We had seen a lot of Hiva Oa and decided to do a slow last day here. Viktor played some saxophone in the morning:

There are passion fruit plants all along the staircase here. They fall down when they are ripe, and Tania told us we could just help ourselves. We were not difficult to ask. Here is the morning´s catch:

We drove into town, visited an art sales outlet and went back up again.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3pm. At around 1pm, as we were starting to pack, I got the brilliant idea of checking on the net if the flight schedule had been changed. We have seen so many other flight changes in South America and in the Pacific, so I was a bit anxious when I logged on. On the Air Tahiti page there was a link to updates on today´s flights. Our flight was marked “schedule changed!” It had been moved to 2:30pm. Great, and we had at least half an hour of packing ahead of us. We reluctantly changed gears from “Don´t worry, be happy” to “WORRY!” and packed like crazy.

On our way to the airport we remembered we had forgotten to fill up the tank of the car. There is one gas station on the island and we were far from it. Bummer.

At the airport the guy from the car rental was not there as we had agreed. Luckily Tania was at the airport, sitting in her car.

She had just sent her son off to school in Tahiti. They have special flights for the students and the student flight had just taken off. We had rented the car on her advice, and she picked up the phone and called the guy. We agreed on a compensation for the missing gas and we could just leave the car at the airport and the keys and the money with Tania. No explanation given. Things are a bit more relaxed here than we are used to.

We hurried over to check-in where there was a relaxed “Don´t worry, be happy” atmosphere. No one had heard anything about a flight change and they intended to send the flight off at 3pm as scheduled. Oh well.

We were transported yet again by an ATR-72:

We once again passed over the Tuamotu atolls and got some nice views of several of them:

With the help of a moving airplane and post-processing with image stitching software I managed to create a photo of a complete atoll (right click and “View Image” to see a larger version):

We were starting to feel at home at the airport motel in Papeete as we checked in for the third time. This time we got a room closer to the wifi boxes and could actually log on from our room and didn´t have to sit in the staircase all night.

We went back to the same Chinese restaurant as last time and had a great meal. We were immediately recognized and given royal treatment as returning guests.

The kids loved the Chinese round movable serving tray on the table and didn´t stop sending each other things using it.

Tomorrow we leave French Polynesia and head for the Cook Islands.

Eirik

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Our goal for the day was Hanatekuua, a bay and a beach on the northern side of the island. The only way to get there is by doing a 2-hour hike through beautiful and hilly terrain.

We started the day slowly and ate a large and nutritional breakfast on our balcony to stock up on calories

We drove over to the north side of the island to a village called Hanaiapa and parked the car. We saw on the map that we could do a short-cut if we walked through a private garden. Obviously we were not the only ones who had seen this. At the entrance to the garden the owners had put up this sign:

“Non-catholic dog. Do not enter!” Message received. We took the way around, with a smile on our face.

Our surroundings were beautiful. Here are a couple of photos from our starting point, Hanaiapa Bay:

We started climbing:

and passed this sign:

“Hanatekuua is one of the last preserved valleys on the island. Please respect it and keep the beach and the path clean.”

It was a hot day. We were well infused with sunscreen and had brought 7 liters (a bit under 2 gallons) of water, which would turn out to be just enough:

That´s 89.2 F for you North Americans. As you can see from the time, we picked the coolest part of the day to walk, not. Luckily it was partly cloudy and most of the time the clouds insulated us from the worst sunheat.

We walked along the side of a hill, more or less following the coastline:

This strange rock seemed to be the only one of its kind here. It had cracks like this on all sides. We were very curious about its origins:

We passed many beautiful trees:

After about an hour and a half we got the first view of the bay:

and then the beach:

We worked our way down to the valley and the beach:

There were a few houses behind the beach. What a remote place to live. There was a beach dog:

It was great to cool off, despite Helene´s skeptical look.

After about two super hours on the beach and a well-earned lunch we headed back. Iseline was not in the mood for walking and needed some motivation. Controlling robot-mom with two sticks did the trick:

Tired, but happy, wanderers:

The low sun made the landscape look different:

We got a nice view of Hanaiapa bay as we arrived:

We reached the bed & breakfast just before the sun went down. It had been a great day. The landscape here is truly stunning and, just like at the grand canyon, walking through it gave us a much better impression of its beauty.

Tomorrow we will head back to Papeete.

Eirik

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Au petit déjeuner, nous avons dégusté des mangues fraiches et cueillies par nous même, ce qui est exotique quand on habite en Norvège…

Ensuite nous sommes allés au village pour visiter le centre Paul Gauguin et Jacques Brel, avant sa fermeture à onze heures. Le temps était radieux, on voyait même des sommets de l’île qui sont souvent dans les nuages.

Malheureusement, on a trouvé porte close. La dame de l’accueil était partie à l’aéroport. Après une heure d’attente dehors, elle est finalement arrivée, et a ouvert le musée comme si de rien était. Eh oui, on est en Polynésie, ne nous énervons pas…

Une fois à l’intérieur, on était immédiatement dans l’ambiance Gauguin:

Le centre ne comporte malheureusement aucune oeuvre originale, seulement des copies digitales ou effectuées par des artistes locaux.

Gauguin, incompris et tourmenté, partit pour Tahiti en 1890 pour cultiver son art dans son état primitif et sauvage. Sans argent et malade, il s’installa à la fin de sa vie à Hiva Oa aux Marquises, où il prit la défense des habitants contre l’administration coloniale et la toute puissante église catholique. Il produisit pendant cette période l’un de ses plus beaux nus, Contes barbares (1902). Il mourut en 1903.

Autoportrait au Christ jaune:

“Je voulais à cette époque tout oser, libérer en quelque sorte la nouvelle génération puis travailler pour acquérir un peu de talent. La première partie de mon programme a porté ses fruits, aujourd’hui vous pouvez tout oser, et qui plus est personne ne s’en étonne.” Paul Gauguin.

A l’extérieur, se trouve une réplique de la maison de Gauguin, “la maison du Jouir”.

Au fond du jardin, après avoir passé un portillon, on trouve un hangar d’avion qui abrite le centre Jacques Brel. Pour échapper à la pression des médias, il embarqua avec sa compagne guadeloupéenne, Madly, sur leur voilier Askoy, pour faire le tour du monde. En 1975, ils arrivèrent à Atuona, et séduits par sa tranquilité, s’y installèrent. Ils s’engagèrent dans la vie du village et étaient très appréciés par les habitants. Jacques Brel étant un pilote habile, sa compagne lui offrit un avion Beechcraft avec lequel il voyageait entre les iles, transportant les habitants chez le docteur, rapportant des livres, équipant le village de son premier cinéma et d’un court de tennis. Au centre du hangar est placé son avion, Jojo, qui après avoir été racheté plusieurs fois et finalement abandonné dans un coin de l’aéroport de Tahiti, a été récupéré et rénové .

Les chansons de Brel résonnent dans le hangar.

Dans sa chanson “Mourir pour mourir” de 1969, il disait: Mourir pour mourir, que ce soit d’ivresse, le coeur appuyé sur les amis de toujours”. Il mourut d’un cancer en 1978 à l’âge de 48 ans.

Nous terminons cette visite par cette citation, qui nous tirera du lit lorsque la paresse prendra le dessus:

Pour terminer ce pélerinage, un petit tour au cimetière du calvaire pour voir les tombes de Gauguin et Brel, toutes deux très modestes et touchantes.

Le cimetière se trouvant sur une hauteur, on peut apprécier une belle vue d’Atuona:

On est repassés à la pension pour un déjeuner rapide, et Eirik en a profité pour goûter au “rakfisk” local, du thon fermenté accomodé de lait de coco et fruit de l’arbre à pain. Des amateurs?

Ensuite, destination Puamau, à l’est de l’île. Sur la route de l’aéroport, on s’est arrêtés pour admirer la vue sur la pension Kanahau, ou on habite, dominant la baie Tahauku.

On s’est aussi arrêtés au “tiki souriant”:

Le chemin descend de la route principale et devient un sentier dans la jungle. Les manguiers poussent de partout ici, et il règne une forte odeur de mangues. En Norvège on peut marcher dans les myrtilles, ici les mangues…

Et tout d’un coup, dans une petite clairière, voici le “tiki souriant”:

Avouez qu’il a une tête bien sympathique. Il a l’air d’aimer la bonne chaire, comme nous, en se tenant la bedaine…

Iseline trouve qu’il ressemble beaucoup aux Barbapapas…

On a repris la route qui monte vers les hauteurs. La vue devenait impréssionante, la jungle couvrant absolument toute la surface inhabitée de l’île.

Les enfants adorent le pick-up, même s’ils n’ont pas le droit de s’asseoir dans la benne quand on roule…

La route était de plus en plus aérienne, il fallait bien se tenir!

Le versant nord de l’ïle est très sec, le paysage totallement différent. La route dessert des villages très isolés, on se sent vraiment au bout du monde.

Arrivés enfin au village de Puamau, on a trouvé, au bout d’une route dans la jungle, le site archéologique d’Iipona.

C’est l’un des sites archéologiques les mieux préservés de la Polynésie Francaise, contenant 5 tikis monumentaux. Connu des ethnologues et archéologues depuis les années 1800, il a été considérablement restauré par les archéologues francais Pierre et Marie-Noëlle Garanger-Ottino en 1991.

Le Tiki Maki Taua Pepe représente une femme couchée sur le ventre. Les experts pensent qu’il s’agit d’une femme en train d’accoucher. On était plutôt enclins à penser qu’il représente une grenouille…

Et voici le tiki Takaii, le plus grand tiki de Polynésie Francaise avec ses 2,67 m, portant le nom d’un chef guerrier renommé pour sa grande force.

On est rentrés avant la nuit car la route était en très mauvais état. Vive le 4×4!

Dans notre bungalow avec kitchenette, on a apprécié de pouvoir faire le repas. Après bientôt 4 mois de voyage, on se lasse un peu de restaus… Eirik, un peu fatigué par une journée bien remplie, a essayé de traverser la porte-fenêtre et laissé l’empreinte de son visage.

Mais après une bonne nuit, ca va repartir. Demain une belle marche nous attend.

After a night of blog updating it was time to get up early again. We had an 06:00 flight to Hiva Oa to catch.

It was still dark outside when we crossed the street over to the airport at 04:58am

For those of you who have placed bets that I will have my new Swiss Army knife confiscated by security before we get to Norway, you were very close to winning yesterday and today. Yesterday I totally forgot to remove it from my pocket when we left Tikehau. Luckily for me there is no security control in Tikehau and I had the knife in my pocket all the way to Tahiti.

Today Helene asked me if I had the knife just as we were about to check in. Wheh! Saved in the nick of time:

Another ATR-72 would bring us up to the Marquesas Islands.

The flight magazine had a very instructive route map for Air Tahiti where they have superimposed the islands of French Polynesia on a map of Europe with Papeete just over Paris:

Distances are huge here. Today we would fly from Paris to Stockholm. Pukapuka in the Tuamotus is in Poland. Mangareva (from which Easter Island probably was populated) in the Gambier Islands is in Turkey and Rimatara in the Austral Islands is in Spain.

Our flight went via Nuku Hiva, the largest island in the Marquesas group. On our 3 hour flight there we passed over the Tuamotus and saw several of the atolls on our way. These wonders of nature look completely artificial from the air:

With the help of image stitching software I managed to double the size of the airplane window:

After an hour and a half of waiting in Nuku Hiva

we could finally head for Hiva Oa and the Jaques Brel airport

where our hostess, Tania, was waiting for us with the traditional Polynesian welcoming flower necklaces

We had to adjust our watches. As I have mentioned previously the French have done their time zone calculations much better than the Chileans on Easter Island. However, I did not realize just how a**l they are about getting solar time and watch time in synch. The Marquesas islands are half an hour before Tahiti time. Yes, half an hour. Marquesas time is GMT -9:30 Cool! This is the first time in my life that i am in a time-zone which is not a whole number of hours offset from GMT.

Less cool is the fact that Apple has forgotten about Marquesas time, and since Apple always knows what´s best for you, there is no way to manually set the time zone on your Macbook/iPhone/iPod/iPad. You can only choose from Apple´s predefined list. Shame on you, Steve Jobs.

In ancient Polynesian times the Marquesas were distinctly separate from the Society Islands (which Tahiti is part of). They still speak a different language here (several dialects, actually) and the word for foreigner in Marquesan Polynesian includes people from Tahiti and the other Society Islands.

In other trivia, Hawaii was populated from the Marquesas Islands some time between AD 300 and 500.

The Marquesas Islands themselves were populated around AD 100 from the Tonga and Samoa region. These islands were the homes to an estimated 100 000 Polynesians when the Spanish first reached them in 1595. Like on Easter Island a population decline of unimaginable proportions took place here. Unlike on Easter Island the decline came after major western involvement and much later than on Easter Island.

In 1790 the population was still around 100 000, but then westerners started arriving in large numbers. In as little as 60 years an advanced 2000 year old culture was disintegrated. Epidemic after epidemic swept the islands, slave traders kidnapped people and tribes at war were given access to firearms. Later, to finish off the wiping out of the culture, the French colonial masters outlawed all traditional cultural activities: tattooing, singing, dancing, artwork and any other activities related to their “heathen” religion.

At the beginning of the 20th century there were only 2000 Marquesans left. Another dark spot on the conscience of western society, another dark spot they didn´t teach us about in school.

Tania runs a small bed & breakfast on a hillside outside Atuona, the capital of Hiva Oa, together with her husband. We had booked one bungalow, but when we arrived Tania told us there were no other guests so she would let us use two for the price of one, with one for the kids and one for the adults. Good deal.

The bungalows were beautiful

The view was nothing to complain about.

We had rented a car, a pick-up, and took a first look around the island. This place is very different from both Tikehau and Tahiti. We are much closer to the equator now (9 degrees south, like Iquitos in the Amazon in Peru) and there is a lot of vegetation here. Hiva Oa is also a mountain island. There are valleys and peaks everywhere, the highest is at more than 1200 meters (3900 feet) altitude.

We followed the road through Atuoana and then further east. We got a nice view of Atuona from a hilltop:

We continued

and passed by a church

The road became very narrow

before we arrived at Te´a Oa, an archeological site with Polynesian ruins:

Mostly between AD 1400 and 1600 the Marquesans build many sacred places. Like on Easter Island these were meant to preserve the “mana” of powerful people. They were ceremonial sites, only people with very high mana were allowed access. Archeological evidence shows that humans were sacrificed in these places.

As i have explained previously “mana” is roughly equivalent to the force in Star Wars. Just like on Easter Islands statues were built that were meant to channel the mana of a deceased. These statues are called tikis.

The site was impressively large, but except for a single sign at the entrance there were no fences, signs, or other explanations of any kind.

If it hadn´t been for our Lonely Planet guide we would never have found the sole tiki at the site. We had to walk into the jungle for a couple of hundred meters to find it:

We had to admit the Easter Islanders outdid their Marquesan contemporaries in statue carving.

Half of the tiki´s face seems worn away from erosion. The style is typical of a Marquesan tiki. You can see what it must have looked like on this poster. It is the big one in the middle at the top.

When we came back Tania took us into Atuona to go mango picking. She explained that mangos are everywhere here and that the locals do not eat them. She knew that most tourists loved them, though. Tania seemed to know everyone in Atuona and said “hi” in all directions. She had an agreement with the local police that she could come pick mangos off a tree on their property.

Tomorrow we will discover more of the island and both the French and Polynesian history that goes with it.

Eirik

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