Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia

We have reached our island stop that is furthest from Tahiti — Nuku Hiva. That's our ship in the bay below.

We're in the Marquesas Islands, one of the most remote island groups in the world. They're about 1400 kilometres northeast of Tahiti and almost 5000 kilometres southwest of Mexico, the nearest continental land mass. It takes 3 hours to fly from Nuku Hiva to Tahiti.

Nuku Hiva is the biggest island in the Marquesas — and the second biggest in French Polynesia, after Tahiti. It's about 330 square kilometres (about the same size as Malta) and has a population of around 2500, many of whom are descendants of the original Polynesian settlers.

The Marquesas are volcanic islands formed by an active geological area called the Marquesas hotspot. Unlike the other islands we're visiting, Nuku Hiva does not have an encircling coral reef, because it's younger than other islands (only 20 to 40 million years old).

Polynesian people have been living here for thousands of years but the name Los Marquesas comes from a Spanish navigator in 1595 to honour the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, who was a Marquis. Captain James Cook popped in to the Marquesas in 1774, and European trade blossomed. For the Europeans, that is. Trading ships loading sandalwood and whaling ships brought epidemics that killed nine out of ten Polynesians.

I admired this canoeist who rode the wake of our tender boat. It's not hard to picture a group of warrior canoeists (less friendly, probably) sighting boats of colonial voyagers a few centuries ago.

We started off in the capital, Taiohae. It nestles in one of the deep bays. Flamboyants / flame trees (poincianas) are in full bloom all over the island.

Nuku Hiva is far drier than the humid Society Islands (Tahiti etc.) as it's close to the (atmospherically) dry Humboldt Current. Some islands in the Marquesas have so little water that they are not habitable by people. We are visiting in the dry season, and there's not been much rain so the hills look far less lush than down south.

The large tiki on the outcrop is noticeable from the water. So we walked up the hill to investigate, passing a number of other tikis ... and chickens, of course.

The central tiki is this gigantic modern statue of a conjoined woman and a man. Which reminds me: Polynesians are very relaxed about gender status — one guide mentioned that there were three sexes in Polynesia.

Then a longer walk, a paddle on the closest beach, and a browse around the handicrafts display. I bought a small painting on a strip of banyan tree bark — hope it's intact when we get home. (And allowed through Australian customs.)

Our guide today is Anyiata, Anni for short. She's a native Nuku Hivan: primary school on the island, high school boarding in Tahiti (Nuku Hiva does not have high schools) and university study overseas. Anni majored in English so she studied at Newcastle University in the UK. Now she organises all the tourism activities in Nuku Hiva.

We did not travel in buses; instead, the locals provided transport to tourists. They lined up in their 4WD vehicles and tourists were divided into small groups, each group driven by a different local driver. It's called a 4WD caravan and I thoroughly approve.

Almost all the drivers were women. It was Sunday, and Anni said the men were out playing bocce. (I'll come back to bocce later.) Ken and I were with Anni herself. During the drive she asked us some questions about Australia's Aboriginal policies and we also had a discussion about NZ politics. Nuku Hiva may be remote, but the inhabitants are very connected to the broader Polynesian family.

Our first stop was the Notre Dame Catholic Cathedral, one of the nicest churches we've been to. The old church building with the Gothic spires that you can see behind Anni in the photo above was built in the 1800s; when a new bishop arrived in the Marquesas in the 1970s, he wanted a new cathedral that integrated both Catholic and Polynesian cultures. Local communities were involved in both the design and building of the cathedral, and the result is this beautifully simple, light-filled, authentic place.

The cathedral has six walls, each wall built by people from a particular island. (The Marquesas has six inhabited islands.) A red stone is placed at the base of each wall with the builder island's name; above it is an ancestral stone used to grind and cut food, and to hold the inks used for traditional tattoos.

The stations of the cross around the church have been carved by Marquesan artists from one enormous tree. It might be the only church in the world where baby Jesus is holding a breadfruit above a bouquet of shampoo ginger. Have a look at the large stone baptismal font. In its previous life, it was a sacred mirror for the chief's daughters. It was filled with water and the girls would admire their reflections. How's that for clever repurposing and reusing? And integrating?

We noticed plenty of horses wandering around ... well, not quite wandering but tethered to spots on the side of the road where there was green grass. The horses belong to individual owners and are used for transport (both people and goods). When the men go out hunting wild pigs, the horses take them into the bush. The dogs find the pigs, the men kill the pigs with knives, the horses carry the pig carcasses home. Simples. A local speciality is roast pork, cooked on hot rocks buried in the sand.

Some literary history. Most Westerners know about Nuku Hiva from the Western artists who wrote about it and painted it. Jack London (Call of the Wild, White Fang), Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island), Herman Melville (Moby Dick) and (dare I mention him) Paul Gauguin all spent time in Nuku Hiva.

Of course, Herman Melville wrote many other books, not only Moby Dick. His first book and the most popular one in his lifetime was Typee in 1846. Melville deserted his whaling ship when it called at Nuku Hiva, was captured by the locals and spent a month in the Taipivai Valley (hence 'Typee'). He wrote a rather lavishly embroidered account of his time there, but in fact he was lucky to escape being eaten. Before the introduction of goats and cows, the odd human morsel was not unknown.

Most Americans on our tour appeared more impressed that one season of Survivor was filmed here than by Melville’s exploits — which just goes to show the depths to which US culture has plummeted.

Jack London set out on a voyage to French Polynesia in 1907 on the wonderfully named boat Snark that he designed himself. It was a dreadful boat but that is another story. What I found fascinating were the photos that he took in French Polynesia in the early 1900s, like this one in Nuku Hiva.

https://norcalpublicmedia.org/20110209798/north-bay-report/jack-london-photographer

Gauguin and (who knew?) Jacques Brel are buried on another one of the Marquesas Islands, Hiva Oa. There's also a Gauguin museum in Hiva Oa, but nowhere else in French Polynesia, for reasons we have already explored.

We're visiting the Taipivai Valley today, where one of the villages on the island is located. You can see the coconut plantations behind the building below. The Marquesas produce 80% of coconuts in French Polynesia. They ship copra to Tahiti, where it's used to make coconut oil.

A lot of citrus is grown: lime, lemon, oranges, grapefruit. We were offered different fruit — mango, banana, starfruit, papaya, coconut — as well as breadfruit crisps and the best grapefruit I've ever eaten. And I am a grapefruit fan, so I eat a lot of it.

Breadfruit keeps everyone alive in tough times, during periods when there's no rain. Anni described how people pound the ripe breadfruit into a paste, wrap it in banana leaves and store it in a stone silo. The breadfruit paste ferments and can be eaten for up to 6 months. It may not be peak gastronomy, but it keeps people alive. (Do you recall why Captain William Bligh came to Tahiti in HMS Bounty? For breadfruit plants, which he introduced to the Caribbean. So many lovely historical threads.)

In another village, Hatiheu, we watched the local people playing a fiercely competitive game of bocce. It carries on all weekend, apparently. Anni told us that there is great rivalry within and between islands, culminating in an annual inter-island bocce tournament in Tahiti each year.

Many tourists come to Nuku Hiva for its hiking trails that wind through the hills (rather them than me). There's also a prison on Nuku Hiva that is the smallest prison in France! It's an open prison with the minimum of supervision; if you don't behave yourself, you get sent back to prison in Tahiti. No, we didn't see the prison but I thought this was an interesting snippet. Another interesting fact (and one that Anni was proud to share) is that in 2024, the Marquesas Islands were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (called 'The Land of Men'), as part of the world effort to protect indigenous populations.

We did see many stunning views from various lookout points. It's a picturesque place, whether you're seeing it from the water or from the land. But much is hidden in those ancient valleys. I felt there was a lot more to discover on Nuku Hiva, that it would repay more time spent there. Perhaps there'll always be stuff that is opaque and undiscoverable by tourists, and that's as it should be.

Next stop: Rangiroa

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