Pacific 2012 Cruise: Nuku Hiva

One of the unique things about the Marquesas Islands is the time. It is one of the few places in the world that does not conform to the general practice of when an hour begins. When a clock strikes the hour in London, Boston, Istanbul, Beijing and most other places in the world, it strikes the half-hour in Nuku Hiva. (i.e. local time is -9.5 UTC)

In anticipation of visiting Nuku Hiva, I recently read Herman Melville's first major work TYPEE. In the book there is a great deal of description of the steep slopes and ridge lines that separated the tribes. The author certainly had his facts right regarding the geography.

As we entered we Baie Taiohae (Taiohae Bay), a rain shower passed by, a harbinger of a series we would encounter during the day.

The cargo/passenger ship from Tahiti was preparing to depart.

It visits Nuku Hiva and several other islands in the Marquesas about once every three weeks. Although Taiohae is the headquarters of for the government of the Marquesas Islands and Nuku Hiva is the second largest island in all of French Polynesia, the population of the island is only 2,700.

The freighter's dock being far too small from ROTTERDAM, once again the ship's anchor was dropped and boats lowered to ferry passengers ashore.

While getting ready to go ashore, from our balcony I spotted (thanks to polarized sunglasses) a manta ray swimming past the ship. Thanks to a polarized filter on my camera, I got a picture of it.

The white oval at the front of the manta is its open mouth seining for algae and other food.

Greeted by dancers as we came ashore we wandered along the shoreline prior to gathering for our tour.

Today's tour was a visit to some parts of the island. It was by car - one of a fleet of private vehicles driven by their owner and traveling in convoy.

Allowing some of our more assertive fellow passengers to precede us in queuing up to be assigned to a car, we somehow wound up in the lead car with air conditioning and driven by the guide.

The guide was a character who spoken rudimentary English with a thick French accent, but having stumbled on the fact that he had spent twenty years in the French Foreign Legion, we were complimentary of his communication skills. And in fairness to him and to the tour company, we had been told that the tour was primarily sightseeing with most of the drivers speaking no English and that even the guide's ability to do so would be limited. Between his broken English and my broken French, we did fine.

Our first stop was the local catholic church.

We then drove up a steep, but remarkably good road, passing over a ridge line. Unfortunately although bright sun shone in the valley below, the closer we got to the ridge line the harder it rained. I only got off one burst of shots, zipping down the window from the moving car during a momentary lull in precipitation.

Passing over the ridge line and the rain stopping, we looked down on another valley and bay - Baie de Tai Pi (Typee Bay) - Hello Herman Melville!

We continued down to nearly sea level, stopping at a ceremonial ground. Our guide got very enthusiastic about what it was like to have 150 dancers performing accompanied by 20 drummers. In the absence of performers, we had to settle for seeing some interesting carvings and sculptures.

Back in the cars, we continued to the shoreline.

In contradiction to the idyllic scene, the process of getting all the cars turned around for the trip back over the ridge line took on the appearance of a Boston traffic jam.