Hiva Oa and Tahuata

Author: Pete

Location: 07°54.559S’ 79°18.846W’

Date: April 22 – 27

Well we spent our first couple days ashore hucking around Hiva Oa. There was the obligatory formalities to attend to. Our agent Sandra and the Pacific Puddle Jump made paying the customary French Polynesian bond for our flights home happily unnecessary. It was pretty painless actually, coming from Panama and Galapagos, filing income taxes in China with instructions written in Swedish look easy. We celebrated our happy crossing with pizzas out at a great wood-fired pizza place along our walk home to the harbor.

The island is stunning. Most notably it’s tall and lush with a sharp spine and incisor-like teeth biting into the sky. Most of the day there is a cloud cap that sits just on top of the main peak towering over little Hiva Oa. The town is cute and sleepy, completely closed from noon to 2PM. They sell pan au chocolat and baguettes in the stores, tropical fruit hangs along the side of the roads from laden trees. It is, quite simply, paradise. Days are hot and sunny, but it cools off enough at night. The Hiva Oa harbor is a little choppy. Boats are anchored bow and stern in good holding at 6-8 meters with 1 meter of tide. The main negative is the green soupy water, churned up from the rain runoff of the squally days prior to our arrival.

We spend a few days reconnecting with the world in the Salon de The, which also made great crepes, and did tattoos! All of the locals are tattooed in the traditional style. I felt naked and white walking the streets without any ink. Miranda and Felix fit in fine. The Marquesians were so friendly and welcoming. We only walked the 2 miles from town to harbor once in the several days of provisioning, water runs, bureaucratic fun, and internet obligations. Stocked up on bananas, rambutan, pomelo, and mangos!

Our last day in Hiva Oa we rented a tee-ruck and checked out the north side of the island, a eye-popping, perilous drive along dirt switchback roads over the razorback mountain spine of the green island. I haven’t driven in months! Just like Panama, a trial by fire. We explored a tiki site with carved statues of warrior gods on ceremonial sites where the Marquesians used to sacrifice and eat ‘long-pig’… vanquished people. The site, at the foot of the high peaks, all set about with ancient trees, made for a apt location to make offerings to the gods. Let’s stick with goats and shells though, hey?

On the 26th, after getting our four day fill of civilization, we set sail again, this time for closer horizons. Just south of Hiva Oa is Tahuata, a less populated (does it get less populated that 3000 inhabitants in the middle of the Pacific?) green saw blade with several leeward anchorages. Sailed right past the first big bay with twelve boats all crammed in, swinging on their anchors (suckers!) and in the very next, slightly smaller bay, with its own white sand beach, found ourselves alone!

We put ourselves in the water immediately with snorkels, masks, and spearguns, and didn’t get our for three days. Incredible clear water, deep, sandy anchorage to ourselves, and fantastic snorkeling. Also saw three manta rays. They’re out in the deep, so we went out one day, jumped in off the dinghy and there they were! We floated around, our curiosity of these ten foot oddballs outweighing the nagging voice in our heads that we couldn’t see the bottom in water infested with, according to the guide books, “enormous sharks.” Bah.

Spent most of our waking hours in the water. The underwater topography drops off as sharply as the wicked slopes ashore, making for more nooks and crannies than an English muffin for fish to hide in. There were myriad tropical fish in blinding colors. Speared a humpback snapper and a peacock grouper and turned them into some dynamite fish tacos!