Like we said, we’re moonlighting as “normal tourists” in the Society islands. So what do normal tourists do? No, that isn’t rhetorical or a clever way to intro this blog entry. Really, what do they do?
While we are, at this point, arguably at least relatively well traveled, we really haven’t done a lot of “tourist-ing.” (is that a word?) Packaged tours aren’t really our forte and why pay for a walking tour of Venice when you can wander around it all by your dang self to find the local’s dance club? Our method of exploring a place is best compared, in Greg’s twisted gamer mindat least, to a random encounter roll. A hold over from his Dungeons and Dragons days…
Tiffany: “Oh, look Greg, there went half the freaking audience in three words or less!”
Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia
Located in the Society Island chain, Tahiti is the best known and main island of French Polynesia. With a massive population of 131,695, Papeete is the capital of both the island and the colony. Scoffing at that number? In case you haven’t been keeping track, about 49% of the entirety of the population of French Polynesia lives in this city. Not this island, this city. The next largest town we’ve encountered consisted of about 1700 people. The only university in French Polynesia is here along with actual shopping malls, supermarkets, (…finally!) restaurants that don’t double as family rooms and all the modern conveniences. Welcome to the big city.
Know how sailors have this reputation for getting tattoos?
You may not realize this but that pretty much started here. When the European sailors arrived in the islands they were so impressed with the Polynesian tattoo that many of the ships’ crew got tattoos themselves and brought the idea back to their home countries.
The Polynesian people have a rich and diverse tradition of tattooing. Each island group had their own extremely intricate traditions and remember, there are a LOT of islands out here!
Unfortunately, like the hula dance, music (they used a flute with their nose!) and many of the other pieces of Polynesian culture, a great deal of the knowledge was lost when the Europeans arrived. The new arrivals completely banned parts of Polynesian culture that were deemed “inappropriate.” Just one more setback these people have born with incredible grace. Since the Polynesian people did not have a written language and their cultural practices fell into disuse for long enough that most, if not all, of the practitioners died off, many of the secrets and details and meanings of their culture have been irretrievably lost. However, unlike the other pieces of Polynesian culture, tattoo has some form of record. Modern Polynesian artists have recreated their unique arts using what few oral traditions remain and the diaries and drawings of the original European explorers who were so amazed with the drastic artwork etched all over the native islanders’ bodies.
As the drawing suggested, the ancient islanders covered their entire bodies with tattoo that they applied with a bone blade and a hammer. Yeah, that would be extremely hard core! Every single piece had a distinct meaning. The first marking was made when the child was 12 and it periodically grew after that according to your wealth and station in society.
Ow. A lot.
Girls got off easy, they just got their lips, jawbones arms & legs done. (AH! Who tattoos their lips!?)
The modern adaptation is slightly more conservative though no less impressive and it is not unusual to see someone with a whole leg or shoulder done in traditional designs. It’s rarer, and some people still do facial tattoos.
Next time we’ll look at the cruiser community and Polynesian tattoos…
Did you see that? A paved road! We’ve seen paved roads before in the islands but now we start putting this information together. How do you make a paved road on a remote desert island…well concrete requires sand, rocks, fresh water and cement. Cement you have to import on the boat, no surprise there. Fresh water can be harvested from the rain; take a while but do-able. Sand can come from the beaches but rocks…rocks are a bit of stumbling point. In the Marquesas they had mountains of rocks (literally) to turn into roads but in the Tuamotu, their land is not made up of rock anymore and shipping in tons of rocks can get expensive. So what is an islander to do except improvise?
And while we’re on the topic of logistics, Greg ran into something that seems out of place in the islands: a graveyard. Yes, we understand that people die (heck, they did a lot of dying not so long ago) but it’s where they go when they die that concerns me, and not in the spiritual sense either.
We’ve already made it clear that there isn’t a whole heck of a lot of real estate out here. Also, Catholic doctrine is pretty clear on the matter: no cremation. So how long will it be before these people are deciding between housing for the living and housing for the dead?
Speaking of the Catholic Church, they have one here and it’s gorgeous.
Did you see that tabernacle? It was the tiny little castle up on the altar at the beginning of the video. (For the uninitiated: Tabernacle is the little box they keep the blessed bread in. So in the minds of us Catholics this is the place where the physical presence of Jesus resides.) In the states, you find a lot of tabernacles made out of precious materials like gold & silver. Here they don’t have stuff like that so what they lack in metal they make up for in expert craftsmanship & skill.
The largest of these stores is Magazin (French for “store”) Daniel, which is so important as to be noted in our guidebooks as “the best supermarket on the island”. So this, according to our printed guidebooks mind you, is the best supermarket in the main city of the largest, most developed, most populous island of the 78 atolls of the Tuamotu chain. Here’s the tour:
And as a special treat for all of Greg’s fellow sci-fi nerd friends out there, look what he found!
If you don’t get it, it’s ok, he forgives you. If you do get it, you know why he put it up here… so awesome!
Oh the third place stuff from the boats go? Like we mentioned before, some stuff is custom ordered. Which is why this video is so amazing:
Greg getting his butt handed to him by an island kid in a game of ping pong is not remarkable. It’s the cultural significance of the thing! (no, not of me getting power slammed by a 10 year old, why are you fixated on that!?) It was the ping pong table, focus on his table! (I might note I scored some points.) What is remarkable is that the table was there in the first place. This most assuredly overshadows any *cough* – minor – *cough* point spread difference there may have been.
Underway, transiting in the Tuamotu, French Polynesia
So we left the natural splendor of Fakarava and headed over to Toau, which was a day’s trip away, and also finally got some video of the mouth-wateringly delectable pamplemousse.
For a little over the past month now we have pretty much sustained ourselves on French baguettes and Polynesian grapefruit. Greg will only feel deprived by the situation when this is no longer possible. Tiffany is already dreading the day… 🙂
Also, many of you ask what happens to trash when you’re at sea. Here’s what everyone does:
Shocking, isn’t it? What’s nuts is that this is the norm for all ships, commercial and recreational, the world over. Greg remembers the first time he saw trash going overboard. It was his first cruise on a Coast Guard ship and they just tossed bags of garbage over the side while at sea. He was dumbstruck until another sailor explained it all. There is some logic to it. You may not agree with the logic, but at least now you’ll understand it. Since all the popular exposure we’re aware of is primarily focused on tossing garbage overboard as a bad thing, here we’ll take the role of explaining it. As for our own opinions, we’ll give it to you at the end.
First off, there isn’t anywhere to really put garbage on a boat long term that is sanitary for the crew. Also you’d have to deal with the smell, the bugs, attracting rodents in port, leaking etc. Now there are some cruisers that “pack their trash out” by only throwing out garbage when they get to port but we will look into that idea in a minute. Also, these cruisers are typically shorter range cruisers who will pull into an established port with garbage facilities once a week. In Polynesia, most of the locals literally burn their trash (including plastics) because they, like us, have nowhere to put it.
As long as what you throw overboard is bio-degradable, the sea does a heck of a faster job breaking it down than anything on land. Also, you’re not allowed to throw stuff within miles of land, so likely you’re tossing the biodegradable trash into the 80% of the ocean that is barren desert (except for the salt water). That’s why we had so many cans in the video; we hadn’t been far enough from shore while inside Fakarava’s lagoon. To get an idea of what is legally allowed to be tossed over where, here is a handy diagram from Greg’s Coast Guard boarding officer days (yes, we are currently talking about maritime law enforcement, don’t mind Greg while he geeks out, hey maybe you’ll learn something!)
Note the one thing you are never allowed to throw overboard: Plastic. Plastic never degrades. Sailors do their best to avoid having it onboard because they can’t throw it overboard, ever. When they do use plastic they store it. Plastic is a major problem for the ocean and is the primary focus of the whole “Pacific Garbage Patch” dilemma.
Finally, stuff falls into the sea all the time, especially organic waste. Whales poop in the ocean – about 3% of their total body mass each day – and they live for a while, you do the math. So do birds and basically every other creature, at some point or another, has had their fecal matter mixed in with the ocean. Animals die in the ocean and their rotting carcasses often sink. Also, many coastal cities use the sea as a garbage site (surprise!). A couple of decades ago the US government was using the waters off the Farallon Islands (near San Francisco) as a radioactive dumping ground. Once they figured out it made the sharks glow though, they cut that out.
Here’s the scary truth. Live by the coast? Throw stuff away? Then it probably ends up in the sea. Where else is it going to go? Sailors are just a little more direct about the process. If an apple gets tossed into the water, is it littering? Ok, so how about a cardboard box that becomes waterlogged and decomposes before your eyes? See, slippery slope.
By the way, anyone want to go swimming?
On the one hand is the unrealistic goal of a perfect world that no one can live (or poop) in and on the other is an ocean so polluted that the plastic outnumbers the plant life (which, by the way, is apparently true right now in some places of the Pacific.) Ultimately, like everything else, it’s a balancing act that we all have to agree on and do. Right after we finish up that world peace bit.
It worries me that one day God is going to show up and ask us to explain why we broke his planet.
Where do we stand? Hard question. As crew, we don’t really have a choice in the matter because as long as our Captain is obeying the law, we really can’t stop them. It’s easy to be hard-over against dumping anything. Garbage is bad! However, all creatures create waste, it’s part of living. Yes, humans create more. Anyone here willing go without their spaghetti sauce? How about your car? Seeing both sides of the issue, actually living with the logistics and having had both sides impact our lives, we would have to say that we agree some things can be tossed overboard as long as we know we aren’t significantly impacting the environment in the area. Right… now define “significant impact”… We could go on…
But not with plastic. Plastic kills baby turtles and that makes Jesus sad.
What’s your opinion about what is ok and not ok to throw overboard?
So that’s the city sign. Guess they don’t exactly have a city line, being as there aren’t a lot of other cities out here to butt up against.
So the semi-obvious question I left out of the previous entries (I ran out of space!) was, “Greg, I get how the islands got there, how did the PEOPLE get there?!?”
Good question, and the short answer is…no one actually knows for sure.
Some people say they sailed from South America. Some dude name Thor (no, really, it’s his name) sailed a raft from South America to prove this theory. He made it to the Marquesas, so, it possible. However, the current popular theory is that the ancient Polynesians came from Asian stock:
(thanks to httpthe.honoluluadvertiser.com)
The summary version is that the Polynesian people were beyond comprehension badasses at seagoing navigation. They were human sextants capable of determining their exact position on the largest expanse of bleak nothingness on the planet Earth (the Pacific Ocean) by doing things such as watching the stars, checking the angle of the waves, looking at birds in flight and…no that’s it. That’s what they did. I am not a Polynesian. I use a GPS because I suck with a sextant, much less reading the angle of a wave bounced off an island 100 miles away (not making this up or exaggerating here.) So these people sailed against the current and upwind in what amounted to two canoes tied together by some wood and some sails lashed on top. Why did they sail against the wind and current? So that if, while exploring, they failed to find any land, they could easily get pushed back home once all the food and water was used up onboard. Doesn’t that just sound swell? Well it sure did to them because they got really, really good at it. Therein how they found, charted and settled all these islands long before we Europeans with our clunky tall ships (and syphilis! Let’s not forget what we brought to share!) showed up on the scene.
As for Kauehi city, well, city is a generous term. Here’s me in the center of town, which also doubles for their beach:
They have a “store” (it may one day grow up to be a 7-11) where they sold baguettes!
Our elation at being able to resupply our junkie fix for awesome fresh French bread was short lived when we found out that the baguettes were frozen. It did lead us to wonder though: are they frozen because they got shipped here? Or do they just turn on the bread baking over once a month to save energy? Unfortunately my limited French skills did not cover such complex topics of conversation. I did manage to find ice cream though. Hey, if they can freeze bread they can have ice cream. More importantly, I can have ice cream.
The main structure of the town is the church. We were lucky enough to be here on a Sunday and we attended a Catholic mass in Tahitian. Though we couldn’t understand the service, we did get to meet the entire town (maybe 100 people in total) and they were really nice to us. Also, the percussion instrument in the choir was an Alhambra water jug. I felt that it would be disrespectful to tape this guy playing during mass but man, WOW. You’d be amazed how good people can get at playing an empty plastic water jug when it’s the only instrument available for 600 or so miles.
They have a dinghy dock and yacht anchorage. The monthly resupply ship, their only semi-reliable (weather depending) means of contact with the outside world, stays offshore and sends in small tender vessels with supplies for the residents. No exports that I am aware of or could find evidence of are taken back out to the ship. With only 100 people on the island and about 30 yachts a year that visit, they have an almost untouched natural beauty and crystal clear blue water right up the edge of the dock.
These people LIVE here. Perched on this tiny ring of coral in the middle of the ocean. They fish, collect rain water to drink and they have been doing it for hundreds of years.
The transit from the Marquesas to the Tuamotu was fairly uneventful. Being the ocean crossing salty dogz (yes, with a “z”) that we are, we scoffed at the idea of a 3 day sail to the next island chain as if such paltry transiting now barely even merited our attention. I mean, goodness we scarcely had to provision for this trip. OK, we bought some extra baguettes and some pamplemousse but that’s basically about it.
Have I mentioned pamplemousse yet? Picture grapefruit…ok now picture it actually tasting really, really good. I mean crazy good. Like you could easily eat yourself sick on it. Yeah, that’s pamplemousse. They grow it out here. It’s better than the mangoes. Notice you don’t see any pamplemousse rotting on the ground with the mangoes…there’s a reason for that.
(From our friends on SV Mulan)
The sail across did have one interesting highlight though:
Yes, a spider crawled out of my armpit. Well, fell out really. I screamed, it died. I screamed some more. I’d rather not dwell on the experience.
The Tuamotus are in and of themselves, an interesting story. Imagine, if you would, hundreds of square miles of open ocean a few miles deep. Ok, now in the middle of that, stick a ring of islands that reach no higher than 3-10 feet above sea level. It’s kind of like the Florida keys, minus the mainland nearby. Oh, and the big lagoon in the center of each…
People live on these things. Which is amazing, but where do the islands come from? Well, Darwin (yes, THAT Darwin) apparently had a second theory that drew a little less fire from the Christian coalition than his evolutionary ponderings. Darwin’s Theory of Atoll Formation states:
(from www.geocaching.com)
Stage 1: islands form from either exploding volcanoes or by the earth’s crust jutting up (like mountains) (the Marquesas are an example of stage 1)
Stage 2: coral, which is apparently just floating around the ocean looking for a place to live, latch onto these islands. There they are supplied with a place to live that is close enough to the surface to allow for sunlight. Coral grows around the islands and form a barrier reef.
Also during this stage the volcano goes dormant and the island starts to sink back into the ocean. Basically, the combined weight of the large mountain jutting literally miles up from the surface of the sea floor is a bit much for the crust to take, so it sinks. Also erosion starts to take affect. The coral keeps growing though, so the difference between the receding island shoreline and the barrier reef becomes a protected lagoon. (The Society Islands are an example of stage 2)
Stage 3: The island sinks below sea level, leaving a lagoon anywhere from 0 to 100 feet deep. The coral keeps growing and forms tiny islands (or “motu” in Tahitian) made completely from the coral. The motu grow on top of the barrier reef which is also constantly growing, so it does not sink despite the sinking of the island. In the end the barrier reef islands are all that remain.
The islands we have just entered are examples of this final stage.
Now while that is all very well and good, lets move on the practical application portion of our little science lesson here: sailing THROUGH a coral reef in order to effectively get swallowed up by an island where you sail on an underground mountain that juts up at unidentified locations just below the water line is, shall we say, a source of some concern for the average yacht owner. Especially when the nearest repair facility is oh, say, 700 miles away, give or take.
There is a waterfall lagoon in the center of this island (Nuku Hiva) that is known for it crystal clear waters and abnormally large eels. Naturally, everyone thought it would be a good idea if we went swimming with them. Apparently this is what one does at Daniel’s bay. Hike for two hours, eat lunch, toss some baguette to the eels the size of my arm (literally) to draw them out, then go swimming with them. Good times. Oh and yes, eels have teeth. So after leapfrogging over rivers, sauntering through canyons hundreds of feet deep, climbing through ancient Polynesian ruins and scaling some fairly large boulders…
You know what? Describing natural perfection week after week is hard. Here’s what we saw; you should watch it:
The eels were smart. They grabbed the baguette, saw kids and got right back under those rocks before anyone got in the water.
Like I said above we also saw some ancient ruins and genuine historic tikis. Much like the mangoes, these people have their history just scattered about them. However, unlike mangoes, their history is not overly abundant. Due to lack of funding & personnel, much of these ancient ruins are simply left.
Also the flowers. I mean, wow, the flowers are everywhere.
Overall a great hike and yet another example of the fantastic beauty these islands have to offer. This is the end of the Marquesas for us and we are off to the Tuamotu island chain. We’re leaving behind our “Buddy Boat”, PROXIMITY, here at Nuku Hiva. There are so many islands out here, which is shocking to me because my perception of the South Pacific was “ya know…there’s Hawaii, Tahiti, Guam, Bora Bora…and a couple more. Ok, so here’s some numbers for you:
There are tens of thousands (yes, that’s plural) of islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the South Pacific there are 3 “regions” of islands, of which Polynesia is one. The Polynesian region is about the size of Canada & the US combined. It’s big. The other regions are also lacking smallness (kind of a theme out here). French Polynesia is one of the larger countries in Polynesia and is about the size of the continent of Europe (yes, the continent). In French Polynesia, there are 141 islands and they give you 3 months before they kick you out, unless you’re European, then you can stay way longer (thanks France… :P) I know 90 days sounds like a lot, but really, it isn’t for so much space…and this is probably the first, last and only time you’ll ever get out here. So this is your one shot to have an amazing life experience. Here’s the dilemma: You want to stay and meet people and make friends and have awesome cultural experiences. You also don’t want to miss any of the other cool stuff on the other 140 islands in this country…and let us not forget that our boat needs to be through the entire area in 90 days or less. Important to remember those boats are slow and a couple of hundred miles between each island does make a significant difference. You should also add in about a week or two for boat repairs, supplying, customs, etc. What we’ve done so far has used up about 20 days. It goes fast.
Everyone has a different way of dealing with this. There is no way you’re going to be able to explore every island in 90 days so ultimately, you have to pick and choose. How much time do you want to spend finding the out of the way more remote islands like Fatu Hiva vs. enjoying the people and culture of more developed main islands like Nuku Hiva? Ok, and by “main island” remember I am talking about 2200 people on this entire island. So a tiny US farm town population…it’s isn’t exactly crowded. For the really adventurous, the Gambier island chain is a few hundred miles south and while it’ll eat a ton of time and there aren’t a lot of people there, you get a see a grand cathedral made entirely of coral, by hand (crazy priest, thousands of locals die in the construction, it’s a long story.)
Everyone says they want “off the beaten track” but we’re basically doing that by being here. So how far off do you want to go?
Rod & Elizabeth from PROXIMITY are staying in Nuku Hiva to enjoy the culture of the Marquesas and make some friends. Rod helped me learn the ukulele and they are both a lot of fun. We will miss them and hope to see them down the line. They expect to hit maybe one island in the Tuamotus before heading to Tahiti. As for us, we want to see some of these coral reefs floating out in the middle of the ocean, so we’re heading out.
I know, we have to “rush” though French Polynesia because we only have 3 months living here. It’s a heavy cross, but I bear what I can 😉
So we have left the southern part of the Marquesas and are now in the more populated Northern Islands. By “more populated” I mean a total population of 5,000 spread out over four islands vice a total population of 3,000 spread out over four islands. Needless to say, a total population of about 8,000 people is a small, small amount for an island chain that has it’s own flag, identity and has considered being a separate country than the rest of the other four major island chains in French Polynesia. The other French Polynesian chains are the Tuamotu Islands, Society Islands, Gambier Islands, and Austrial Islands chains. Tahiti and Bora Bora are part of the Society Islands, FYI. I was curious about this odd independence of such a small amount of people and did a little reading and asking around at the tiny museum in Nuku Hiva, which is where we are now.
Let me say this and don’t laugh at me when you hear it, but the Ruskies have got absolutely nothing on the Polynesians when it comes to putting up with difficulty. These people have been plagued (syphilis), cannibalized, colonized, converted, warred upon, beaten down, re-plagued (smallpox) and then one of their islands in the Tuamotus was hit by 141 atomic bombs (let me say that again: One hundred forty one atomic bombs, 6 of which were hydrogen bombs!) by France when they were conducting nuclear testing. In the Marquesas alone the population was devastated by a whopping 95% before people stopped dying in droves and they were able to begin rebuilding their society. According to one book, The Marquesas alone started with 800,000 people at the start of the 19th century and dropped as low as 2,000 at one point! Now, to be fair, before us Westerners got here, they weren’t exactly a peaceful people with everything going on perfectly; islands were constantly at war with each other, raids for human sacrifices occurred and cannibalism most assuredly was practiced. Still these people took a beating and are starting a long bounce back from pretty dire straights. Despite all this they are the nicest people you have ever met, they put up with me bumbling through a language that isn’t theirs but that they adopted in addition to their own in order to better communicate with their sponsor country / people who colonized them. All in all, I respect the heck out of ‘em.
So we were going to stop at Ua Pou, another major island in the Marquesas but we gave it a quick flyby instead. Tiff explains:
We did get some awe inspiring pictures of the giant spires formed by dormant volcanoes that this island is known for. Spires like this are all over the island and are so high many are enshrouded in clouds.
We pressed onto Nuku Hiva and into Taiohae Bay, which with a population of 1,700 is the “big city” and capital of the Marquesas. We were greeted with sights of civilization such as pizza, crepes and a grocery store. What I describe below is by far the most advanced cruising port in the Marquesas.
I would include internet in the list of modern conveniences; however, when I say “internet” I would think most people would picture things like Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, email and the like. If I said I had internet you may write me nasty emails saying, “Hey, why haven’t you responded to my Facebook message I sent you!?” This would because it is, for your reference purposes, a 60 minute process to download and read a 2 line text email. Pictures and videos ain’t happening. Web 2.0? Right, we’re working on web 0.3 here. Little perspective on Marquesian internet access for ya: I asked one of the locals and they told me that the internet is in fact satellite based – but wait, here’s the bad news – the ONE SERVER for the ENTIRE ISLAND CHAIN is in Tahiti. Remember that island that’s about 2,000 miles away? Ya, that’s where the ONE server is. You thought dial up AOL was slow? Lightning compared to what we can get here.
On the up side, by giving up all hope of accessing the web, I get a lot more time to wander about, get in trouble, get humiliated by high school kids in volleyball and find interesting things for this blog, like a local tiki park created for cultural preservation (though the locals spell it “ti’i”). This one is my favorite: a naked tiki holding a war club in one hand and the head of another tiki in his other hand. Why do I call the Tiki a he? Nope, no assumption here, lets just say this guy could easily fit in at a particular bay on the island of Fatu Hiva. It should be noted that of all the islands in French Polynesia, the Marquesas are known for their exquisitely detailed and precise tikis…
In addition to the Tiki park, it first must be said that this place is simply gorgeous. Not just this town, all the islands we’ve come to so far have been jaw-droppingly amazing. These people live out their lives within mother nature’s personal art gallery. No words can accurately describe the abundance of picture perfect plants that surround us on a daily basis. The flower bush in this video was just on the roadside. It is not overly unusual, I just picked it to give you an example visual assault of perfection that we are bombarded with on a typical day:
Speaking of natural beauty, as it were, I also discovered that if you think that school clothing regulations in the US educational system are lax, you will have a very different perspective once you see what these kids wear at recess:
