Land Ho! – Nuku Hiva

Two days ago we had our first sight of land in a week! Ahhh! Twas wonderful to see land again, and beautiful land it was! As we’d expected, we weren’t on land long enough to regain our land legs!

(Yes, the food on board is good!  Fortunately, a friend cautioned to be sure all waistbands are elastic.)

Nuku Hiva is the largest island in the Marquesas Islands. The Marquesas are in turn, the northernmost string of islands in French Polynesia. This was an anchor port and although the waters were quite a bit calmer than prior days, it was quite a challenge to board the lifeboat turned tender!

On arrival at the dock, in true Polynesian tradition, we got “lei-d”!  Rather than take the provided transportation (a couple of buses and many private 4-wheel drive vehicles), we chose to walk along the edge of the bay where our shore excursion “feast” was set up.  Other tenders followed behind ours.

This was not the professionally produced type of festival that tourists typically see at Disney but rather local folks putting for their best for their guests. Yes, yes, they were well compensated by the cruise line!

Drums were hand carved and dancers and drummers were wearing locally hand made dresses or grass skirts. Tom has some great video of the dancing! The event was held on the grounds of the palace of a former Chief of the island. Many of the old stone statues and some of the foundation stones of the palace are present still.

Late morning, the pigs that had been cooking for the past 24 hours, were taken out of the ground oven. Many folks found it disgusting, I could only think of the delicious meat that was about to be served… remembering the ones my brother-in-law in Hana, HI had prepared some 20 years ago when we were there.

We had learned earlier that the restrooms at the festival site were out of order and it would be necessary to go back to “town” about a mile away, for facilities. We made sure we’d seen all there was to see and then headed back to “town”, i.e., the dock area, to use the restrooms and explore the town a little, very little! This time we took a shuttle “taxi”.

Tom particularly liked sitting in the front seat as the driver was a very pretty and shapely young native with colorful flowers in her hair and wearing a sarong.  The cruise line had hired virtually all the locals with cars to serve as our taxi drivers. I noted that this young lady had several real leis hanging over her rearview mirror and that they almost covered her pair of large fuzzy dice! Americanized, huh?

We noted an old outrigger leaning against a tree and then observed a sleek new version in the surf beyond.  After a quick round of the open air market where locals had their handiwork displayed, we headed back to the cool air of the ship! We are so spoiled!

From the Observation Lounge, with Bloody Marys in hand, we watched the locals on their sleek modern outrigger “canoes” (kayaks), enjoying the wakes from the tenders!

That’s today’s report! More pictures will be posted when we return. Today, Papeete, Tahiti is in site!

R