We’ve been in Tiaohae Bay on Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas for 4 days now and it’s about time to get moving on. We rented a car the first day with Brit & Axel and toured all around the island. We picked up the replacement latch for our windvane and Rob fixed that. He also repaired a broken wire to the alternator that was keeping us from charging our last day on the way in here. Our propane tanks are getting filled today, the Gendarme has signed off on our visa extension in our passport, there are fresh veggies in the fridge and the laundry is hanging out to dry. Sounds like the chores are about done.
The last thing to finish up is an upload of some pictures to the website because this is likely the last day we’ll have an internet connection for five or six weeks. We’re headed into the Tuamotus, which is an island group composed of sparsely populated atolls. There are about 10 islands on my wish list, all of which have passes into the lagoon that seem doable for a first year visitor with a 6′ draft.
The Marquesas are absolutely beautiful and we’ll miss the high mountain peaks and lush green vegetation after we leave here. The tour around Nuku Hiva included lots of surprises in the terrain. Near the shoreline it’s lush and tropical with palm trees as you’d expect; mid way up to the top you start running into a pine forest that looks like the ponderosa pines near home in Montana; high up in the plains there is a huge clearing in the pines where they’ve created a farming and agricultural area.
We were on a hunting and gathering mission that day because I wanted some avocados and knew they grow wild here. After about an hour of scanning trees along the road I finally found an avocado tree on the way down to the beach on the north side of the island. Then Brit wanted some mangoes so we found a mango tree with decent sized fruit. Axel collected a few coconuts and then we started looking for pineapples. We were surprised to realize that there had been huge pineapple trees all along the route that we hadn’t noticed until we started looking. My image of pineapples is only from the commercials we see where they grow close to the ground in Hawaii. Here they’re high in the trees and all of them seem to be just out of reach over the edge of a cliff. So we got skunked on the pineapple collection because likely the locals gather any that are close enough to the road to reach.
Tomorrow morning we’ll go over to Daniel’s Bay, which is our second stop in our tour of Survivor locations. We’ve been fans of the reality show Survivor since the second season and it’s kind of fun for us to see the spots where they shot. There’s a two hour hike up to a waterfall that’s reportedly gorgeous. Right now there’s not much water in the falls but we’ll enjoy the hike nonetheless.
Teresa
