“When you see the Southern Cross for the first time,
You understand now why you came this way.
‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small.
But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day.”~Stephen Stills, Richard Curtis, & Michael Curtis
I cannot think of the Marquesas without remembering Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s song of escape to the South Seas to forget about lost love…or to find it. It seemed like such a distant, unknown, and faraway place. And, in fact, with little to do here but play in the water, relax at the beach, or explore the lush landscape, it is remote, romantic and primal.
We arrived at Nuku Hiva and set anchor in Taiohae Bay on a humid day with a soft drizzle from the clouds hanging on the jagged mountaintops that encircled the beach. The largest of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, Herman Melville summed it up as a “country that no description could fit the beauty.” In more contemporary times, Nuku Hiva was the site for “Survivor: Marquesas”, the fourth installment of the popular CBS reality television show.
I donned my rain jacket and backpack and headed past the pier-side handicraft market to the small town of Taiohae stretching down the sandy road along the beach. Local boys rode their horses in the surf, raced kayaks, and children played in the schoolyard.
I passed a sculpture garden with primitive, tribal, and some very graphic stone carvings, the oceanside local cemetery, a tiny historical museum located behind a small inn, and the remains of the 19th century “Notre Dame Cathedral”, built in the spirit of the French original. It was rebuilt in 1977 and included ironwood carvings of biblical stories, clearly influenced by the island culture with breadfruit in place of olive trees and native spears substituted for biblical swords.
I can imagine that this place has changed little since Melville deserted his ship to live here for a short time, and Robert Louis Stevenson made landfall on his voyage on the Casco in 1888. As the drizzle turned to rain, I hurried back to the tender pier where the locals performed onboard the ship an elaborate and colorful native dance for us as a farewell, and I was left to ponder what I had seen for the first time.
One of your best posts!
Another awesome post. What a wonderful place.