Marquisas islands Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa

 16/06/2021

Hiva Oa

Nuku Hiva        

In July 2017, my family and I visited the wild Marquesas islands which has a total population of about 9 346 over 13 islands.  It is best to visit French Polynesia during the cool season between July and September.(Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa, Ua Pou, Ua Huka, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva are the main islands) These islands are 1 418km east of Tahiti. Our flight to Hiva Oa was three hours and thirty minutes long and there were only 42 seats in the plane so you felt like a part of it.Before we took off the crew asked us to weigh ourselves to make sure that the weight was evenly distributed in the aircraft for security measures.

The Marquesans do not speak Tahitian, they speak Marquesan. They are very proud of their differences from Tahitians. In Hiva Oa, we had at first, been surprised by the locals' customs, they would hunt mountain goats and wild boars. Since these animals are wild the Marquisieans are allowed to domesticate and/or hunt them. On our first day, we were driving across the island when we saw a sign indicating "Dried bananas and marinated lemons". Dad wanted to buy some so we turned left into a path leading us to a small house. There, we bought the fruits and my mom noticed that a gun was leaning on the side of the house.

"Who uses it?" she asked, pointing at the weapon. The woman answered that it was her fourteen year old son, she called for him and he told us that he used the gun to hunt goats. He then showed us the head of a goat he had killed and skinned that day.

On the second day, we went on an excursion to Hiva Oa's neighbouring islands, or "motu" with the O'Connor family as our guides. They showed us how to make fire using only our hands, wood and dried grass. They did it in about fifteen seconds:o The other islands had very few people on them and they mostly relied on exporting fish for income.

Hiva Oa

On the second island, Nuku Hiva, we had hired a guide to bring us trekking through the mountains. Apart from the occasional cow skull, there was nothing on our path, there wasn't really a path at all as the jungle was very dense and there were few houses in the surrounding area. We stopped at a pond surrounded by thick bushy rainforest trees. The guide told us to look in closely, the water was cool but this was a trap. We could distinguish a very large mustard coloured animal with brown spots slithering in our direction, it was a huge murray eel, as large as a melon and as long as my eight year old brother. On another occasion, some children showed us to a mara'e with tikis. A mara'e is an old burial site which used to be the place where people would gather for ceremonies and important occasions.

the mara'e in Nuku Hiva

The Marquesas islands are a great location to discover Polynesian culture as the landscape is nearly untouched. There is no pollution and no noise so you are 100% connected to nature.