The Marquesas

When people ask which part of our seven year cruise was the best, I always say it was the Pacific – from the Galapagos in the east to New Caledonia in the west – literally hundreds of beautiful, mostly fertile islands with good anchorages, plenty of warm sunshine, and inhabited by handsome, hospitable people. We only spent one season there but there were yachts that cruised about for many years and never tired of all that beauty or the lazy laid back way of life.  There were others who, by the time we reached New Zealand, said they were ‘islanded out’ and sick of it all.  Rather like that British chick in ‘White Mischief’ in Kenya who yawns boredly and says ‘Oh, no, not another bloody beautiful day!’  Mike and I never got tired of it.

 

The Marquesas are a small group of fourteen islands near the Equator, about 1500 miles from Tahiti and are administered as a subdivision of both the French Central State and the Government of French Polynesia.  As there are no barrier reefs, the Marquesan coastlines are either indented with bays or end in abrupt cliffs with soaring jagged mountain peaks.  Heavy cloud tends to hang over the islands giving them a dreamy, mysterious air.  Surprisingly, despite the lush appearance, the islands are quite dry and frequently suffer from drought.  Water was therefore a bit of a problem for us, though we did manage to find enough, and during our visit there was a reasonable amount of rainfall so we could collect our own.  Nature runs rampant here; herds of goats and packs of wild horses roam in complete freedom.

They are stunningly beautiful and lived up to every expectation of tropical Pacific islands. The Marquesans take a pride in their difference to (and perhaps superiority over) the rest of Polynesia, with their own language, songs, haka dances, tattoos, carvings, tapa cloths and cooking. The official languages of French Polynesia are French and Tahitian but the Marquesans communicate in their own language and many of them also speak English.  The artist Paul Gaugin lived, worked and was buried here and his name is to be found everywhere. The French singer/songwriter/actor Jacques Brel was also buried here.

4 June 2004

We made landfall at the southernmost island of Fatu Hiva and anchored in the Baie de Vierges (Bay of Virgins), originally called the Bay de Verges (Bay of Penises) because of the extraordinary phallic-shaped rocks jutting up around the bay. The name was changed, inevitably, by the missionaries and is, in my opinion, the lesser for it. Delighted to be on land again we went for a long walk up to the top of the central mountain and collected a bag of ripe guavas. It was a very steep climb and coming back down again was agony for my poor knees. The people were friendly and kind and one shopkeeper’s husband took us to his home and gave us some delicious giant grapefruit (pamplemousse), green pawpaws (papaya) and mandarins from his garden. Nicole and Pieter from Petima arranged a dinner for the yachties in the anchorage at the home of one of the islanders, Rosa. We paid $5 ahead, took our own drinks and a ‘gift’ for our hosts. Mike and I took a Barry White cd which Rosa and her friends practically swooned over – an inadvertently good choice! Life on these islands is similar to that of the islands in the Caribbean – perfectly idyllic on the surface. When I said as much to my hostess, she agreed and said “but the young people get very bored”.  That may be, but the young people we met were charming and courteous, without exception.

The dinner was delicious – chicken (very ruggedly chopped), breadfruit and green papaya, swimming in spicy coconut milk, rice and various other odd starchy things, unidentifiable puddings. Lots of good music was played and our hosts willingly tucked into our alcohol, getting more than a little merry. We had been told that alcohol is strongly discouraged amongst the locals as they have weak heads and a tendency to abuse. It was a fun evening and we rowed back to our boats before things got totally out of hand.

We spent four days on Fatu Hiva, then moved on to the island of Tahuata where we were boarded by two French Douaniers (customs officials). Hilariously, one of them thought he perhaps knew me from thirty years ago in Paris. I HAD been in Paris 30 years before, and have the same name as the woman he had known, but I’m sure I would have remembered a ‘liaison’ with this gentleman. He kept staring hard at me, not quite accepting that I was not her, and he received a few hard stares in return from Mike, who didn’t find it quite as hilarious as I did. This was a lovely anchorage with manta rays in the water. We swam and snorkelled, wined and dined and had a sociable time for five days.

We did the formal check in at Taiohae on the main island of Nuku Hiva where we met up with many of our cruising friends who had made the big crossing with us. We had no check out papers from the Galapagos, but no one was remotely fazed here and didn’t even ask for them. There were no charges levied to visit all the islands in French Polynesia, and we were given a three month permit, and one year for the boat.

Huub celebrated his 36th birthday party on the wharf and the whole crowd attended. Some locals produced banjos and there was singing and dancing. Later I sneaked off with Nicole and Jocylene and went to watch some of the local youngsters practicing their haka dancing in preparation for the forthcoming festivals. My only previous knowledge of hakas was watching the All Blacks rugby team who perform a haka before every match. These hakas were less aggressive but more artistic and beautiful. The movements are somewhat different from African dancing but, like Africa, the strong drum beat forms the central musical theme. Stirring stuff.

Getting a tattoo in the Marquesas is considered one of the ultimate rites of passage, and most of the other women in our group went off and got one. Marquesan designs are particularly lovely and I was desperate to get one too, just a weeny little manta ray at the top of my thigh. I sneaked off one afternoon to get it done, but Mike caught me and nearly had a heart attack. He begged me not to, so what could I do? I still regret it.

There were no self service coin laundries to be found, and it was very expensive to get washing done at a French laundry, so we cruising women gathered sociably on the quai with our big rubber buckets, and rubba dub dub. Internet access was a nightmare, difficult to find and very costly so we tended not to bother. Our friends on Moose kindly sent an email via their SSB to my brother in London to let him know we had arrived safely. Our salt water pump had developed a leak and Pieter spent many hours with Mike repairing it. Nicole is a superb cook and we had a particularly great fondue meal on their boat Petima to celebrate Colin’s birthday.

Although things were extremely expensive to buy in the shops in French Polynesia, we managed to live through those months very cheaply. The locals were often quite happy to give limes, pawpaws, bananas, grapefruit and coconuts – all you had to do was ask. They never asked for anything in return, but we always gave something anyway, which they accepted happily. Fruit grows in profusion here, falling off the trees, so we lived on a diet of these fruits for the next few months. Our lives were healthy, sociable and so incredibly simple. We drank juice made from fresh limes, caught fish, cooked grated green papaya in a little butter with garlic and onion as a vegetable, and had plenty of rice and other dry goods on board. (But I must admit that one of the best things about getting to New Zealand was finding green vegetables again, which we had begun to miss terribly.)

With a bit of good rain about we had managed to collect some water, but we finally left the harbour of Taiohae as the water there was not drinkable and moved round to an anchorage called Daniel’s Bay where we managed to fill our tanks. (The French locals buy water in bottles – something we always refused to do and insisted on finding tap water or rainwater to drink.) At Daniel’s Bay we took a very long walk one day with a few other cruisers through deep forest to find a rather special waterfall. Mike dragged me across the deep, fast flowing river four times going and another four times returning, and up some sharp cliffs – exhausting but very interesting. On the way back we stopped at Daniel’s place, signed his visitors’ book and chatted to his wife Antoinette whose legs were so swollen she could no longer walk. Daniel, armed with a shot gun and a couple of dogs, went off with a few cruisers to shoot a goat!

We heard here that there were a lot of small flying biting mites, (they called them nonos) which can leave a very unpleasant rash.  Luckily we were not affected by them but a few cruisers were and we felt very sorry for them.

Our last stop was on the island Ua Pou.  We shared the anchorage with just one other boat, Hi C’s, and had a very sociable time with Cyril and Jackie. Going ashore one day we met a young Marquesan man, Mooi, who produced a wheelbarrow which he then proceeded to fill with fruit and vegetables from his garden and freshly caught fish which he insisted on giving us.  The next day he escorted Jackie, Cyril and I (Mike had gone AWOL) for a long tour over the island and to a waterfall where we had a much needed swim in the romantic pool at the bottom.

He skimmed with remarkable ease (for such a large young man) up a coconut tree, picked green nuts and sliced them open with his panga for us to drink the slightly effervescent, refreshing water within.  Thus I discovered that coconut milk/cream is not the juice within the nut, but is made from pouring boiling water over the grated white flesh.  Having extracted the cream, we would dry and toast the gratings as a delicious snack.

Coconuts were to be found lying about all over the place but proved, for us mere mortals, to be exceedingly difficult to get into. Mike and I spent one comical afternoon trying to break open a nut. Mike’s panga was not up to the job and we had husk chips all over the boat by the time we got even a small crack in it. The islanders have a special spike for the job and even so it is a bit of an art which few of us ever mastered.


That afternoon Mike had wandered off on his own and was found by a group of island women who took him to their home and fed him a feast of crab, lobster and prawns on the understanding that he would give them a bottle of booze the next day - he gladly agreed. So, the following day we duly rowed in with a silk sarong and some fishing lures for Mooi and our last bottle of gin for the ladies. They were all delighted and it was a good trade for us. We’d not bought nearly enough cheap booze in Panama!

We had an excellent barbeque our last night on Hi C's.  We heard Moose and Aliesha on the VHF, both leaving for the Tuomotus that night and bid them goodbye.  We would be following them the next day whereas Hi C's were heading for Nuku Hiva and would come along later. 

26 June 2004


I could have spent many months here, but that spoilsport, time, kept marching on.  With much sorrow we said goodbye to these beautiful Marquesan Islands, and sailed on to the Tuomotu Archipelago.