Steve and Cathy's Blog

Anyone who knows us at all well is aware of our shared love of islands.  Each one is distinct from all the others, not just geographically but, more important, culturally.  There are some that just seem to have developed a way of life, a mindset among its inhabitants that really appeals to us.  Nuku Hiva is one of those.

Insignia anchors in a beautiful bay on the south side of this island of 131 square miles (the second largest in all of French Polynesia after Tahiti).  We will tender into the small village of Taiohae, which lies at the end of the bay.

We meet in Insignia Lounge at 8:30 for the one excursion available today, Visit to Taipivai Valley.  This is the only tour available, but there will be three different “shifts,” as the travel is in 5-passenger pickup trucks that are owned by the island’s residents.  Our tour description notifies us of this unusual consist, also noting that the drivers are the owners of the vehicles and their English vocabulary is sometime limited, so there is only one true guide with each group of vehicles and he/she will speak at each of the three or four stops we will make.

Destination Services is really put to the test because of the transportation arrangements.  Each pickup only holds four of us plus the driver, and there are a total of about 25 vehicles.  Plus we must tender into the dock in the village and walk approximately 100 yards to where the pickups are marshaled.  They really do a great job getting us organized, and our ride into the village only takes ten minutes or so.  Last evening, we made sure to get with Pat Watt for this tour, as she is a delight to be with on any tour, but will be especially for a tour with only four of us tourists in the vehicle.

As we exit the tender, we are greeted with tons of musicians and dancers.  The welcome we receive is like a festival.  We are very much distracted by all of this entertainment.

The leader of the musicians and dancers assure us that there will also be music at noontime, so we reluctantly make our way to the vehicles and find ours, number 29.  It is a spotless white Ford with a crew cab and a great big guy named Te’ea.

We are joined by a woman named Karen as the fourth passenger, and Steve is invited to sit in the front seat as 1) he is the tallest and 2) has a big camera that will be difficult to maneuver in the back seat.  Pat asks that I take plenty of pictures as the one in the shotgun seat and share them with her.  Oh, the pressure.

They break all these vehicles into caravans of about a half dozen or so each.  As the title of the excursion suggests, the trip will take us to Taipivai Valley, but on a route that will first take us up a long, winding road to Tekao, the highest point on the island at 4,016 feet.

It takes about a half hour of climbing up a narrow but well-maintained road to reach this point, where we stop for phenomenal photo ops.

We are allotted eight minutes to get out, admire and photograph the views, listen to our guide Jacques, and hop back into the trucks.  Our guide explains how the island is laid out (we have also received a brochure to help) and to note that the population is less than 3,000 people but is stable and will grow if and only if employment opportunities continue to improve.

Already on our way up here, we have seen horses and an occasional cow on the side of the road. Jacques explains that people without enough property bring their animals up here and let them loose to graze. Cows are raised for milk or beef, but, interestingly, horses are used to access some of the most difficult landscape too hilly for 4-wheel drive vehicles.

So there is some raising of domesticated animals, and there is also some coconut exporting.  The big economic hope, though, is in the growth of tourism.  We learn that, in 2017, eight cruise ships called on the island.  In 2018, twenty are expected and the projection for 2019 is almost forty.  At this point, cruise passengers will probably be the best bet as infrastructure of all kinds needed to accept tourists is limited.

The topography of the island is spectacular, but that also means that the road in is the road out. We are now heading for Taipivai Valley, and will be returning on the same road.  Our driver Te’ea is very good and handles his truck very smoothly.  His English is indeed limited, so conversation is a bit difficult.  Pat does speak some French, and that helps.  His is certainly willing, but is shy about his language skills (he shouldn’t be around us whose skills in that department are very limited).  Pat, Karen and Cathy chat and Steve snaps away at practically anything that moves and every time we round a corner.  The landscape is green, lush rain forest on the top of the mountain and pastoral, quiet farm country in the valley.  Of course, almost every picture seems to have a white Toyota pickup truck in front of us as we are indeed in a convoy, but whatever.

Our second stop is above Taipivai Valley.  The twenty-five of us pile out of our trucks, gape in awe at the gorgeous scenery, take pictures and listen to Jacques as he tells us about the area.  One thing that he wants us to know is that Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, found the valley so enchanting that he deserted his ship here for three weeks and lived amongst the indigenous people, eventually writing his novel Typee based on the experience.  More recently, the fourth season of the reality television show Survivorwas shot here in 2002.

Following this stop, we wind down into the valley itself, through a couple of tiny villages, past several farms, and across a couple of small rivers.

We arrive at Te A’Aitua. This break is part to view an archeological site (a place where the lifestyle of the residents is on display in the form of a classic native house), to take an opportunity to have a delicious snack of dishes made of native fruits, and an opportunity to purchase Nuku Hiva crafts and meet some of the local people.  It is also a working coconut plantation.

Jacques carefully explains the hows and whys of house building.  There is a lot of detail in the very specific ways that a typical house in constructed, and these details are a result of practicality (keeping the heat out, for instance), religious beliefs (how all the members of the family sleep with their head and feet in a certain direction), and the availability of certain materials (they used to use palm fronds as a roof, but now the roofing material, while looking the same as native grasses, is made of plastic because it last twenty years rather than five years).

We are led over to another pavilion to be served the snacks.  There is a dish for every single fruit grown on the island: slices of papaya, slices of mango, chunks of coconut, fried banana and another dozen dishes made from fruits.  You would think we hadn’t eaten in two days the way we reacted to all of these delicious foods.  There were wooden crafts and textiles on sale, as well as some other food items. Cathy bought a small coconut pie to bring back to the ship after she discovered how good it is because another guest graciously offered half of his.

The tour continues as we hop back in the trucks and buzz off to the foot of Taipivai Bay.  We stop for more photo ops and information from our guide Jacques.  By the way, our guide is from France (as is about 7% of the current population).  He came to Nuku Hiva about twenty-five years ago to teach English and fell in love with the place.  He is now retired (except when the tourist board asks him to lead these tours) and lives near Taiohae.

We have one more stop on the tour, but it is back in Taiohae.  We still must wend our way back to the village where we started.  Through the valley, up through the mountain and eventually down to the village we go.  It is a beautiful day on a beautiful island with breathtaking scenery.  This is not hard work.

In about half an hour or so, we pull up to Notre Dame Cathedral. There has been a Roman Catholic Church on this site since the 19^thcentury, but the present structure dates back to 1977.

Jacques reverently guides us through the church, pointing out its many unique features.  I wish I had a notebook, because the uniqueness of the present building is due to the efforts of one particular bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Taiohae o Tefenuaenata. But I did find that good old Wikipedia has some good information worth quoting here on the history of the cathedral and the special blend of native and Roman Catholic customs and culture: “In the 19th century, France began expanding its colonial empire into Asia and the Pacific Islands, conquering Tahuata in 1842. Soon, the rest of the Marquesas Islands fell under French rule. Even though the colonial administrators chose to focus most of their resources on Tahiti—believing it was the more valuable of the two islands—Catholic missionaries, nevertheless, continued spreading the faith. Their persistence paid off and an apostolic vicariate was established on May 9, 1848. Construction of the cathedral most likely started after this time. It was built on land that was treated as sacred ground by the ancient Marquesans and was completed in the later part of the 19th century.

“Almost a century later, construction on a new cathedral commenced in 1973; it was completed four years later in 1977.  The two bell towers and a section of the wall from the old cathedral were preserved and are now utilized as part of the entrance to the cathedral compound.

“The entrance of the cathedral is flanked by statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul carved from rosewood. The exterior walls of the church are made of wood and stone, with elaborately carved doors at the entrance.  The stones were given by each of the six inhabited islands of the Marquesas.

“The interior of the church is noted for its mixture of European and local Marquesan features in its design.  This is demonstrated in numerous pieces of art adorning the cathedral. An artwork entitled The Passion, the pulpit and the Stations of the Cross were all carved from whole tamanu trees,with the stations having been carved by Damien Haturau. The first station shows Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane at the Mount of Breadfruit—as opposed to the Mount of Olives. The pulpit has the symbols of the Four Evangelists carved into it, with the floor behind it laid with Ua Pou flower stones.“

After the tour, we all hop back in the trucks once more for the three-minute ride to the village.  Our inimitable tour comes to an end right around noon.  Time for lunch!  There is a nice open-air, casual restaurant right near the dock, so Pat, Cathy and Steve go there for lunch.  We had fish sandwiches: grilled tuna on baguettes with lettuce and tomato. Delicious.

After lunch, Cathy is ready to head back to the ship but Steve is not.  Pat has some shopping to do and Steve some photographs to take, so the two of us stay in the village.  We walk along the road around the beach to a market/convenience store.  It’s closed from noon until 2pm, but opens almost as soon as we get there.  Pat buys some things while I take photos of the bay and our ship.

Then we returned to the main area of the town so Pat could complete her hunt for a particular piece of woodcraft she had been looking for.  She didn’t find exactly what she wanted, but did buy a suitable substitute.  Then she went to the tourist office and purchased a flower ring for her hair.  We got in a very nice conversation with the tourist board representative and took photos.  The young lady was a delight.

Well, the ship is due to set sail at 4:00, so we hop on the tender and head back around 3:00pm.  We do indeed glide out of the bay at 4pm.

We are heading for Honolulu, Hawaii, 2,093 nautical miles away in a north/northwest direction.  Another exceptional sunset to watch.

Tonight we will move the clock back 30 minutes. We had moved it forward 30 minutes on our way to the Marquesas.  Marquesans insist on being in their own time zone from the rest of French Polynesia. We sense a bit of friction between the people of the remote Marguesas and the French Polynesian government eight hundred miles away in Tahiti.

This day has been special.  Steve is especially enthralled with the place, primarily because of its small population and limited tourist stuff.  The people are charming, genuine and hospitable.  It would be a wonderful place to come back to just to explore more of the natural attractions and relax in one the world’s most remote locations. Who couldn’t enjoy that?