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Published: February 21st 2009
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nice
Saturday Feb 14th
Nuku Hiva- T he biggest island
Disembarqued at Taiohae, ride to town to see many arts and crafts and clothes
Long cherry wood or sandal wood log instrument with ornamental carvings on the outside and a slice hollowed out in the middle- with drum sticks, hit at different places is a lovely percussion instrument.
We visited the Cathedral with all 14 stations of the cross sculpted from one tree, the stations are semicircles about 3 feet high, just lovely except when the carver asked the bishop what an olive tree looked like for #1, the bishop said carve what you know so the leaves in the Mount of Olives are really breadfruit
We then toured in jeeps, through the Taipivai valley of Melville’s Typee and Omoo fame stopping at many lookouts between switch backs, ending at Hatiheu for 4 course French Polynesian feast with a 7 piece jam session with singing. Food: #1 fried fish and fried shrimp with breadfruit and bbq type sauce, #2 poisson cru( tuna marinated in sea water then citrus juice which ”cooks” the fish, mixed with cucumbers and tomatoes and garnished with coconut milk with small onion stems-lovely, #3 pork cooked
in an outdoor lava rock underground(four marquesien) pit with smoked bananas and breadfruit, with some goat and fat layers from the pig and #4 manioc or tapioca pudding with coconut and cream sauce- délicieux. Although Terry is still not sold on breadfruit-Uru.
After lunch we had choices of walk here or there or swimming in a black sand beach; we opted for a climb to a tiki and sacred tapu clearing on the mountain. We climbed, walking sticks absolutely d rigueur, up a slippery muddy path with switchbacks for trekkers-never saw those before, and arrived in the teeming rain(read slippery) to a clearing with 2 Meae Paeke- stone platforms for ceremonial rituals. I climbed there for the tikis; a lower Meae had tikis stikin out from the meter high stone platform, is still tapu and some say still used by the local Marquesian in their ceremonies , the top one is built differently, tikis instilled into the structure with cavity in the middle for the organic wastes of the high chief so that nobody would abscond with “it” to use in black magic rituals! Back down the mountain, Terry and I both safe, not all made it, thank the gods
that this is not on Holland America cruise line or there would have been good business for Terry suing the owners for dangerous excursions. The captain came to dinner and apologized not for the dangerous climb but for the change in plans as we were to embark at a second freight delivery spot but the ship never came. So… we had an unexpected adventure: as many cars had already been sent back, we hoped as we could in the vehicles that were there, in the back of pickup trucks in some cases and went back to our original port: up from valley one down to valley two, up and back down to valley three. Eva, a certain aged very distinguished Canadian from London Ontario was singing with her friend Gaby a doctor from the Black Forest of Germany in the back of the pickup truck in front of us and they managed to get a smile out of a solitary French gentleman who was sitting between them- a fun time was had by all.
Last night dinner menu was vegetable soup, pork with warm potato salad, peas and carrots, and coconut meringue flottante with white and red wine, no coffee
or the is ever offered at night.
People then go to Karaoke or our Marquesian sailor’s band, we try but usually just go to bed at 9 to get up at 5:30 for coffee at sunrise and enjoy the day ahead.
Morning now, seas are high enough to wash above our port hole and arriving at next port, ttys
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