Jackamy - 4x4 tour around Nuka Hiva

4x4 tour around Nuka Hiva

Jackamy

Paul & Derry Harper

Thu 15 Apr 2010 03:31

We booked a guided tour around the island for 8 of us, Blue Magic, Bionic and Jackamy, Miss Tippy chose to hire a car and drive themselves but we thought we'd probably get lost doing that and we wouldn't have the local knowledge as to what we were driving past or looking at. So first thing Tuesday morning we all piled into a pick-up with our tour guide Jocelyne to set off and explore the island. The winding roads took us to the village of Tai Pi Vai, the 'Valley of the Cannibals' made famous by Herman Melville in his book "Taipee". The traditional activities of vanilla harvesting and copra production flourish in the fertile and luxurious valley along with crustacean fishing. We even saw a man fishing for eels in a river - crazy man! All the villages on the island have an infirmary, a city hall, a school and a church. The large church which is apparently full every sunday was very pretty and filled with many intricate wood and stone carvings. Traditionally the best sculpture and wood carvings have come out of the Marquesas, where fine tiki (sacred statues), bowls, mortars and pestles, spears and clubs are carved from rosewood, tou wood or in stone.

A view of Taiohoe Bay

A mango tree and a hibiscous tree

A view of three anchorages on the South East of Nuka Hiva

Taipivai Valley - hundreds and hundreds of coconut trees

Drying out the coconut for the copra

The village church

The bell tower and local houses

Catching eels!

From there we climbed the mountains to the centre of the island, where we saw two huge waterfalls, Teuakueenui and Mahuiki. Unfortunately as it hasn't rained for 6 months there wasn't much to see water wise but they were still impressive. Jocelyne stopped off at numerous points along the roads for us to take pictures of the beautiful views and to tell us bits of information about all the vegetation and many more. We arrived on the other side of the island at Hati Heu in time for lunch at Chez Yvonnes. The town's focal point is the wooden church, and the tiny seafront mairie houses a small museum with a collection of traditional Marquesan artefacts. At the end of lunch Jocelyne used scraps from the kitchen to entice eels in the river. When she first mentioned this I don't think any of us expected what followed. A few 30 cm eels popped out to investigate but the metre long eel that clambered over the stones up the river stole the show. It was a horrible creature but very impressive!

Teuakueenui Waterfall

You can see the zig zag path down the mountain side that ancient Marquesans used to walk or ride up regularly - some still do use these paths

Views of Hati Heu Bay

Mark, Chrissy and Amy in the 4x4

The giant eel

Chez Yvonnes and the view

The village church

A statue of the Virgin Mary watches over Hatiheu from high up on a rocky mountain, probably some 500 metres high. When the statue was built ancient Marquesans would climb up the mountain with one piece of the statue at a time and understandably this took a long time to complete, I'd say it was worth it though, it's pretty spectacular. The downside is that every two years someone has to climb the mountain to paint the statue as she is white.

The statue on the mountain

After lunch it was back onto the dirt track, to climb the 490m Teavaitapuhiva Pass to enjoy the views once again. Shortly after leaving the village we stopped off at the Hikokua archaeological site where modern tikis have been added to the old ones, and the vast Kamuihei and Tahakia archaeological site. It is at these sites that cannibalistic sacrificial ceremonies took place right up into the 20th century. The stone 'tikis' serve as guardians to the ceremonial sites entry to which was taboo. Ceremonies were held at the Marae, sites where all important decisions were made, possibly 3 or 4 times a year. The marae had the essential function of allowing humans to communicate with the world of the Gods and ask them to influence events such as the quality of their harvests of successes at war. Only the priests would perform these rituals and to get results the priest would make offerings to the Gods. The best gifts would entice the Gods to be generous to men and the biggest gift that the Polynesians could give the Gods was human flesh in the form of human sacrifices. After the sacrifice had been made the priest and all high ranking Polynesians would eat the eyes because they believed this would give them knowledge, the heart as this would give them strength and the liver I can't remember why. Very very interesting!

Tweedledum and tweedledee entering the site

A tiki and a table for preparing the bodies

Another tiki

To the left is the platform where the ceremonies took place and to the right is the view of the site from the platform

The larger hole is where the men would be placed until one was chosen to be sacrificed and the smaller hole is where the chosen one would be made to wait

A rock covered in Petroglyphs. You can't see it too clearly but the right picture is a close up of one of the petroglyphs

Walking through the site to the priests home

A banyan tree - you can just about see Amy at the base of the tree in the right image so that you can get a feel for the size of it. Once the bones from the human sacrifice had been prepared they would be placed in the roots of these trees.

From here we began the car journey back to Taiohae with a few more stops to take in the scenery and enjoy a mango or two. The roads are lined with horses, cows, goats and chicken so there was always something new to look at. All of the horses are owned by someone and most were tied up on a grassy patch as were the cows. Riding horseback is the traditional method of transport and tracks are clearly visible in the mountain ridges which some Marquesans still use to travel from one valley to another. The goats and chickens roam free and if you can catch them you can eat them!