The Marquesas

Quite a culture shock going from Galapagos 17 days ago to French Polynesia here. Our port of entry is on Hiva Oa. Nice place. Very Polynesian. The people are very friendly. Lots of tattoos. Not small people. Some of the fellas are downright BIG! Faces all tattooed. Shaved heads. Fierce looking. And then they give you a huge smile and a bonjor. We go from very Spanish Ecuadorian Galapagos to here.

It’s a 45 minute walk to town. There is nothing at the warf area. The dingy docks are horrible. Cement, falling apart, dingy eaters. The dink is getting the !$!#$ beat out of it. I have given up all pretenses of keeping it nice looking. Now I just try to keep it running and not leaking too much air.

So we hit the town to do some provisioning. We are out of everything fresh. They have a couple of nice markets. We load up. I went to the ATM to get some cash. They use Polynesia Francs here. US dollars are not too useful here. 100 FP France to a dollar. So on the ATM I keep hitting other for amount until I get to a 1 with a whole lot of zeros after it. So I am loaded for bear. I got me a pile of 10,000 bills baby. Most of which we blow on the first trip to the grocery. It is EXPENSIVE here! I’m glad we are stocked up on booze. A bottle of rum is something like ½ billion dollars here.

Did an island tour with a guide. More like a driver who grunted and pointed. Not a whole lot to be guided to it seems. We drive 45 minutes then hike for 20 to get to a Tiki carving of a smiling person wearing glasses. Very famous Tiki totem I am told. Says its 500 years old. But if that thing is not wearing glasses I will eat my smelly hat. A smiley face, nearsighted, supposedly female, Tiki.  Oh well. When in Rome. Then on to several other locales.  More totems. Lunch at a local place. Family style. Local cuisine. Very good. We didn’t recognize about ½ of what we were eating. They have some interesting ways to use up burned coconut and animal parts. But it was very good.

So, how does one find a 500 year old Tiki Totem of a smiling nearsighted girl?
You find a map on a tree, thats how. Duh! 

500 years old eh? With glasses? OK, I'll go with that. Don't want to tick off the locals. They do eat people here after all. Or they did.

This is at an old cemetery. Some of the markers mark the burial of the head of an enemy. With large rocks piled on so the spirit cannot escape. Only the head? What happened to the rest of them says I? Lunch.

The island has countless small inlets like this bay. Very steep. To deep to anchor . Very isolated. Beautiful. 

This is the anchorage on Hiva Oa. Got rather crowded. I'll bet the regulars are glass to see us leave.

Second night here we hear about this place called Alexes. He is Ex French military or spy or something. Runs a B&B  with his Polynesian wife out of his house. Which is way up the hillside. So we, and a couple of other boats, ring him up and he comes down and picks you up at the waterfront. In a POS pathfinder. Squeaking rattling bone crunching suspension. We pile in. I am stuffed in the back hatch with Russ from Nexus. We were bitching but should have held off on that. Because when we got the ride back down there were four of us stuffed back there. Four grown men. Getting tossed all about on these barely passable switch back mountain roads. We laughed out asses off. Andrew from Hebe and I had gotten on the pool table and ran it for several hours. He is a very proper British fellow. Until you load him up on beers. Then he is an absolute riot. The ARC “yutes” kept challenging us and we kept beating them. Then they have to buy a round for us. We got properly sloshed. For free. Reminded me of the old days with my old roommate Yoko. Back when we were the “yutes”. What’s a “yute”? There are a bunch of younger crewmembers on a few boats. The under 25 crowd. Nice group. They refer to themselves as the United Nations. Must be 10 nationalities and I don’t know how many languages spoken. They are very entertaining. And when we get into a port they cut loose! And after a three-week passage they really cut loose.

So we did Hiva Oa pretty well and are now on the way to an even smaller island called Au Pou. WaaPoo I am told is the correct pronunciation. It’s an easy overnight passage. Its 2:30 AM and we are about 3 hours out. Got a wind shift a minute ago and got a whiff of the island. Smells like grapefruit. Hoping for a little larger anchorage. Hiva Oa was pretty tight. The island population is around 1000 people and they are reportedly very friendly to cruisers.

Got some hot wifi in the anchorage. Expensive but fast. First time we have had wifi on the boat in months.

All for now.

Peace

M