We have a car organised for today so that we can do some exploring. Although it is waiting for us from 8.30 am we do not end up getting ashore until two hours later as we are waiting for a supply of water cans to be loaned to us by another boat so that we can fill up with water – Mike isn’t hopeful about repairing it tomorrow.
We strike lucky with the car, getting a much bigger one with air conditioning than we have paid for as they didn’t have a smaller one. First we head off into Atuona to go to the ATM but find it isn’t working. We queue for ages for the one and only cashier, and as we begin to get near the front of the queue, he calls out to us that if we just want money on our cards there is another ATM at the post office. How did he know we were tourists??? Anyway, we thank him and find the other one which thankfully is working and we get on our way. We have a long drive ahead of us along the mountain trail to Puamau.
We head off up into the interior of the island and very quickly find out why nearly every car here is a 4X4. The road climbs very steeply and we soon find ourselves on a ridge with spectacular views'.
The vegetation is lush and green with vertical peaks that rise suddenly out of nowhere. There are palm trees, banana trees, beautiful flowering trees (I don’t know what they are but they are vibrant with colour: reds, oranges, yellows and white). The road is surprisingly good too for the first part, then abruptly it changes and is a shingle strewn unpaved road, and only looks one car wide in lots of places. Then suddenly it all changes. We round a corner and are suddenly faced with a landscape that is all rocks and sheer cliffs (and sheer drops with not a barrier in sight but lots of rock falls). Again we appreciate the 4x4!
Photos: Barren views of Hiva Oa
It really is an amazing place. One minute lush, the next minute barren then a beautiful beach opens up in front of you round the next hairpin bend – and boy do I mean hairpin! I am terrified that we will meet another car on one of these bends but amazingly we don’t.
The beaches are all black sand on this island, and large granite-like pebbles, but they still have waving palm trees on them. We apparently drive through villages called Hanaiapa, Hananpaaoa and Nahoe but they have no signs so it’s difficult to work out where we are. The map is half a side of A4 for the whole island!) but somehow, eventually, we arrive at our destination (well we go past the village initially, only realising our mistake when the road ends in someone’s garden!).
We have been recommended to have lunch with Antoinette, a lovely lady as it turns out, who, if she knows you are coming, cooks you a special Marquesian meal and you eat it in a shed in her garden. That’s how it was described to us anyway, but it turns out that her pretty little shed can cater for about 20 people. At 2200 CPF a head (about £18), and she is full today, not a bad little earner
She beams all the time as she brings out bowl after bowl of freshly cooked dishes, seven in all, and fruit juice. There’s wild pig stew (very tasty), goat cooked with vegetables (even better), rice, raw fish done in citrus (couldn’t cope with this one), a strange brown stuff that was gloopy and cooked in coconut milk (very strange consistency and I couldn’t understand whether this was to go with the mains or whether it was a pudding), fried breadfruit crisps (yummy) and some rather odd, squishy wet breads that were banana and apricot – I think. There was piles of it. Thankfully, the Swiss crew from Ariane, another WARC boat arrived at the same time as us and sat behind us – we gave what we left to them. They turned down the fish too.
We were full when we left, very full. We are given directions to one of the most important Marquesian archaeological sites – the Me’ae of Lipona – where the biggest ‘tiki’ are found. This site is an ancient holy site where worship and sacrifices were performed. The statues are huge and some of the biggest found, over 2.5 metres tall. Apparently, originally, they had willies to match the size of the statues but the missionaries who arrived to reform the islanders, had them all hacked off. Ouch!
The way back is just as hairy and again we are grateful not to meet more than a few cars. Our last stop is the cemetery back at Atuona, to see the graves of Paul Gauguin (artist) and Jacques Brel (singer), both of whom lived and died on the island
We stop for some shopping on the way back to the boat and spend about £50 on nothing. In one supermarket, the two tins of coconut milk and two (small) loaves of bread cost £8. A five litre bottle of water costs about £3.50 here. Madness. At least I’ll lose weight here – I can’t afford to eat!
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