Taiohae, Nuku Hiva

The previous day was a sea day. I worked on the jigsaw puzzle and blog posts and relaxed. We attended a talk on the culture of the Marquesas islands. There are less than 10,000 people living on six islands. The others are uninhabited. They have maintained their language and their tattoos.

It was announced at noon that the ship is changing the itinerary again. The passenger injured at Fakarava needs to be sent home. So they are re-ordering the islands in the Marquesas, going to Nuku Hiva first, then to the replaced island of Tahuata, and finally to Fatu Hiva.

The entire Marquesas Island archipelago is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We have a morning scenic drive tour with nearly 100 people on the ship signed up for it. We are split into two groups and the first group tenders to shore and gets split up into groups of four or six to be assigned to a 4-wheel drive vehicle. The drivers are local farmers or workers that come with their personal vehicles and do this about twice a month when a cruise ship comes for extra money.

The tide is nearly out when we get to shore and you can see how muddy the water and beach are. This discourages folks that might have planned to swim.

There are around two dozen vehicles that are the private vehicles of locals. We and another couple are squeezed into a pickup truck with three in the back seat and one up front. There is one tour guide for each group. You need a four wheel drive to get through on some of the roads on the island.

We first visit the Catholic Church. The figure to the left of the door is John the Baptist and to the right is St. Peter.

The Marquesas Cross is above the Virgin Mary.

There is a statue of a catholic priest in the garden and it’s protected by Tikis on either side of the A-frame over it.

Then the public meeting grounds, stopping at a scenic viewing point going up.

As we drove up we passed some wild horses. It is traditional for young men to go up into the mountains and capture a wild horse that they will train and keep. We saw some horses along the road.

The Marquesas Islands have a big get-together every four years and this grounds was built in 1999 for that meeting. 3000 people were invited. Nuku Hiva has around 3000 inhabitants and the meeting overwhelmed the infrastructure.

They had some local foods for us to sample. Coconut, grapefruit, bananas and breadfruit chips were offered to sample.

There was a white spongy substance that I tried, that I later learned came from the core of the coconut. I normally dislike coconut and can get sick from coconut milk. But I didn’t have any trouble with this.

Then we drove to the beach at Taipivai. The beach was muddy again and there were Black Noddies and Frigatebirds flying over the water.

The tour stopped at an overlook of the Taipivai valley on the way back and then went to the local craft market in Taiohae before returning to the tender port.

Notice that the dry season is starting, you can see the brown on this hillside at the bottom of the picture.

The tour finished around 1pm and we went back to the ship for lunch. In the original schedule, this was going to be our last stop in the Marquesas Islands and the ship would be leaving soon. But because it’s now the first stop and we don’t have very far to go to our next stop, the stay here in port is extended.

After lunch we went back to the island to walk up to the Tohua Koueva Archeological site Donna had read about. It is supposed to be one of the best preserved meeting grounds that hasn’t been restored. It wasn’t in very good condition and Donna was a little disappointed. It was a 3 mile walk up to it and back down.

We also walked up and saw the controversial statue build on Mount Muake next to the marina. It’s a 40 ft tall Tiki statue by an Italian artist.