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Date: 11 Apr 2008 21:41:00
Title: Hanavave Bay, Fatu Hiva Island, Marquesas
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10:27.881S  138:40.697W
 
Last Friday (4/4) we sailed the thirty-five or so miles southeast from Hanatefau Bay on Tahuata Island to Hanavave Bay on Fatu Hiva Island.  Normally, it would take us five hours or so to sail thirty-five miles, but because we were sailing straight into the prevailing wind doing the long-forgotten zig-zag sideways crawl, it took us close to nine hours.  We've been so spoiled with relatively smooth downwind sailing that the upwind sail that day felt a bit uncomfortable and even the boat wasn't too happy about continuously crashing into and through the waves splashing salt water all over itself.  We did survive the upwind sail though, and were rewarded with the most fantastic scenery the Marquesas have to offer.
 
Hanavave Bay or the 'Bay of Virgins' as it is sometimes called, is billed as the most beautiful bay in the Marquesas, and graces the cover of several of the guide books we have for the area.  After having visited eight bays in the Marquesas so far, we would say that the Bay of Virgins beats them all hands down when it comes to pure majesty.  Pictures 1, 2 and 3 below show the bay as we approached, anchored, and motored to shore in the dinghy.  Again, the pictures don't quite do the scenery justice (especially after dumbing them down for the web), but hopefully they'll give you the general idea of the place.  To us, it felt like we had dropped into the Lord of the Rings movie set, and several of the elves were going to appear from behind the rock spires at any moment.  None did, but maybe we just weren't paying attention at the right time?
 
Upon arrival in the bay, we noticed three rally boats were present along with seven other non-rally boats.  Taking advantage of a golden opportunity, we loaded twenty-five bananas and fifteen limes into each of three bags, put the dinghy in the water and delivered the fruit to Nutella (Spanish), Ideal and Lady Kay (both British).  All three thanked us and thought we were doing them a big favor when in fact it was really them doing us the big favor by putting a dent in the six hundred pounds of fruit ripening fast and attracting bees in our cockpit.
 
We learned from Lady Kay that although there were no restaurants in the small village, there was a woman who had offered to cook dinner for them in her family's house that night for a fee.  The concept sounded good to us so we went to visit the woman at her house in the village to make our 'reservation' for that night.  When six o'clock arrived, we joined up with the three crew from Lady Kay (and later three from Nutella as well), parked the dinghy behind the small breakwall, crawled up onto the concrete wharf (not easy at low tide) and walked up the main concrete village road.  Two women approached us and asked if we needed help finding our way.  Once it was determined that Kathie was the woman we were looking for, one of the women quietly guided us through the dark village to Kathie's house.  Along the way she broke a few small branches off a particularly lovely shrub and offered them to me.  They are still looking quite nice in a vase on the boat.
 
We arrived at our dining destination, which was the open front porch of a small, tidy house - set up with two tables pushed together, flowered plastic table cloths and a medium sized fluorescent light (similar to one that might be hanging in your garage) for ambiance.  Everyone had a mismatched plate and a fork.  We asked for a knife, and did receive one.  Just one.  So we snickered about it and proceeded to share the one knife as needed.  There were about nine different dishes.  All of them local recipes made from local ingredients, most of them excellent.  There was grilled fish (the whole fish, head and all), barbequed goat (no, it didn't taste like chicken - tasted more like lamb and was quite excellent), raw fish marinated in lime and soaked in coconut milk (Don and I were not brave enough to try it, but the Brits said it was good), a kind of coleslaw made from papaya, grilled breadfruit (not my favorite, but the breadfruit did taste strangely like bread), some kind of spiced chicken, rice, bread, yams and chunks of sweet grapefruit for dessert.  We brought our own wine and compared boat stories with the other boaters.  Like, how best to try and sleep when underway and the boat is rolling side-to-side a good forty-five degrees.  Which, by the way, the crew from Nutella suggests sleeping cross-wise in the bunk so the roll affects you head to toe instead of side to side.  An interesting concept.
 
Towards the end of the meal, the man of the house played guitar for us and also displayed his incredible rosewood and stone carving work.  Although tempted, we didn't buy anything this time.  So ended our first truly local meal.
 
The next morning all the anchored boaters were greeted by a pod of spinner dolphins that came into the bay for a visit and a show.  These dolphins are smaller than those we've seen before, and black in color.  The acrobatics they performed for us were amazing and definitely more complicated than the usual dolphin maneuvers.  These guys propelled themselves out of the water several feet, completing triple flips and quadruple twists - all in a matter of seconds.  Just incredible.  Some of the boaters closed in on the performers in their dinghies and others slipped into the water and were able to get very close as the dolphins swam and jumped and twisted right next to them.  The show was so close to our boat all we had to do was sit on the deck and watch.  The performance went on for a good half-hour, and in that time I snapped about fifty pictures -  only two of which actually caught the dolphins in action (the remaining 48 show a nice view of the water splash after the dolphin disappeared under the water).  Picture 4 below is one of those two.
 
Later that day, we put on our socks and sneakers (first time for socks in months! it felt really strange) and headed to shore to hike up to the 200 foot waterfall we had heard about.  The supply ship had arrived in the bay that afternoon and was unloading supplies onto a small barge that ferried them to shore.  This being a big event, the entire population of the village had turned out and was down by the wharf watching the supplies come in.  We happened to arrive in our dinghy just as all of this was going on and had to thread our way through the watching villagers to get to the main road leading out of the village. As we walked through the 'crowd' (not all that many people), we stuck out like the tourists that we are with our socks and sneakers and big hats and cameras and sunglasses, and many of the kids approached us asking for 'bo bo' (candy).  We didn't have any, but didn't feel too badly.  Most of the kids that approached us looked like they had gotten plenty of 'bo bo' from other boater/tourists that had come before us.
 
We followed the narrow concrete road to the edge of the village, and started to make our way up and out of the valley.  Picture 5 is a view of the stream that runs through the village with a few houses nearby.  Everything was so green and lush that every step along the way would have made a pretty picture.  Up we went, beyond the end of the concrete road, turning off the two-track dirt road onto a one-track path leading through the forest.  The path got narrower, steeper and more rocky as we went along until it almost completely disappeared and we were left to scramble up rocks, boulders,  over tree stumps and through rainforest foliage looking for signs that we were still on the right path.  Occasionally the path was marked by a few stones stacked on one another, and after a while we could hear local kids yelling as they played in the pool at the foot of the waterfall.  Picture 6 shows Don trekking through the forest.  Just as we approached the waterfall, the local kids were packing up and leaving.  Some saw us coming through the trees and bellowed, 'Touristas!' to their friends.  We weren't sure if this was a warning or just a general proclamation to their friends, but we felt our arrival had certainly been properly announced.  We arrived at the base of the waterfall after our one and a half hour, extremely sweaty trek, and were a bit underwhelmed.  The waterfall was as tall as we had read, but there was so little water trickling down (it's dry season here in the Marquesas), it was tough to tell that it was a waterfall.  Also, the pool at the bottom wasn't necessarily something we wanted to swim in.  It certainly wasn't polluted, but the water was murky and we had heard there were many crayfish, so we didn't go for a dip.  After swimming in clear turquoise water for five months, we have a low tolerance for murk.  Picture 7 is the upper half of the waterfall (it was too tall to fit in one picture and the stream bed was too treacherous to try and scramble down for a better picture).  We sat for a bit enjoying the solitude (like we don't already get enough of that on the boat) and then made our way back down.
 
That about sums up our stay on Fatu Hiva.  The next day (Sunday, 4/6) we planned to sail the forty or so miles back to relative civilization on Hiva Oa to take care of some internet stuff and buy more giant bread.  More on that later.
Anne
 
 

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