After spending a couple of nights in my tent above Atuona, I stumbled across a French couple that hosted guests on their sailboat, Kaveka, through AirBNB. I jumped at the opportunity and asked to stay with them for a few days, and my time on their boat was one of the highlights of my trip.
Frank and his wife Celine were both from Paris. Their English was decent -- more than sufficient to communicate -- and I found them both to be quite interesting people. Over the past four years, they had sailed together down the west coast of Africa, through Cape Verde, across the Atlantic to French Guyana and Venezuela (where they had some crazy encounters with pirates), Columbia, and through the Panama Canal. They then had passed through the Galápagos Islands before heading for Tahiti, and finally wound up in the Marquesas, where they had been for two years when I met them. They didn't have jobs, but rather used their boat to host guests, and to teach sailing to generate enough income to live and maintain their boat.
I was impressed at how efficiently they used everything they had. They fished with spearguns, harvested wild fruits and vegetables, grew their own herbs on the deck to cook with, and were clever about repurposing any materials they could find. I went down to the harbor to meet them, even though I wasn’t planning to stay with them until the following night. Frank collected me from the pier with his zodiac and brought me out to their boat, where we spent the afternoon talking and getting to know one another. They invited me to stay for supper and I graciously accepted. Out came a big bottle of salted mutton from a sheep that Frank had shot with an arrow on one of the other islands, butchered in the jungle, and preserved with salt. They cooked this with rice and onions and a banana chutney that they had also made. The meat was tough, but very flavorful. I helped by chopping up the vegetables, and donating my cucumber so we could have a small something fresh.
They asked me if I had an interest in sailing to Tahuata the following day, which I immediately agreed to; it was a chance to see one of the more rustic islands, and one that I hadn’t expected to visit on this trip. The sail took approximately four hours, and we spent two nights in a quiet bay on the western side of Tahuata, an experience I will speak about in more detail in later sections.
FRANK & CELINE
on board the kaveka
After we sailed back from Tahuata, I stayed with Frank and Celine on their boat for a few nights more, moored in Atuona harbor. On one of the days, I asked Frank if he had an interest in joining me to explore the north end of Hiva Oa, as Celine had left to attend a class she was taking on boat engine maintenance. We took the zodiac to shore, where we went first to have a shower at the pier – and by shower, I mean a spigot of cold water behind a cement wall. It felt good, though; it was my first freshwater shower in four days. We walked into Atuona and I rented a car for the day, which cost 10,000 XFP for 24 hours (around $100 US), expensive, but worth it. We drove up to the north end of the island, which was quite arid and dry, and we continually pulled off the road so I could photograph the views or so we could hike down hidden trails to find ancient tikis or petroglyphs hidden in the jungle. The roads were horrible: unpaved, rocky, and very very steep. Our rental car was good enough, but lacked pep, meaning most of our day was spent driving slowly in 2nd gear. However, it was cool to see the terrain of Hiva Oa, and to appreciate how isolated each of the tiny villages was, trapped in a way because of the cliffs dividing each bay and valley. A couple of the villages were absolutely beautiful, with fruit trees, flowering bushes, and fancy chickens running around as if they owned the island. Everywhere we saw the wooden trestles that are used to dry copra (coconut flesh), and as we passed them, the air was filled with the rich scent of overripe coconut. On our way back, we stopped at the Atuona cemetery so I could see the grave of the famous painter Paul Gaugin, who was buried there in the early 1900s.
Kaveka at anchor
Paul Gauguin’s grave
On my last morning with Frank and Celine, they told me that they had heard that a couple of Americans on a small sailboat had become worried that French customs would search their boat, so they had apparently dumped a couple of guns overboard into the bay, including a Kalashnikov. This news got both of them very excited for some reason, and Frank spent most of the morning snorkeling around their boat in the harbor with a big magnet on a string trying to fish for this gun. He told me he wanted to try hunting pigs with it. What a crazy world!
Driving through Hiva Oa