Local fishing is also popular, and Saturdays remain the busiest day at the harbor with the fish market raking in plenty of customers. These are the islands’ most authentic, wallet-friendly and social lodging options for visitors. Others have opened up their family homes as pensions. Many make a living from traditional wood or stone carving and hunting. Laid back locals can be found gathering to listen to strumming banjos while others crack nutshells on sidewalks. Most of Nuku Hiva’s buzz is at Taiohae bay’s cruise port, where yachts en route to Australia from America glide through the bay’s coastline – a glitzy contrast to the island scenes of villagers going about their day by horseback.ĭaily life here goes at its own pace. Notre Dame cathedral is a relatively new structure. Prices start from $50 for a return ticket. The journey to Hakaui begins with a scenic 40-minute boat ride from Taiohae bay, in which passengers come close to the island’s rocky and fortress like promontories. Led by Tangy, a native to the valley and his Croatian-born partner Ana, both are respected experts on the route. Guidance to the valley is strongly recommended with local tour operator Cannibal Art, which offers a two-day camping package at the cost of $150 per person. Endless streams of water drop from a height of 1,148 feet (250 meters), making this waterfall the tallest in French Polynesia. This iconic horsetail-type waterfall has formed within the midst of Hakaui valley’s jagged basalt peaks. The hallmark attraction is the hike to Vaipō waterfall in the ancient village of Hakaui. Many tracks on the island’s dedicated footpaths lead to mysterious traditional settlements and more spell-binding wonders of nature. There’s no public transportation from Taiohae to other parts of the island, so hiking is the top activity in Nuku Hiva. William Teikitohe, right, gives cultural tours of the island. With more of the new generation of Marquesans turning away from their roots, Teikitohe wants to preserve the importance of such sites. “It’s a rare place and it’s the only place where we can get the real essence of Marquesan culture,” he tells me. Having been born and raised in Nuku Hiva, Teikitohe’s reveres the site as sacred. William Teikitohe, a tour guide working for Le Nuku Hiva by Pearl Resorts, points out easy to miss archaeological remains including countless petroglyphs of animals and humans. Traditional culture is of prime importance here. Tiki statues carved out of stone stand outside of refurbished thatch-roof huts. Gigantic banyan trees form part of the majestic scenery of ancient marae temples and dozens of ceremonial stone platforms, known as paepae. Here games were played and human sacrifices made. This massive Tohua (open-air gathering place) was the center for clan festivities and is set amid the eerie forest grounds of a former ceremonial royal playground. Near Tiki Tuhiva is also the Tohua Koueva Archaeological Site, which has undergone a meticulous restoration to display what life was like for the ancient Marquesans long before the arrival of Europeans. Nuku Hiva is one of the remotest places on the planet. It’s a measure of how far-flung the individual islands of this archipelago are that the connecting Air Tahiti flight to Nuku Hiva Airport takes another four hours. It’s an eight-and-a-half-hour flight time from San Francisco International Airport to French Polynesia’s Tahiti Faa’a Airport. However, the journey to this paradise of seclusion is not straightforward. Possibly thanks to the remoteness there have been relatively few Covid cases among the population of just under 3,000 people. The islands have recently opened up once again to visitors, with tourists who have spent the previous 30 days in the United States now welcome. It is also the capital of the Marquesas Islands, one of the most untouched archipelagos on our planet. Tahiti and Bora Bora have long been the stars of French Polynesia, but Nuku Hiva basks in its own limelight as the second largest island in the country. The natural beauty of this landscape stretches out onto a kaleidoscope of cliffs, rocky peaks, deep bays and steep valleys. The view from the infinity pool in Le Nuku Hiva by Pearl Resorts, the only hotel on the island, is of the cobalt blue of Taiohae Bay. This South Pacific utopia is one of the world’s most remote locations and is an extraordinary part of the planet where a traveler can be as far from the crowds as it’s possible to be. For miles on end there are hardly any inhabitants in sight on the French Polynesian island of Nuku Hiva.
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