Hapatoni, Tahuata

We were originally scheduled to visit Atuona on Hiva Oa, the final home and resting place of painter Paul Gauguin. But that changed a few days ago because of high winds. The trip brochure does mention that the Atuona stop can be canceled because of high winds. The bay the ship anchors in faces east, and when there are strong east winds and swell from the southeast the ship rolls at anchor.

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

There are six inhabited islands in the Marquesas Islands.

There are 600 people that live on Tahuata, 100 people in Hapatoni, the village we will be visiting. In some way it’s an artist colony.

There were shore excursions on Hiva Oa offered by the ship, but there will be nothing offered at Tahuata as they are smaller and don’t have the infrastructure. There will be a song and dance presentation on the ship at 4:30 pm.

They had musicians and dancers that greeted us when we got off the tender.

We walked around the town looking for birds. There is the Marquesas Kingfisher which is extinct on Nuku Hiva because the Great Horned Owl arrived and hunted the chicks to extinction. The sign said there were less than 300 birds left in the wild. So we gave up on trying to see it.

We saw the Red-breasted Finch, also called the Red-breasted Firetail and the Fruit Dove.

Along the beach we saw some crabs.

Donna looked through the market. They had some nice wood carvings, but did not have a Marquesas Cross.

After walking around town we chose to walk up the road that goes to the east side of the island up and over the mountain ridge. It’s too far to walk all the way to the other town on the other side of the island.

We saw a pig that was tied to the tree.

Donna made it up about 500 ft and Steve kept going and went about 1050 ft up. Portions of the road are gravel and portions are paved concrete.

Steve saw the Reed Warbler briefly as it flew across the road on the walk after Donna turned back.

He made it back to the ship by 1pm for lunch.

After lunch, some resting and working through photos.

At 4:30 in the afternoon around 25 entertainers from the island came on the ship and sang and danced for us.

Sunset was towards the end of the dancing around 5:30pm. The sea was pretty calm and there were no clouds around the sun, so we elected to try to see the green flash. We headed down to the bow to get as low to the water as we could. The sun sets fast here, we made it to the front deck just as the sun was setting, so no time to get ready to take photos. We both saw the green flash about two seconds after coming out on the bow deck.