Nuku Hiva: Day 3 - Exploration

Thursday, May 2, 2013

We set off for our island adventure at 8am this morning. Our guide was a local Marquesan named Richard (his French name) and took us up into the mountains. We were a little nervous because we heard about a German tourist couple who were taken up into the mountains by a local guide and ended up being eaten.

Here is Taiohae Bay (where we are anchored) from above.

The inlet to our right in the following pictures is the beach that one of the tribes from Survivor Marquesas was located. They were given boundaries so that they couldn't discover the road just above them.

Kind of funny that the inlet to the left leads to the Taipivai Valley, where there is fresh water and a village complete with a market within walking distance of the survivor tribe.

The left inlet, you can see some houses at the mouth of the river.

And here is the Taipivai Valley and it's village from above.

We then headed down into the Taipivai Valley. He took us to a little shop where the guy makes jewelry and wood carvings. I tried to convince myself that I needed a goat skull, but I couldn't find reason.

Here is a breadfruit tree.

He then took us to the church in the valley. Christianity is the dominant religion on Nuku Hiva, ever since we invaded them and forced our religion on them at gunpoint.

Here is the river that runs through the Taipivai Valley. It supposedly had enough force to run hydro power off it. We were also told it contains huge eels. I opted not to swim in it.

We were taken to another little craft market where they sold mostly jewelry.

Richard tried his hands at making some jewelry, but failed miserably.

We were given some breadfruit by one of Richards friend who picked them right off the tree for us. The old 'hit it with a stick and catch' method. Thee oddly don't look like the breadfruit on the tree that I took a picture of, but we're going to eat them anyway.

We were then taken to Baie Hatihau, I think. All the bays sound alike and I can't remember what he said. Regardless, it was on the North-Eastern side of the island. It had some huge volcano rock spires that s hot up to the sky. A hundred years ago, some people climbed up the one spire and erected a statue of Virgin Mary atop. It was still standing there today.

We stopped at our first archeological site and got to see the mother of all Banyan trees.

Here were some Polynesian-style trail markings. It is the symbol of life and shows a male entering a female. It is interesting to see the similarities between the Animal and plant kingdoms. Some of the fruit bearing trees have male and female versions where the female tree bears the fruit and the male version only produces flowers. They don't want to wait until the tree is fully grown to determine if it is a fruit-bearing female, or a useless male tree, so they would pull up the plant in its early stages of life and look at its roots. The male pants have roots that grow straight down and the female's curve outward as in the symbol of life.

This petroglyph shows a fish, a turtle and a bird.

This one has villagers dancing after a great catch by their fisherman (whether a large amount of fish, or possibly a whale).

The guide let me climb up a papaya tree and pick one off to take back to the boat.

This archeological site was used for celebrations. The ground-level would have dancers and drummers and whatnot, while the raised areas would sit villagers of higher rank in society. The moe elevated an area, the higher their societal rank.

This is a bone pit. When someone died, whether friendly or foe, they would put all their bones in these pits (except for the skulls which were shoved in the base of the banyan trees). They had no metal ore of any kind on the island, so bones were a really important material used for tools and weapons (among other things).

Here is a Noni fruit, which has become one of those American-fad fruits that you find in weight loss products and 'anti-oxidant' drinks.

A beautiful Polynesian hibiscus flower.

Here are some coconuts being dried to make copra (used for coconut oils).

Another church.

We had lunch at a little tiki restaurant beside the beach.

I had the goat curry, with breadfruit, rice and some tapioca-like root food which I cannot remember the name of.

We stopped by the museum and got to see some of the old tribal weapons,

How they made fish hooks out of coral,

And details on their tattooing procedures. Tattooing was a huge part of their culture and involved a really gruesome method as they did not have needles obviously.

Here is the beach right outside the restaurant and museum. You can see the huge spires in the background. The far-left one has the Virgin Mary statue on it.

We then went to another archeological site that had some wild horses hanging about.

This one is not dead. He is sleeping.

This is a European-style grave site, which was very uncommon back then.

This area is where they made human and animal sacrifices. They would sacrifice both enemies, and the local villagers who would be chosen based on how few tattoos they had.

Here is the platform that held the sacrifices.

And this is what you would see if you were being sacrificed (except it would be full of people cheering).

This statue shows a couple being we'd.

And this one shows a child being sacrificed. I guess the 'fewest tattoos gets sacrificed' rule is pretty unfair to children and newborns.

And finally, here is the last little beach on our tour. The sand is very dark on most of the island because Nuku Hiva is a volcanic island and mixed in the sand is a lot of black volcanic rock.

It'd be wonderful to pull up here in your sailboat, drop anchor and spend a week or two taking in the beauty that is Nuku Hiva.