Category Archives: French Polynesia

Anaho Bay

Posted on by
4

Monday, May 28, 2007 – Anaho Bay is truly amazing. It is a glimpse at what all the Marquesas were probably like 30 years ago. It’s probably what all the islands were like 100 years ago. It may be the last genuinely unspoiled town left on earth. We wish we could send a photo because words cannot even begin to describe it, but we’ll try to paint the picture with words.

Anaho resembles Taiohae in that high mountains thick with foliage plunge straight into the water with little shoreline. The bay itself looks like it is out of a picture book, with it’s beautiful horseshoe curve and blue water. In some small spots near the shoreline the water is a spectacular blue-green. The land along the water is odd there are a few small isolated spots of white sandy beach, but it is mostly a narrow beach that immediately becomes thick, dense foliage. Continue reading →

A Peek at Marquesan Culture

Posted on by
1

May 27, 2007 On Sunday morning we decided to go to church. The tourist guides all said that Polynesians are deeply religious people and everyone goes to church. Dean Richard, our guide, said that was true in his grandparent’s day, but nowadays it was socially acceptable to not attend church. The tourist guides all said the singing was amazing and worth a visit on a Sunday morning.

The Catholic Cathedral we had visited the night before had very high wooden ceilings, rock walls, and lots of statues and crucifixes. The church could have held at least a couple hundred people and there were maybe 40 at the Saturday night service. Everyone sat attentively. The service was in Marquesan. The singing was really beautiful, as promised. The priest and alter boy were dressed in white robes. Since we wandered in out and while the service was going on, we had no contact with the church goers. Continue reading →

Traditional Marquesan Feast

Posted on by
3

Saturday, May 26, 2007 – Today is the last time we will be able to send pictures for a few weeks. Currently, we are in “civilization” where there is an internet café’ (it is a slow and somewhat inconsistent connection, but it is something). Tomorrow we will be heading out to go island hopping. It is extremely unlikely that we will find an internet café on any island between here and Tahiti. So, back to text only updates. Continue reading →

Nuka Hiva Guided Excursion

Posted on by
5

May 25, 2007 We want to begin with a correction to a previous blog post. The statues in the park along the water were carved in 1989 for a festival celebrating the Marquesan culture. We guess the park already existed and they permanently put the statues at the park location. The 2000 year old statues are mentioned below.

On Friday, we got up early and went into shore. We went back to the gas station to take care of the fuel tax exemption paperwork and pay. Then we took a guided tour of Nuka Hiva in a 4×4 with a local tour guide, Dean Richard that speaks excellent English.

They only began putting roads on the islands in 1981. Parts of the island are still only accessible by boat. The roads that exist are mostly dirt. They are actively working on making new roads and paving the existing ones. We have seen work crews doing both. We were glad to be chauffeured because we would have not been too comfortable driving those steep, muddy mountain roads. Continue reading →

Special Blend and Getting Fuel

Posted on by
4

May 23 to May 24, 2007 – Wednesday was a really mellow day. We had gotten in from dinner late on Tuesday, so on Wednesday we slept late. We spent most of the day tiding and doing some laundry. Tidying is another one of those chores that sounds easy enough, but is laborious on a boat. Putting things back often means pulling everything out of a storage area and repacking it all back in because it needs to be packed in a certain order. As we use up things, spaces open up that need to be repacked so things don’t move around within the storage space. We often need to shuffle things from one storage area to another, causing both areas have to be completely pulled out and repacked.

Around 09:30, “Special Blend”, another Nordhavn 43, pulled in and
anchored (translation: parked) near us. They came from Florida, through the Panama Canal, and departed for the Marquesas from the Galapagos. Eric took the dinghy over to visit them, and also went and introduced himself to some people on another nearby power boat. Special Blend is in the foreground and Kosmos is in the background and another one with Kosmos on the left: Continue reading →