French Polynesia - Marquesas islands - Tuamotus to Tahiti

V249 continued - Cook and deckhand Emma takes up the story..

"The Marquesas are some of the most magical islands in the world, their wild peaks and deep lush valleys exude a unique energy, one of untouched wilderness and one of peaceful and fertile life. We spent some time in Tiohae, on the island of ‘Nuku Hiva; this is one of our change over points and is the ‘capital’ of the Marquesas.

The town has a laid back feel, and its long curved bay, scattered with a couple of shops and restaurants is nestled by fruit trees and the rumblings of the rustic ‘Landrover Defenders’ heading for the hills is a common sight (although rapidly being taken over by the less sexy Japanese Hilux).

While we were there some of the crew took the chance to get a tattoo, the islands being one of the homelands for tattoos, the designs are intricate, symbolic and some of the most interesting that you’ll see and have been revived in recent years. One of the tattoo artists is ‘Brice’, who made tattoos on Ali, Sam and Jon.

Jon’s tattoo is a beautiful Tiki over his upper arm, which took over 5 hours of freestyle tattooing at Brice’s house. After this tiring day for both of them, we were invited to stay for dinner at his house with his mum and were treated to a feast of goat stew, roast chicken, breadfruit and watermelon, in return Brice and his freind came out to visit the Soren and for lunch, even though many small yacht frequent the Marquesas, few islanders get to see what it is like onboard a sailing vessel.

Mother’s Day or ‘Fete de Maman’ is celebrated here with great festivities and a big party, which many crew and voyage crew attended, it is put on in a marquee, with a ‘Mother’ competition with traditional dancing and singing, the party goes into the night with a mix of some less traditional tunes and is a fantastic vibe.

From Nuku Hiva, we stopped at the island of Ua Pou, to the south, with its most sudden pinnacles rising from its sky line. We arrived at dusk, which was an incredible sight from aloft. Here, in Hatahetau Bay we had our usual drinks on deck and a delicious tuna dinner. The next day all onboard enjoyed some snorkelling and a very pleasant walk to a waterfall, hidden upstream from the town, in the forest. This was cool clear water, a refreshing break from the humid forest and very nice to jump in naked- really back to nature, who could resist? Some of the voyage crew and crew enjoyed a feast put on by the villagers in the evening with delights such as Poisson cru (marinated fish salad in coconut milk) and smoked fish with taro.

Our last stops out of the Marquesas were in two of the most fabulous setting I have ever anchored in, back on the island of Nuku Hiva. Anaho Bay, in the North is a very sheltered anchorage, and is a huge enclosed bay with high peaks behind, a long sandy beach running along it and only a few scattered houses.

Here we spent the day, it rained a little on and off and the pretty much deserted beaches were great to walk along, to make patterns in the sand and to look in the surrounding rock pools. There is a great walk over to a village over the ridge, which to some people’s delight has a café with machine coffee. Back on the south side at Baie Taioa, is another great anchorage, where a river enters the bay and a 2 hour walk takes you through forest, across rivers and down a spectacular ravine to a waterfall, which had a source high up in the hills, it’s surrounded by basalt cliffs and after the rain was a bit of an extreme swim to get to - after getting across the washing machine like outflow it was well worth it.

So we left the jaggy profiles of the Marquesas behind with the hope of one day returning to these remarkably untouched islands. Within just a 4 day sail, with some light winds, a bit of engine trouble, and some swimming in the 2000m deep blue swimming pool, we arrived at some very different islands. So close, but so geographically different, the ‘Tuamotos’ are atolls, rings of coral, only coconut trees and few hardened marine plants grow on these fragile white rings, but in middle is their jewel, a bright blue lagoon full of marine life. There are 77 Tuamotuan atolls and just over half are populated and some very sparsely. They are probably the sight that is conjured up when people think of your typical paradisiacal South Seas island- and they live up to the dream, although there are probably less nonos (biting insects) in this dream. The waters are an amazing colour and the passages in must be most carefully navigated, especially for a larger ship like us. There are breaks in the coral, as the sun must be high, but ideally behind and the tides that pour in and out of these gaps flowing the right way. The tides are pretty complicated to work out and the pilot books outline these in detail. When entering the passages a good lookout is always posted aloft, to point out any ‘coral bommies’ that can be inside the lagoon.

On our approach to our first atoll- ‘Fakarava’, the skies opened at day break and we had to wait so that we could see where we were going, the cool rain was a welcome change to the usual hot days and we took advantage of this running around in our swimmers, taking nature’s shower and washing clothes. Once the rain cleared, with Jim in command and his enthusiasm for sailing as much of a voyage as possible, we sailed through the passage to our anchorage outside the small town.

These islands are famous for cultivating pearls and many of the voyage crew went to visit a pearl farm and learn of the processes. We spent the remaining 4 days in several anchorages in ‘Fakarava’ and ‘Toau’, enjoying a slow pace of life exploring the slithers of land and snorkelling in the lagoons and finishing off with a big fire barbeque on the shore, with whole snappers

Our 2 day sail to Tahiti took us into yet another very different land of the Society islands, which combines monstrous peaks, like in the Marquesas that are encircled with fringing reefs, like in Tuamotos. We had a quick stop off at Point Venus, in Tahiti to see where James Cook measured the transit of Venus, then sailed to the far more chilled ‘Cook’s Bay’ of Morea, a pleasant few hours sail down wind for our last two nights.

Now we are alongside in Papeete in Tahiti, the capital of French Polynesia, once again a very different place to islands we have visited. It is a busy place, which has a ‘French continental’ feel and provides all that you expect in a city, traffic, apartment blocks, cafes, a colourful market, some very colourful characters and a place to do a little work before exploring further reaches of this beautiful ocean in such a simple way.

Emma Lupin ,
Soren Crew - June 2007.

See Picture Gallery from this part of the voyage.

Soren Larsen will be visiting these destinations again - in 2008