Fascinating Humanity

Adventures In The Marquesas Islands

In 1982, assigned by National Geographic to produce a chapter of one of their upcoming books, Secret Corners of The World, I spent two months photographing the six inhabited islands of the little-known Marquesas Archipelago. Below the following photos, and dealing with Fatu Hiva Island, are the chapter’s first three pages.

French Polynesia. Marquesas Archipelago. Hiva Oa Island.

Polynésie française. Archipel des Marquises. IIe d’Hiva OA.

Fatu Hiva Island. Hanavave Bay

IIe de Fatu Hiva. Baie d’Hanavave

Fatu Hiva Island. Hanavave Bay at sunset

IIe de Fatu Hiva. Baie d’Hanavave au coucher du soleil

Fatu Hiva Island

Ile de Fatu Hiva

Fatu Hiva Island. Rim of ancient crater. Wild horse.

IIe de Fatu Hiva. Bord d’un ancien cratère. Cheval sauvage.

Hiva Oa Island. Paul Gauguin's grave
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Ile d'Hiva Oa. Tombe de Paul Gauguin

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A setting full moon, flooding the ocean with silvery light, is outlining to the west a scene of nightmare: the island of Tahuata, a gigantic black fortress brooding over the waves. To the east her pallid brightness robs Mohotani of all mystery. Hiva Oa, which we left two hours earlier, sinks behind us; and moonset will come before we reach Fatu Hiva, most southerly of the Marquesas group. Already the east grows pale. On Tahuata the blacks and whites turn gray, and the phantoms vanish.

Our small fishing boat is leaping nimbly over the hard-pounding swell. My fellow passengers--four women from Fatu Hiva and a French official on a tour of duty--sit in sleepy silence.

The sun rises, and with it rise wind and waves. Whoever called this ocean Pacific? Three of the passengers are leaning overboard. A crewman sloshes bucketfuls of seawater on the deck to clean it, carelessly soaking my feet. "Are you a sailor?" he asks. "You hold well your stomach!"

I shrug off the compliment, for I am a landlubber who has taken a seasickness pill. A Belgian who has wandered over three continents and who has come to the Marquesas to sample a different wilderness. Having lived in Colombia for eight years, I have often stood on the South American shore of the Pacific and felt the pull of its horizon.

A Spanish mariner, Alvaro de Mendana de Neira, felt that restlessness four centuries ago. Sailing from Peru in 1595, he discovered Fatu Hiva and the three other southern islands of the group. Two hundred years would pass before the rest were discovered-by the Englishman James Cook, the American Joseph Ingraham, and the Frenchman Etienne Marchand. Of the ten notable islands, four-including Mohotani-are uninhabited today.

Four wave-tossed hours bring us to the tormented volcanic relief of Fatu Hiva. In its lee we enter quiet water, yet have a precarious landing at Omoa, the main village. As we anchor, a sleek outrigger races toward us, one man steering, two paddling. They take us ashore on the rush of a large wave-and we almost founder. Luckily, my photographic equipment is in watertight plastic bags. Yelling and bailing and pulling wildly on the paddles, our Marquesans get us back on course. In the shallows we all jump out to drag the canoe up the strand for unloading.

Unlike other isles of Polynesia, the Marquesas are not protected by coral reefs, and approaching them is often a delicate enterprise. Their isolation, rugged terrain, and lack of development increase the surprises they set in the way of seasoned travelers. I learn this at once.

Some spectators have quietly watched our arrival. One refers me, for accommodation, to the local shopkeeper and lends me a wheelbarrow to transport my baggage. Nobody cares to help me, even for money. So I trundle my luggage up the village's main alley, between two rows of lush gardens exploding with the colors of hibiscus and bougainvillea, past brightly painted plywood bungalows. I find my man in his well-stocked shop, and follow the girl whom he has told to show me a house.

"Here it is," she says, leading me into a rather grubby bungalow. "I will clean it for you." She says "pour toi," not "pour vous," for Marquesans do not bother with the formalities of French. And picking a broom from a dusty corner, she sweeps the floor, the curtains, the table, and the bed.

Two Frenchmen live in Omoa, and I meet them that day: They are, each in his own way, typical of white men who settle in the South Seas.

Lionel, in his early thirties, married a Fatu Hivan while serving in the French navy and has retired here to a rented house. Full of energy and dreams, he plans to build a house and cultivate land that his wife owns in a distant valley. "I work alone," he says. "I have so much time on my hands that I need no help. I want to buy a secondhand bulldozer to open a road to my wife's land. Then I will plant fruit trees and travel to Australia, the United States, and Japan to market my crop."

Yet the Fatu Hivans have more land than they can use, and live comfortably with little effort. How does Lionel hope to get his fruit picked one day? Have these islands not deceived him, as they deceive others?

Philippe, 27, sailed alone from France on a six-meter yacht two years ago. Now he is trying his hand at agriculture. But having no Marquesan wife, he has no land, and without money he cannot buy any. Indeed, much land is held jointly by members of very large families, and strangers with money may not find suitable land for sale. Mostly he works as a copra share-cropper--gathering coconuts, cutting them up for drying. One morning I follow him as he goes out to harvest wild coffee.

Leaving at seven, we climb for an hour over risky terrain, along a steep and muddy path overlooking a sheer drop, up a network of banyan roots clutching a 25-foot cliff, finally up a 20-foot rope. Then Philippe hacks his way to the wild trees to pick the scanty berries. He earns the equivalent of $15 for a 12-hour day. He makes much less on his other crops. Perhaps, as rumor says, it is unrequited love that keeps him here.

I rent an outrigger and sail along the cliff-bound coast to see the spectacular bay of Hanavave, also called Bay of the Virgins, where pinnacles of basalt guard the entrance to a high-walled valley. Shyly, women of Hanavave show me how they pound bark to make tapa cloth; and a young man agrees to put me on the way to Omoa, for I want to walk back across the highlands, remnants of two concentric volcanic craters.

He leads me to the foot of the inner cone and shows me the path. "You cannot get lost," he says. "Only remember, when you come to a fork, to take the path to the right. You should reach Omoa in a few hours."

I thank him and walk up--through mape forest, then over low ferns--the mountain trail which offers breathtaking views over the island and the sea. At the base of a deep canyon the houses of Hanavave shrink to the size of dice. The landscape is at once beautiful and somber, charged with foreboding. Like the other islands of the archipelago, Fatu Hiva once had a larger and happier population. Famines, intertribal wars, and above all the diseases brought by the white man wiped out 90 percent of it. And the dark valleys seem burdened with terrible memories.

I lose the sense of time and distance. When I reach a fork, I veer right and down through prickly shrubs. Across the valley, white goats balance on a narrow ledge to browse. Like other "wild" animals of the Marquesas--cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and cats--they descend from domestic stock introduced by Europeans. Below me, horses are grazing. At length I realize that I am following a path they opened, not a traveler's route.

I climb the mountain again. Another fork takes me on a new leg-chafing expedition to nowhere. Back on the ridge, a white veil of rain sweeps over me, torrential and cold. The path becomes slippery as I skirt abysses, then so overgrown as to be almost impassable. It turns into a narrow gutter, wide enough for one foot. To my right rises the mountain wall; bushes force me away from it. I stumble and fall against the shrubbery on the other side.

No, into a void! I see nothing under me except the crown of a tree. My heart jerks as I scramble for a handhold. I check my fall, and, with camera bag heavy on my arm and sweat cold on my skin, I pull myself back onto the trail.

Shaken, I return to open heights to orient myself. At last, through the pouring rain, I can descry my path far ahead. The light is dimming, but the landscape is so beautiful that I cannot make myself hurry. Suddenly, seven white cows appear on a hill. They charge toward me ribs against ribs, agile as fighting bulls. Luckily, they veer away. They are domestic stock--that is, they have owners--but they are dangerous. To kill them for the table is the work of a hunter. The great hunt for "barnyard" animals strikes me as characteristic of the Marquesas in its oddity.