The Marquesas - Wild at heart

The craggy Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia have captivated anthropolgists, writers and artists alike writes AUDREY YOUNG.

It's Sunday morning mass in the Notre Dame des Marquesas, and four teenage girls try to slip in late during the first hymn. For their sins the girls are shown to the empty front row where they whisper and giggle their way through mass on Nuku Hiva Island, in the Marquesas, where the Church is as powerful a force as the landscape.

These are craggy, verdant and confusing islands: Spanish by name, French by rule and Polynesian by people. They are a part of French Polynesia, a three-hour flight north-east from Tahiti towards the equator.

It is where the French painter and writer Paul Gaugin spent his dying days.

One hundred years ago, these spirited girls would have been just the age to capture the desires of the Parisian dropout.

It is curious that the licentious Gaugin is such a heroic figure among the predominantly Catholic Marquesans. But Gaugin's complexity defies neat labelling.

He was something of a champion of his time, engaging in constant battle with the Christian missionaries and French authorities, both for himself and on behalf of the Marquesas.

He was as inscrutable as the Marquesas themselves.

Gaugin died in the home he called his House of Pleasure in 1903, aged 55, on another island in the Marquesas, Hiva Oa.

He finished his life being nursed for syphilis and a gammy leg by the last of his young mistresses, 14-year-old Marie-Rose Vaeoho, and thousands of tourists have made the pilgrimage to his grave.

French missionaries found success in the Marquesas and they were claimed by France in 1842.

The Marquesas have captivated anthropologists, writers and artists alike.

For such a remote and relatively unknown island group — the furthest from any continental landmass than any others — they have been famously chronicled.

Crosby Stills and Nash sang about sailing to the Marquesas in the Southern Cross.

The author of Moby Dick, Amer-ican Herman Melville, fled the brutal captain of a whaling ship in Taiohae in 1842.

He spent three weeks among a cannibalistic tribe in the Taipivai Valley, the basis for his first book, phonetically titled Typee, which was initially met with some disbelief back in New York.

Robert Louis Stevenson spent a month in 1888 sailing the Marquesas on the yacht Casco with his wife, two stepchildren and his elderly Scots mother.

The Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl spent a harrowing year living rough on Fatu Hiva Island with his new wife, Liv, in the late 1930s and based his book, Great was the Earth on the Seventh Day, on the honeymoon adventure.

Of the 12 islands in the Marquesas, only six are inhabited. They were originally called Te Henua Enata. But in 1595 a Spanish explorer, Alvaro de Mendana, renamed them the Marquesas, after the marquise of Mendoza, wife of the Viceroy of Peru.

All sorts of Polynesian migration theories abound. But the one with official currency in French Polynesia seeks to explain that Polynesians from Hawaii, Tahiti and New Zealand all have common Marquesan ancestors and similar language.

It holds that the migration began from South-east Asia in 10 to 15 BC and discovered the Solomons, Tonga and Samoa. The next migration about 1000 years later moved east towards the Cook Islands, the Marquesas and the Tuamotu atolls in French Polynesia. The next migration, 500 years later, headed in several directions to Hawaii, Easter Island, Tahiti, more of the Cooks and New Zealand.

Whatever the orgins of the people, the landscapes are vastly varying. The Marquesas are not the islands of bright blue lagoons.

They are the islands of sharp green peaks, heavily tattooed men, wild horses, stone tiki carvings and historic ceremon-ial meeting places, pa'e pa'e.

It's the place where old skulls can be found in the above-ground roots of giant banyan trees. And they were there as recently as December when a pile of old heads tumbled out after the roots of one such tree were destroyed by fire.

These days the dead are given Christian burials.

The cathedral is in Taiohae, the capital of Nuku Hiva Island. With a population of 1500 it is the biggest town in all six inhabited islands of the Marquesas totalling just 8000 people. It's a quiet village with no discernible shopping centre, just a few shops here and there.

Sunday mass is one of the big community events of the week. The other is the Saturday morning market starting in darkness at 5 am.

The village fishermen head out to sea on Friday night and by the time they return, the wharf is pumping to the sounds of a Jonah-style car stereo while the vegetable and delectable patisserie stalls get under way.

The centre of attention is the sea-haul of benito tuna, as big as snapper used to be. The women are as keen as the men at wielding the machete for filleting, weighing and buying at $7 a kilo.

Being a port town, Taiohae is the first landfall for Californian yachties heading out on their South Pacific cruises.

Rose Corson, a sparrow-like expat American in her autumn years, runs the yacht club. She also has her own private museum of artefacts including a fascinating U-shaped, neck-snapping club.

As the former owner of the hotel on the hill, she is the grande dame about the place of its reincarnation, a classy bungalow-style hotel that has been recently upgra-ded. It is perched on the side of the bay and bears the rather exhausting name of Hotel Keikahanui Nuku Hiva Pearl Lodge.

The hotel supplies an entertaining guide by the name of Teikimaakau-toua Hatuuku, or Pascal for short. The 28-year-old from the nearby island of Ua Pou is staunchly proud of the Marquesas. He used to be a guide on the ship Aranui and, like the best of guides, he is full of tales, old and new.

He recounts being on the Aranui when it discovered one of its passengers, a German fellow, was missing at one shore stop. The young locals thought he had run off with another woman. The old folk believed he had been eaten by a giant eel.

But Pascal suspected the man had met a watery death from the decks of the ship. After telling the missing man's wife that he was not to be found and ship was shoving off, she didn't blink an eye, he says, or shed a tear.

Cruise ship is a popular way to see the Marquesas. But the more thrilling journey is the brief helicopter flight to Taiohae. Instead of a three-hour drive from Nuku Hiva airport, it's a 10-minutes chopper flight over rugged mountains. The return journey surpasses the in-bound trip with an awfully close encounter with a 350m waterfall, Vaipo.

A must-see on Nuku Hiva is Hatiheu Bay, where Robert Louis Stevenson dropped anchor.

En route, it is necessary to pass through Taipivai Valley where Herman Melville stayed. But the exact site is not known. Tourism infrastructure seems to be developing slowly.

Pascal points to a spot of bush that he has been reliably informed marks the Melville abode.

Then he tenders his somewhat dubious evidence: he says he had been running a course recently for other guides and one of his students had made it his business to find out from the old folks of the valley just where Melville stayed.

Pascal double-checked with an old woman who confirmed the site. When he asked her how she knew, she said the guide had told her.

One couldn't be sure whether his was the true story or a joke he had picked up at guide school.

A dose of rain turned what might have been simply a bumpy ride to Hatiheu into an adventure of car-rally proportions: mud, slips, raging fords and downed power lines, but nothing the Land-Rover couldn't handle.

The roads are as rough as they can get and still get to be called roads.

We passed the bishop on the way. Pascal waved out but the bishop was not expected to wave back, he explained.

The journey was an ordeal but we were rewarded.

Hatiheu Bay turned out to be idyllic. The centrepiece was a large contemporary stone-platform pa'e pa'e adorned with a family of tiki stone carvings. With their backs to the sea, the bug-eyed tiki kept watch over the kids playing soccer in the grounds in front of the church.

Keeping tabs over it all was the Virgin Mary, a white 2m stone statue on an impossibly steep crag. It was carved limb by limb and roped up by a priest in 1872 to demonstrate that his God was stronger than that of the Marquesans'.

It was a hot, wet afternoon, and between showers parents spilled out from the bar to play petanque on the road while the tourists sampled the fresh fish platter at Chez Yvonne restaurant 100m away.

It had all the makings of a Gaugin canvas, minus the girls.

CASE NOTES:

Getting there: The Marquesas are a three-hour flight from Tahiti. Air New Zealand flies Auckland to Tahiti four times a week. Fares range from $900 to $1500 return, depending on when they are booked.

Qantas flies three times with fares ranging from $1000 to $1149. Air Tahiti flies to the Marquesas five times a week from Papeete. The return trip to Nuku Hiva from Tahiti is about $600.

The 10-minute helicopter ride from the Nuku Hiva airport across mountains to Taiohae costs $120, compared with a $70 three-hour trip by four-wheel-drive.

It isn't a cheap destination but Air New Zealand is considering a package deal.

Cruise ships also visit the Marquesas, the Aranui cargo/passenger ship (32 cabins) every three weeks and the Paul Gaugin (160 cabins), twice a year.

When: Being only 7 degrees below the equator, there is not a big climate range, though it is wetter from March to July. Average temperature, 28 deg C.

Getting around: Four-wheel-drive hire is essential for the rough inland roads.

Where to stay: Nuku Hiva's luxury hotel (starting at $420 a bungalow) on Nuku Hiva is Keikahanui Nuku Hiva Pearl Lodge, (689) 920 710, fax (689) 920 711, e-mail keikahanui@mail.pf

It also has a sister hotel on Hiva Oa, where Paul Gaugin lived. More modest hotels on Nuku Hiva include the Hotel Nuku Hiva Village Noa Noa, (689) 920 194, fax (689) 920 597, and Hotel Moana Nui, (689) 920 330, and fax (689) 920 002. There are also homestays and pensions.

Where to eat: Chez Yvonne in Hatiheu, an hour's adventurous drive from Taiohae.

What to do: Mountain safaris, visiting archaeological sites, horseriding, fishing, scuba diving.

Don't miss: Vehine and Michel's fresh cherry custard tart at the patisserie stall, Saturday morning market, Taiohae.

What to take: A French dictionary or phrasebook may help; insect repellent.

Contact: Tahiti Tourisme, 36 Douglas St, Ponsonby, Auckland, (09) 360 8880, fax 09 360 8891, e-mail lolac@tahiti-tourisme.co.nz