Day 4 - Saturday, Oct. 19 - Hiva Oa

Our destination:  across the bay

Rainfall in the night.  Breakfast with Catherine and Philippe, who are leaving today for other islands and snorkeling.  Me?  A quiet morning before an afternoon trip to ceremonial ruins.

       The maid comes to do the room just as I head for the pool (whose water is much cooler than the ocean).  As I swim, the little girl from yesterday’s excursion comes up, still wearing the bone turtle necklace she bought on the island.  They’re inseparable, those two, even when swimming.  She’s also leaving today, with her brother, parents and grandparents.  Either a new batch will arrive or I’ll have the whole hotel almost to myself (which I doubt).

Upeke

       It rains off and on - to varying degrees - throughout the morning, the whole valley shrouded in clouds, winds rising and falling.  The maid gone, my new friends off to the airport, my magazine read, I sit on the porch overhanging the valley and watch line after line of white wave-crest run inexorably to the beach below.  Marquesans live at a slower pace; things don’t seem “urgent” here.  There’s a different mind set, one not easily adopted by a city person, but I’m starting to get it.  Is this what seduced Brel, compared to his bourgeois childhood in a wealthy work-ethic Belgian family, and after all those years throwing up in theater wings waiting to go on?  This timelessness?  He’d started out sailing around the world, but dropped anchor here and stayed.  He didn’t know he had cancer when he set sail.  That was still to come.  Near the end of his life, he flew back to France to cut one last record... and returned to be buried here.  On it, these lyrics:  “Faut-il que je vous dise / gémir n’est pas de mise / aux Marquises.”  (Let me tell you, / people just get on with life / in the Marquesas.)

After a light lunch, an excursion to Taa’Oa Valley.  We take two cars:  Hei with a new group of eight who just arrived and me alone with Alain.  It’s not far, just across the bay, but I’ve been warned to take mosquito spray, and I’m soooo glad I did!  It’s totally necessary in this almost-jungle high up at the end of the road.  There are visible clouds of mosquitos.

       The ceremonial site of Upeke up the valley from the  ocean was built around 1200 A.D. based on what has been found so far.  But there may be more buried below that, just as there is in Mexico’s Mayan ruins.  Evidently archaeologists haven’t had their way with it yet.  It reminds me in a way of Teotihuacan:  a rectangular open area with the ruins of small buildings on either side and at the ends.  Everything is built out of black basalt, except for one wall of reddish stone, the same rock as the hats of the tikis on Rapa Nui.  Yet another similarity between the two islands.
       There were sacrifices here, performed on rectangular platforms, and mostly of enemies.  First the poor victim was kept in a rectangular space in the end platform made of huge basalt rocks; it was a mere hole where he could only lie flat.  The roof opening was then closed with another stone.  The prisoner remained buried alive until the sacrifice, where he was killed either slowly by strangulation or mercifully by a rock blow to the head.  Victims were never women or children, neither of which weren’t even allowed on-site.

       These ruins also include round basalt pits, used to store food.  That came in handy in times of drought, which occurred regularly.

       The king lived uphill, above all this, close to the tiki, a short, squarish carved stone.  It looks like a face but is so worn it’s hard to tell.  Farther uphill, there’s only the land of my guide Alain, a wood-carver who has planted all kinds of exotic trees on his property:  sandalwood, rosewood... 

     On the way back downhill, Hei stops at the first platform to demonstrate one of the sports of the Marquesas:  lifting a round 150-kg stone.  Amazingly, he lifts it up with great effort, then hefts it onto his shoulder before dropping it with a thud that resonates through the earth.  Kind of like the Highland games, or more appropriately the contests on Easter Island that Hugo told us about when I was there.  After all, his people - the people of Rapa Nui - came from Polynesia.  And before that all Polynesians are thought to have come from... Taiwan!

       Along the road, Hei stops to pick some grapefruits off a tree and we head for the coast.  He prepares them for the others - new arrivals - while I walk the sands, making sure to avoid the stinging jellyfish which Alain has pointed out, and stare out at the huge combers crashing to shore.

       Back at the Lodge, at the pool for a quick swim, I meet Johann, a new arrival.  Then it’s dinner and bed.  Tomorrow is a big all-day trip!