Ua Poa

Ua Poa main town is wealthier than at Tahuata and probably on a par with some of Atuona on Hiva Oa. Firmer more solid and larger houses. Better more beautifully floral gardens. More shops - in unexpected spots in different streets. This morning went back to the place I showered yesterday and felt cleaner for it. As I sit here alone in the Pensione (no-one here so can’t get WiFi code, and still can’t buy a sim card on this island), I feel the effects of the boat as I sit here swaying and nauseous with it (although that might be the effect of the salad roll I bought for breakfast with weirdly pink sliced pretend meat). Also I don't think all the bread is agreeing with me. Hmmm maybe I will have to get off and stay off it once on Nuku Hiva. Tech school teacher Marie was exuberant about this place but I haven’t seen enough and haven’t been on my own enough to get my own take on it. Brilliant high peak views from harbour and this Pensione on the hill. I know these blogs are lacking some joie de vivre, but then so am I. Yesterday decided not to take a day tour here, when I realised it would be endless 4WD miles over very rocky roads to see only another village similar to the outlying villages on Tahuata, and similarly with the petroglyphs(this was not really how I felt so much as my real problem being that I have not yet recovered from sea sickness, is influencing all my judgements). The tiki face petroglyphs on Tahuata, up to which Joelle had with others built a walking track, will be hard to be beaten. Even guide Philip Beardmore said they were indicative of a different development of image than those on his favourite place Nuku Hiva.

1888 - Robert Louis Stevenson and the Marquesas Islands. Where was Gauguin?

I love the fact that so many of the world's renowned people have visited the remote French Polynesian islands, and gained a great deal from the experience. It seems everyone starts at Tahiti and then moves onto other islands. Even my trip will start there before I travel those 1000 odd miles north to the Marquesas - I have no choice because all international flights arrive and depart from Tahiti - but what reason do ships and their sailors have for always starting with Tahiti? We know Robert Louis Stevenson spent some months in Tahiti, before visiting the Marquesas in 1888. He wrote about his experiences and impressions there, in a 1900 book called ‘In the South Seas, Being an Account of Experiences and Observations in the Marquesas, Paumotur and Gilbert Islands in the Course of Two Cruises, on the Yacht Casco (1888) and the Schooner Equator. 1900. You can read his words at http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/rlsteven/southseas.pdf. Robert Louis Stevenson's first landfall on his voyage was at Hatiheu, on the north side of Nuku Hiva, in 1888. Meanwhile half a world away, in the second half of 1888, Paul Gauguin joined Vincent van Gogh in Arles, but the two quickly parted ways. Gauguin left France in 1891 and settled in Tahiti. He returned briefly to France but abandoned Europe permanently in 1895, having failed to sell many of the works from his first Tahitian excursion. He moved to the Marquesas Islands around 1898 and died on Hiva Oa in 1903. There is no record of Robert Louis Stevenson ever travelling to Hiva Oa. And there is no record of Paul Gauguin ever travelling to Nuku Hiva. I wonder if their personal and professional worlds ever allowed for them to know of each other?

My travel arrangements are cast in concrete and as flexible as ...

You already knew my flights to and from Papeete were booked. Since then I have booked myself into the hotel airport (across the road from the small airport) for two nights. On Sunday I hope to get a ride around the island and see all I want to see - Captain Cook and Charles Darwin's Point of Venus, and the local Gauguin museum. If I am really lucky I might even pass some of the small villages in which the artist lived. My guide on the Marquesas Islands tells me that nothing happens on a Sunday (well it didn't when he was last on Tahiti 17 years ago)and that my plans might come to naught. But I am positive that something will happen. When I return to Papeete around midday before flying back to Oz, I will have the rest of the daylight to see some things I might miss on that 1st Sunday. Whatever I will see will be seen. Nothing more nothing less. Then early Monday morning I have booked a long flight via Nuku Hiva the main Marquesas Island to the island Hiva Oa. This is the island where Gauguin died, so I will charge up the hill to the cemetery and look at his plaque. Somewhere around all of this, I will meet Philip Beardmore who will guide me across the seas and the land for 10 nights and 9 days. He offered and I accepted to sail in his ketch around as many islands as we can in the time. Eventually we will end up at Nuku Hiva and I will fly away. Sailing alone with a stranger is a calculated risk but I believe I will have a magical time. What I love in anticipation of travelling with a local who speaks English is that I will have real conversations about real things that are local so I gain a much deeper understanding of the place and its people, and will meet real people in a way that I would not have as an independent traveller not attached to anyone. I may get to see things that my research has never mentioned and I may miss some things that seem important now. But the thrill of rocking and rolling on seas because there are apparently no calm lagoons around the islands, of having my meals cooked for me, and of the pleasure of regularity of days and nights at sea interspersed with on-land discoveries- all of this amounts to a spectacular possible wonder. Being there and doing it will be different from my dreams but I have no doubt it will be memorable.

And Paul Gauguin?

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist (mostly painter). He was born in June 7, 1848 in Paris and died in May 8, 1903 in Atuona (which is in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia - on the island of Hiva Oa. I will be able to go to the cemetery where he is buried and see his gravestone.) which used to be the capital of the Marquesas.