Mange. Mange.

Hanamoenoa. Closest to the beach again.

At Hanamoenoa Bay on Tahuata, we lounged about for two days enjoying crystal clear water above white sand dotted with bits of coral. We plunged into the water numerous times throughout the day, splashing about and drinking coconut juice; there were several other boats there and in some hilarious ways it was rather like a pool party. We might be reclined in the cockpit, enjoying the shade produced by our bedsheet bimini when suddenly fellow cruisers Steve and Drew would saunter by in the water, just putting around for the hell of it with a snorkel on, and we might chat for a while before they'd splash away again. Likewise, we passed the time gazing at sea creatures or swimming about merrily. Ashore there was a fine white sand beach, but not much else except coconuts. We collected plenty of the latter and found that, in addition to providing a refreshing beverage, coconuts are great pool toys. We invented coconut water polo, where you start in the water at opposite ends of the boat and battle to get the coconut from the middle to the other side; we also found a good deal of entertainment in diving coconuts, which are incredibly buoyant, to the sea floor and watching them race back to the surface. Needless to say, it was quite refreshing to be at an anchorage where it was safe to swim. The wisdom around here says that black sand beaches or murky water means sketchy swimming due to sharks; there's also the fact of waste from cruising sailboats to consider.

So we were happy to be there for a while, but we soon moved down to the next spot- Vaitapu Bay, also known as Resolution Bay, a name given by Captain Cook when we refitted his ship (the Resolution) there a couple hundred years ago. There we found the small town of Vaitapu, and an awesome local family.

Tahuata from the water.

We left Hanamoenoa in the evening and it only took twenty minutes or so to get to our next spot. By the time we got anchored and went to shore, the sun was just going down. We left the dinghy at the quay and walked past a line of fuel drums awaiting the next supply ship visit on the way toward the village, just a hundred or so yards in the only direction the road went. We walked past a house, then a beat-up old single-room church and were almost to the first cross road, still not five minutes from the quay, when an older Marquesian guy with shaggy hair and a long beard streaked with white called out asking if we were Americans. We confirmed his suspicion and he waved us over with a big upward swing of his arm. His name was Iona; he had a big belly and a jolly smile. He sat under a tarp awning next to a small, cheap pool table around which were several people of various ages playing or watching. The tarp kept off the rare billiards table rain and castings from the huge breadfruit and mango tress in the yard. There was a house just behind with a big open patio where there were a few more people hanging out. Before long, we were each in turn getting owned at billiards by an 11 year old named John and drinking piahana with our new friends. They were incredibly hospitable. Most everyone there was related in some way or another and by the end of the evening, Jimi, the 25 year-old nephew of Iona, invited us to his house up the hill the following day to see his plantation and harvest some fruit.

Little John running the table.

We met Jimi the following morning and he drove us up to his house with John, his brother who had beaten us a pool the night before, and Pierre, their uncle, who is 29 years old. We ate poisson cru and fried fish and Jimi joked that he ate ten fish for breakfast and ten for lunch (he was only sort of joking, though these were little reef fish). Of course, he ate his breakfast at 4 am, unlike us white boys. Thus, he mainly watched as we ate and chatted. The food was never-ending though and it was insisted that we eat until we could eat no more. No more fish on your plate? Fear not- Jimi or Pierre will load you up with some more fish and provide the encouraging instructions: “Mange. Mange.” We'd spent enough time with Marquesans by now to understand the French word for “eat”, though it was nonetheless accompanied by a hand with fingers pointing up and brought together being waved toward the mouth. So we ate as best we could.

John hanging out with the "pet" pig. We're
pretty sure being the pet means better food but
still certain death.

Bocce in the yard. Taylor vs. Jimi.

We then spent the next couple hours wandering around his land collecting fruit. He has an incredible array of fruit trees and we soon had a huge sack with papaya, pomplemousse, eggplant, oranges, limes and bananas. Jimi also raises pigs and we got a huge kick out of watching all the pigs running around.

After we had been given all that fruit, we offered to buy some beers to enjoy for the afternoon. So Jimi drove us down to the store and we bought a case of Hinano and took it back up to the house. The next several hours were spent drinking beer and playing bocce (John also beat all of us at that, though he couldn't beat Jimi). It was great talking to those folks, too. They had a little bit of English, which really helped. Jimi told us about all of his tattoos and about Marquesan culture. He tried to teach us a bit of the language, too, but we were terrible, often unable to repeat anything longer than a few syllables. We were pretty stoked to learn, though, that originally there was no Marquesan word for “thank you”. He explained that everything was shared, that whatever you had belonged to everyone, so there was no need for such a word. We thought that was pretty cool, if less practicable since the arrival of the white man and all his stuff.

Papayas and our friend Jimi.

Jimi hunting bananas in his ample plantation.

Bananas drying. Early: whole bananas (front, light color),
Mid: sliced in half after a week (back, darker), End: finished
drying (front right of table).

Though we had basically been eating continuously (there was a large table of bananas in different stages of the drying process that we were encouraged to vulture around), we eventually ate a lunch of chicken and spaghetti prepared by Jimi's wife. When I finished my first helping of spaghetti I looked up to see Pierre holding a big fistful of noodles just above the pot on the table, motioning the noodles toward my plate and saying, his own mouth full, “Mange. Mange. You eat.” Alright, fine, I thought, I'll eat some more. This went on until everything was gone. By then it was 2 or 3 in the afternoon and we were totally wiped out; we had done nothing but eat and drink all day and we could barely move. Jimi drove us back down toward the water. We had found out earlier that he was an avid spearfisherman, so we asked if he would take us out the next day. We arranged to meet in the morning at his uncle's house.

Dana carting off some of the harvest.

We sauntered over weary-eyed in the morning and found Jimi sitting on the beach with his mother waiting for us. The latter sat on a rock in front of a large pile of beautiful brown-speckled cowrie shells, the largest I had ever seen. As is so often the case, while I stared in wonder at the beauty of these tropical gastropods, the Marqeusan woman absentmindedly obliterated the creatures between rocks- evidently the foot is eaten raw or doused in coconut milk (what food can't be improved by a coconut bath?). My peculiar adoration of marine invertebrates thus stimulated, I inquired as to what other creatures were harvested from the intertidal. I learned that large limpets, also gastropods, were pried from rocks, their layers of armor compromised and their flesh also eaten raw or, naturally, with coconut milk.

Soon we gathered the necessary things for spearfishing, namely the weapons, snorkels, fins, a floating plastic tub for the harvest, and a young Marquesan lad apparently engaged by Jimi to swim around towing said plastic tub while we fished. He did this with impressive indifference; we were in the water for a couple of hours and he splashed slowly and merrily behind us, tied to the tub of dead and dying fish, issuing not a word of complaint or boredom. As for our spearmanship, the learning curve was evident. Jimi pointed out several fish that we could target without fear of ciguatera poisoning (this local knowledge is critical to the safe eating of reef fish). I myself could see one of the approved species in high numbers and thus chose to focus entirely on that- a small sergeant-major-like fish but with black and white stripes rather than black and yellow. I soon began to stray from the others as I strained to verify my abilities as a top predator species. I was using my Hawaiian sling, which is a long pole-spear with a shock chord anchored to the non-business end such that one can loop the chord between thumb and forefinger before cocking the spear back against the bungee and gripping the pole to hold it cocked. As soon as the grip on the pole is released, the spear sling-shots toward it's target, or to the space the target was at before it executed with ample time to spare its escape plan, or to the space a few feet away from the target, or directly into coral or sand. It's really quite difficult to make contact. Those fish are remarkably fast. Even as my aim started to improve, they would jet away easily before my javelin of death arrived. It was perturbing to find such difficulty in killing these fish, but then, they literally spend their entire lives thus engaged as prey, constantly vigilant, always skirting death, sneaking a nibble at some algae when able.

I wouldn't be out-witted by them, though, even if their experience was greater than mine. I began to understand the nature of the game. The miniscule brain that fits between those big beady black eyes is apparently large enough to process that when a big animal sits staring at you and your friends from the surface for a few minutes then descends directly towards you before sending some fast-moving apparatus out ahead of itself, the proper reaction is to swim away rapidly. So I wasn't exactly a ninja fish at first, but soon I learned that spearing was easy when in the right position- the game required to achieve that position was the tricky part. I began to pick my targets out from farther away as I slowly skidded across the surface; sometimes it was easier to go for fish in twenty or thirty feet of water for, since they stayed near the bottom, the long approach allowed for more of the requisite acting. Once I'd acquired a target, I would relax all my muscles for a few moments before taking a deep breath and angling toward the depths. As my fins broke the surface and followed me down, I would cock the sling then equalize the increasing pressure in my sinus. I would deliberately swim toward the fish I was targeting for a few seconds but without looking at him, then I would change course several degrees toward the opposite direction he was facing. This was the most critical step and, if executed properly, noticeably pacified the fish. With a couple of proper course changes and keeping eyes away from the prey, I could get in close without causing mass hysteria. Then I started getting hits. The first was quite successful, all three prongs of the spear's trident piercing clear through the fish's body. I swam the unfortunate bugger over to the bucket, which bobbed a bit as its tow line was tugged by the playfully flipping and flopping Marquesan boy.

I was encouraged by finally having nabbed some prey, but I soon found that I had only discovered a portion of the challenges of spearfishing. Suffice to say there were several fish left that day hiding under rocks with one, two, three, even four new holes clear through their bodies; I learned the incredible fight that remained in even a fish that had been so impaled. I witnessed the brutal nature of the reef, as the companions with whom a fish had been nibbling only moments prior would turn and begin to bite at the friend that had acquired bloody holes in his body. It is not an easy place to live, though clearly the woes of the hunter pale in comparison to the hardships of the hunted.

Jimi fixing my sling after our outing.

In the end, I contributed four or so fish to the bobbing plastic bin, Dana and Taylor each speared a few and Jimi speared the remaining dozen. We brought the bin back up to the house and set about preparing a feast with Pierre, who hadn't been able to come fishing because of a leg fracture he sustained playing soccer, Jimi's wife, little John, and whatever other family members were hanging around. I scaled fish with a piece of wood with two bottle caps nailed to the end (the best fish-scaling tool I've ever used) while Jimi and his wife cleaned them. Their method for cooking varied by species. The black and white striped type and one or two types of trigger fish went to the frying pan. The red goat-fish and small snapper-like fish were given the usual coconut bath and eaten raw. There was also black-tip reef shark, which had been caught the day before by another family member and was delicious eaten raw with coconut and lime. We were entertained to find that the traditional methods for extracting coconut milk had given way to the modern devices: the coconuts were shucked by a good run in the washing machine, then the meat was ground out of the shells using a large rounded-cylindrical bit with small barbs cut all over that was spun by a large electric motor harvested from god knows what. It was fast, though, and we enjoyed participating in the process. The resulting meal was as epic as ever, too, and we were given to mange until our bellies would hold no more. Once again, a lack of any part of the meal on one's plate meant an instant refill at the hands of Jimi and Pierre. Whole fish flopped onto the plate while you weren't looking, steamed breadfruit, boiled bananas, strings of shark meat and plenty of purple drink to wash it down. Again, we had spent the majority of the day in the harvesting, preparing and consuming of food and were, by the end, totally exhausted and sated.

We thanked the family endlessly for their kindness and walked down to the beach where the dinghy lay waiting and where loads of children were playing in the water. As we approached, Jimi's son, who had been splashing in the shallows, ran out to meet us at the dinghy, excited to help us launch. Evidently, the prospect of assisting with the white guys' dinghy was deemed exciting and soon we had seven or eight Marquesan kids lined up all around the dink. A few more came over looking dissapointed that there was no spot for them to grab on, so I pointed to the bow line and they excitedly ran over and grabbed the painter, huge smiles appearing on their faces. So I counted to three in terrible French and we all carried the dinghy to the sea. Of course, once afloat, the kids started climbing in and around the dink, so we paddled slowly until one by one they jumped off of their own volition and, always laughing, made their way back to the shallows.

Dana trying to figure out the best way to go about this.

Tahuata had proven as welcoming and wonderful as Hiva Oa, and we were once again sad to leave. But we had so many places we wanted to explore that we had to resist the urge to post up for weeks at each spot. So, the next morning, we pulled the hook and set a course South. For the first time in a while, we were sheeted close, having opted to brave the upwind beat to visit the notoriously beautiful and remote island of Fatu Hiva

Ardea posted off of Vaitapu.