the shallows, and Lisa went for a swim and a run (surprise surprise) while Will wrote his book.
We also did a hike over to Hatieu’hai, the next bay along, where there is a great restaurant. At lunch they go to the stream next to the restaurant and feed the eels. These are almost 1 meter-long freshwater eels that appear out of nowhere and flap about trying to get the kitchen scraps.
After 11 days, it was time to leave Nuku Hiva and head South to another island (still in the Marquesas) called Ua Pou (prounounced like the spanish Guapo but without the ‘g’). You’ll have to check in for the next blog post to read about that!