We arrived in Taiohae Bay in Nuku Hiva greeted by our friend Dan on Kini Popo who arrived a few days before us. He met us in his dinghy as we dropped anchor and invited us over for homemade cheeseburgers and tamarind mojitos. It was the perfect welcome to the islands after our 26 day passage.
The next morning we made it to shore to check in with the gendarmerie and legally be in the country. Even though we had been working on our French during the crossing, I was happy that we had enlisted the service of an agent to check us in, help us with the paperwork and communicate with the gendarme. It was a painless process, and afterwords we had our first exploration of the little town. Its completely walkable and people are extremely helpful and friendly, even with a language barrier.
The bay wasn’t very crowded when we arrived, but that soon changed. The first weekend we had two large cruise ships that showed up and off loaded their guests for the day. Aside from more people on shore, it wasn’t too overwhelming. What was fun was that various dancers and musicians came out to greet the cruise ship guests as they disembarked. It was fun to see the young people in traditional dress dancing to the drums as the guests came ashore.
Later that week the ARC World Rally came to Nuku Hiva. The ARC is an around the world sailing rally that does a complete circumnavigation in 18 months – that’s fast! The bay filled up with sailboats from all over the world. We spoke to several boats ashore and heard a bit of their exploits. But, after a few days the bay started to thin out again.
We have made some new friends here, including the nicest British couple who invited us to their boat for a proper curry dinner. It was an amazing three course dinner that put my cooking skills to shame and has certainly raised the bar for boat cooking!
My cooking skills also need to adapt to the shopping available. I think of it a bit like the TV show Chopped. You have to figure out what to make with whatever you have or whatever is available. There are a couple of small grocery stores in town called Magazins that have mostly dried or canned goods and some frozen items. For produce, there is an open air market with fruits and veggies that various families bring to sell from their land. The best find on the island is definitely the pamplemousse. It is a variety of grapefruit with pale green flesh and much sweeter than grapefruit in North America. It makes a great juice that is perfect with a little rum!
We wanted to see a bit of the interior of the island, so Mike, Dan & I hired a guide to give us an all day tour. The fauna is amazing. The variety of plants, and especially fruit trees, was incredible. We picked up some mangos, coconuts and soursop.
We also got to see lots of archeological ruins and hear about the history of the islands, the Marquesan people and the colonization by the French.
But, by far my favorite thing was the 600 yr old Banyon Tree, which is one of the oldest in the world.
We stopped for lunch at a nice little spot on the other side of the island right across from the beach. We tried some local specialties including goat in coconut milk and poison cru. Delicious!
Now that we’ve finally had some down time to recuperate from our passage, we’re ready to do some more exploring. So, today we are headed over to Daniel’s Bay where we are looking forward to hiking to a waterfall. Happy Easter everyone!
Katie