A successful venture

Nuku Hiva resident of 19 years, Philip Beardmore’s delivery on my request for an authentic and real experience was of a very high order. He went out of his way to make contact with people and to make connections which led to my immersion in families as they lived their daily normal lives. What I experienced and learnt from him and everyone I met was profoundly rich, sometimes personally challenging but always personally enriching. From time to time I was way out of my comfort zone, but I now know more about myself as a result, and that has to be a good thing. All my expectations and much more have been achieved and all souvenirs and gifts have been purchased. Now I am ready to come home.

Mixed reflections

Hoped to be sitting in a similar seat towards Tahiti as I travelled up to the Marquesas on so I would be able to see what I missed out on first up (no set seats just grab the one you want). Forgot planes take off differently according to the wind. So we took off and I had a view of the featureless sea. Then, I was delighted when the plane banked and flew over the island of Nuku Hiva, more or less finishing over TaiOHae and so I saw some of the valleys I had visited on Wednesday. It was a bitter sweet departure. I know I will never be back and so it is truly goodbye. But such a rich store of experiences will give me much pleasure for a long while. Sensational place but hard work coming from a winter climate. And hard work with too little conversational French. However I wouldn’t have done it any other way. A few nights ago I walked up to the plush resort hotel on the hill, sat sipping a (non-alcoholic) cocktail, chatting to a local, admiring the pretty boy bar girl and watching the guests. Strangely, I was given a bowl of green and black olives which did not blend with the fruit juice I was drinking. But that was enough for ‘dinner’. Anyway I looked at the guests and their well-fed tummies, and their expensive linens and sparkling diamanté sandals and knew they could never know the Marquesas’ like I have (even though I realised I had only scratched the surface and understood almost nothing) and I felt sorry that even though they all spoke French, their isolation in such tourist enclaves prevented them from really knowing how people lived, laughed, talked and felt. Nor could they know the values of the local people. And without it at least some of that, all they could be doing was ‘seeing the sights’.

Getting to Nuku Hiva airport

The drive to the Nuku Hiva airport would have to be exposing one of the top 10 natural wonders of the world. Amazing. The variety of terrains from mountains to deserts was awesome (the desert surrounding the airport consists of rolling hills with comparatively low vegetation but it does not meet my childlike definition of a desert which ought to be rolling hills of sand – yes I know we have stony and other styles of deserts on Oz and around the world, but no way did this meet my feeling of desert). At various times the sea could be seen, from our great heights, on all sides. The driver, driving at 20-40km per hour, negotiated continuously curving road, which had more switchbacks than curves (and for the first time in 2 weeks after endless tortuous roads with steep drop-offs and lots of landslide mud and rocks everywhere, I had a functioning seat belt – yes my Ozzie conditioning has been hard to break. Law here says only belts in the front seats need to be worn and only in the towns and villages; still often they didn’t work and were draped over to save the Gendarmes the work of pulling you over and having all that paperwork for your misdemeanour of not wearing a belt). Until we reached the northern ‘desert’, there was never more than a 200m straight section of road, and through the desert one of the few straights could be as long as 400m – and this was during an over a 1 ½ hr trip from the town of TaiOHae. Fanbloodytastic. Exhilarating. I will always remember the endless wild horses and their foals standing in the middle of the road or eating on the verges, and others with their winter coats scruffily moulting off. Massive beef cows in black and white and red and white meandering similarly. Amazing panoramas. Exposed valley based tree ferns thinner than ours, and with a bulbous growth at the top of the trunk before the fronds pushed out on some. Sky blue and some white clouds. Stunning at every turn. Feel that every ‘grotty yachtie’ (phrase from a German couple of sailors) should take the trip even though they must return to sail. The last drive really has been the final wonder in these fabulous islands. Great relaxant and stimulator simultaneously. And it will give me memories to last me the next 13 plus hours of flying (albeit with breaks at Tahiti, Auckland and Melbourne where I will have a chance to walk around a little). And now my plane has arrived at Nuku Hiva, so I will be boarding soon to start the next step of my journey.

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.

A slight connection from Captain Joshua Slocum

You know how I look for connections between my life and my forthcoming visit to French Polynesia - well one was handed to me on a plate. One of my managers, an enthusiast of boats, was excited when I explained I would be sailing around the Marquesas Islands for a great adventure on a ketch which I wasn't familiar with. He loaned me a copy of a book titled Captain Joshua Slocum The adventures of America's Best Known Sailor - written by son Victor Slocum. It is an extraordinary book telling the life and challenges faced by Slocum across the seas in the 19th century. Around 1895 he built a ketch (The Spray), and became the first person to sail around the world alone - and the boat was only 36 feet long! Pretty impressive. I was particularly alert when in late May 1896 Slocum remarked that he passed without stopping 'the high and beautiful island of Nukuhiva'. I look forward to seeing this island from the sea within the next three weeks. I will touch down at the Nuku Hiva airport en route to the island Hiva Oa, Saturday week, but eventually I will sail back to Nuku Hiva to finish my glorious adventure. Then I loved the fact that Slocum, after passing the Marquesas continued on via Samoa to Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. I enjoyed a number of wonderful working sojourns in Newcastle and it was the place I was married amidst lots of very happy friends. But I wonder what Slocum was seeing there in spring 1896 - I wonder what the city/town looked like then. From Newcastle, Slocum continued south towards Melbourne and then on 25 January 1897 he crossed Bass Strait and stayed awhile at Beauty Point on Tasmania's north east. From there he sailed west to Devonport where, as he was leaving on the 16 April 1897, he remarked 'Tasmania is the fruit garden of the world'. Even when I lived in Devonport in the early 1970s, many of the surrounding small towns were focused on apple growing and other fruit orchards. Regrettably over the years, as the world's need for fruit changed, orchards were plowed under. Now there is a revival of interest and a great deal of fruit is grown again in the district. Slocum was based in Devonport for 3 or so months and Devonport's Joshua Slocum Park remains today as a recognition of his great feat (he was really only half way around the world when he was near my home town). Will have a look at the Park with different eyes next time I am up there for the opera.

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?