After a year of struggling in Spanish, swapping
to speak in French is not easy. Si Oui
is the result and even after 3 months here in French Polynesia gracias and por
favours drop in from nowhere. Despite
French being my strongest language I’m still as rusty as hell. Mostly down to the circles we’ve been moving
in. First there was Florent our French crew
from the crossing who did all the talking with the locals, then we kept meeting
people who were French or fluent and again they did all the talking. But now most people have moved on so finally
my French is getting the work out it needs.
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| Taiohae Bay |
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| Guts thrown to the sharks right at the dinghy dock - don't fall in |
Meanwhile we have realised that the
local Marquesan people, although living in a French Overseas Territory, don’t
have much time for their European compatriots, so we’ve tried to learn some
Marquesan. They have only 9 consonants
and heaps of vowels. So where we are at
the moment Taiohae is pronounced Ta ee o ha ay.
We’ve also just found out that na na which means goodbye is actually
Tahitian and we should be saying Ap pai which is Marquesan. We have persevered for 3 months and have a
vocabulary of about ten words/phrases. Now
we are heading for the next group of islands (Tuamotu archipelago) and no doubt
there will be a whole new set of words.
Mark has finally found his niche – his Marquesan is much better than
mine. Clearly his Pacific roots are
showing.
Cruisers on our travels have
consistently said don’t rush through the Marquesas. We were considering our options when Mark
said over breakfast one morning ‘Let’s stay another year’. So we have.
We’ve just spent 5 weeks in Anaho bay on the north of Nuka Hiva. It’s a huge bay fairly well protected from
the ocean which is unusual here in the middle of the Pacific. There were never more than half a dozen boats
there and often only 2 or 3. The nearest
village is a 2 hour walk over a steep hill but there is a farm in the bay where
we could get some vegetables and they kindly brought some eggs back for us when
they took their produce to market on horseback.
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| Walk to the farm in nono territory |
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| Egg delivery |
The bay was home to some huge manta rays
and worryingly some largish sharks but that didn’t stop us snorkelling on the reef. The locals would hunt octopus on the reef at
low tide which were then thrashed to tenderise before becoming a delicious
coconut stew. We did the 2 hour trek to
the village 3 times. Once when the local
restaurant had prepared a Marquesan oven which is a bed of coals in the sand, the
meal is placed on top and covered with more sand and left to cook for
hours. The day we were there they had 3 whole
piglets in the oven.
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| Marquesan Oven |
July in the Marquesas is a special time
for them. They spend the entire month
celebrating with two highlights, their July 14 and end of July spectacles. A huge auditorium is built just for the month
to host dancing and singing exhibitions and competitions such as Miss and
Mister Nuka Hiva and La Belle Maman which were always hilarious (we probably
need to get out more). There are 3
restaurants inside and at the weekends they are packed.
The July 14 celebrations saw a huge
parade along the seafront. One of the
highlights was the ‘dustmen’ who proudly paraded and then did some public
information work showing everyone how to dispose of glass containers without
their lids on which makes it faster for them to put into the glass crusher. Exceptional audience targeting with the
entire population watching the parade – all this complete with recycle bins and
the glass crusher on the back of their float.
Marquesean warriors on horseback
provided the finale with some of the horses in the parade racing along the
beach afterwards. We were a little late
getting to the beach, for which I was very grateful. Two of the horses had collided head on and
were lying on the beach. One dead the
other mortally wounded. The riders had
escaped with minor injuries although one had been taken to hospital. We then were treated to the sight of both the
dead and wounded horse being scooped up by a digger and put into a truck to be
taken who knows where. This is what I’ve
been told – as you can imagine I wasn’t watching.
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| Prop forward? |
On a lighter note, we have been
fascinated by the She Hes here.
Polynesian families for some reason raise some of their boys as
girls. These ‘girls’ continue their
adult life as females although we still haven’t discovered how their love lives
develop – a question for the next group of islands. What is so fascinating is that the families
don’t know what these boys are going to be like when they mature and you end up
with huge rugby full backs tottering around in wedge heels, dangly earrings and
sarongs as well as the more demure effete ‘girls’ that Mark would admire from
time to time until I pointed out they were Mahu (the correct term).
So we have loved the Marquesas all apart
from the one thing you can’t see in any photo.
The fearsome no-no. We think they
got their name from your reaction when you realise you have been bitten. They are sand flies on acid. Their bites take about a day to emerge so you
are never sure when the attack occurred but you certainly know when they
erupt. Like mini volcanoes they spew their
venom for days on end. My first
approach was to ignore them in the belief that that would reduce their ferocity
but I soon learnt that you might as well tear into them as the results are just
the same.
The itch they produce is so toxic you
can find yourself literally tearing your skin off in the pursuit of
satisfaction. Indeed it’s almost a
sexual experience when you achieve the right scratch – try a piece of carpet! Even once the venom stops pouring, you are
left with unsightly bite marks for weeks after.
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| Mango picking |
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| The biggest sweetest grapefruits you will ever taste |
They were the only downside to these lush,
beautiful islands and smiling, friendly people.
Where the fruit is so abundant it rots on the ground where it falls,
people will pick buckets of mangos and grapefruit for you from their gardens
and you buy bananas by the stalk not the hand.
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| Rare moment of luxury |
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