Traitors Bay near Atouna on Hiva Oa

Marquises, French Polynesia

 I met a French sailor today. On his passage to Hiva Oa, he took the route that I considered because I read that it offered better winds most of the time. I chose a more direct route. He said it took him and his wife 47 days to sail to Hiva Oa, as compared with our 21 days. He said they had three days of good southeast winds, and the rest of the days were nearly calm. He has been anchored in this harbor for three months waiting on parts and making repairs to his boat. He said the last parts that he needs came yesterday.

The weather has been perfect. Temperatures have been in the mid-eighties in the day and low seventies at night. There has been a steady breeze to keep things cool, even during the heat of the day, and the humidity has been very low, except shortly before the three or four showers that we have had. We are happy for such showers, because when we come in from the ocean, showers rinse the caked salt off of Cosmos and save the crew a couple hours of rinsing and scrubbing.

Hiva Oa is beautiful from one end to the other. It seems to be the tropical paradise that people dream about, except it lacks beautiful beaches or good snorkel/dive areas where we are. The beach is covered with large stones, and the water is made murky by the waves. We are on the south side of the island. North and west sides of islands are usually clearer and calmer in this part of the South Pacific, since the prevailing winds are from the southeast. People don't inhabit the part of the island that is clear and has good beaches, they inhabit the part that has the protected harbor. The largest protected harbor on Hiva Oa is of course on the south side were Atouna has been built.

There are seven villages on Hiva Oa and about 2,000 people, mostly Polynesians and a few French. Before the Europeans came, there were twenty villages and about 8,000 people. The Polynesians speak Marquisan to each other. It sounds like Hawaiian to me and it probably should. The tour books indicate that the Marquisans eventually also settled in Hawaii. The official language and the business language are, of course, French. Almost no one speaks English.

The village of Atouna is about two miles from the dinghy dock. Sometimes, someone offers us a ride in the back of a pickup truck and sometimes we walk the full distance. The road goes over a pretty tall hill, so we get our exercise, and the views are always entertaining and beautiful.

The village includes the gendarmes, a post office, barber salon, three grocery stores, three dry goods stores, four café/restaurants, and other small businesses. There is one hotel and several pensions on the side of the mountains. There is a museum that has several Paul Gauguin paintings and some archeological artifacts. Hiva Oa is the island that Gauguin chose for his residence in his mature years, and he is buried on a hill above Atouna.

On the way into town, is a small army facility with about sixty people stationed there. We enjoy hearing the soldiers singing marching chants as they go in formation along the cliff-side road, in view of Cosmos. The local sport seems to be canoeing. Of course all of the canoes have outriggers. We see numerous boys making trips out to and back from a nearby rock-island and in the lagoon where we are anchored, they sometimes have sprint races.

We hired Sabrina, a tour guide, to take us across the island. More than half of the pictures were taken on the tour. We went 47 miles over the twistiest, turniest roads you have ever seen to cover a direct distance of 30 miles. The leather on the three-year old steering wheel was completely worn away from driving along these roads. In some places, the road disappeared at the end of a cliff and all that could be seen ahead is water, until right at the curve away from the ocean. The ride was not for the faint hearted. Our guide, Sabrina, often did 40 MPH over rough gravel roads.

The views were awesome as can be seen in the pictures. The mixture of rock cliffs, ocean, blue skies, white clouds, palm, mamosa, and banana trees, tall wild flowers and ferns, were gorgeous. We made the tour on a perfect-weather day.

We went through several villages of three to four families. One family had 21 children, according to Sabrina. The villages all have electricity. At the far end of the tour route, is the village of Paumua with about twenty houses, a meeting hall, a grocery store, a large building where canoes are stored and about twenty houses.

A very short distance from Paumua we saw the remains of stone structures that were built about 400 AD. Sabrina pointed the largest Tiki in the Marquises. It is a priest Tiki, with his son and wife. Other Tikis included a woman giving birth and a "bad" Tiki buried upside down, with only his legs sticking out of the ground. We sent pictures of all of these. She pointed out a lama carved much later to represent Thor Heyerdahl's belief that Marquisans came from South America, rather than from Asia, as is the most prevalent belief among anthropologists. She also showed us a eight foot tall, two foot wide prisoner stone where prisoners were sacrificed and the pit where they were cooked. She pointed to several structures that were made of red stone, instead of the more common gray stone. Red stones were indications of royalty and could not be used by commoners.

We are going tomorrow, to Tahuata, a less inhabited island about 12 miles away. Several people have told us that it has white beaches, clear water, and only two small villages. We will probably spend one or two days there before moving on. I am looking forward to the diving.

Joe Dorr