Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Fatu Hiva

Fatu Hiva is the only populated Marquesan isle without an airport....but internet is everywhere...and as I type this two dogs (one vaguely looking Newfoundland, the other rather like a hyena) are at my feet. It is about 75 degrees and on the whole trip it has not gotten warmer than 83 nor cooler than 74...pretty sublime!

I hope not to repeat myself with my budding Alzheimers!.....The voyage continues to be very interesting for me. The people of the Marquesas had a definite caste system until Christianity intruded. Even today one can see the physical differences between tall, rather aquiline, stunning looking (to our eyes) people....and heavier, more ursine types with rather squashed faces...seeimg almost inuit (Eskimo)....

They developed interestingly in the arts: rock carvings abound (petrographs), figures on tapa cloth, and, perhaps in the absence of real paper and real paint (even locally produced paints seem almost absent), tattoos are HUGE....when there was no canvas, there was the human body...and the highest castes have the most all encompassing and vivid tattoos...quite hideous to my eyes...but body mutilation (and I am sure they call it adornment) has never been my thing. I think of all of those young women with tattoos when they are grandmothers...but in the MArquesas most older women have a good many of them. I watched tapa cloth being made....the second bark of a readfruit tree is pounded for about 3 hours, constantly dampened and then allowed to dry. Some of the tapa (which was used as clothing as well as for art figures) is pretty with a pleasing texture. The people came to the Marquesas it seems from Taiwan and SE China...via Borneo thence Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, starting to develop the Polynesian features much later. IT is estimated that the MArquesas, the farthest island group from ANY continent (an interesting fact I think) came about 2-300 BC...astounding I think.....

The islands are hugely irregular with erose countryside, many crevasses and startling pitons....one bay here on Fata Hiva is called "the bay of Phalluses" and when you see my few photos you will see why. The missionaries changed the name to the "bay of Virgins"....I feel that the folk have taken up catholicism rather half heartedly but the church dominates in a way and has incorporated many tiki designs and patterns from tapa into their culture. The statue of Jesus in the cathedral on Nuku Huva looks very much like Don Ho.

The FLOWERS of these islands are almost astonishing in their variety....hibicus are used often as hedges and bloom in at least a dozen colors. Bougainvillia, frangipani, ylang ylang (this island smells greatly of vetiver), red ixoras, red ginger (vibrant!) and jasmine prevail plus lots of varieties which I have never seen. People use the flowers almost supernally....with flower crowns, leis, with flowers to stick into every possible visible orifice - it is social and pleasing!

The island handicrafts are predictable: carvings (I wonder what those people from Reims are going to do with a 4 foot high tiki when they get home?), rather pretty and sometimes elaborate bone carving (most of the bones are from cows...shark bones are rare, whale bones non existent)...they do some rathe pleasant super crafty looking jewelry....those ubiquitous black pearls again..rather alot of it is rather meritricious..printed tapa cloth and cotton yardage which is locally designed and printed and which can be pretty. Most women and most men wear a one piece "paro" (a sort of sarong) wrapped in a dozen different ways.......the island dancing (at almost every port kids are trooped out to perform) is as rather tedious as most folk dancing...though on a slightly higher level than that I remember at Nome where old ladies shuffled about for an hour of dada....the dancers though have a good time and are fun to watch with their unisex palm frond skirts. On the other hand, the best dancers seem to be obese 60 year old ladies and they are a joy to behold because they are having as much fun as the born again at a revival meeting.

The ship continues to be very satisfactory and of course I have made a few friends whom I think I will nurture and keep: Dacre and Jenny Smyth from Melbourne (I may have written about them...he is the former admiral of the Australian navy...she a SYMES which is one of the oldest names in Australia, a family which published the AGE which is rather a national newspaper....Jenny's best friend is Rupert Murdoch's mother) and they were friendly with Louise and Graham Hall once upon a time...an awfully nice guy (Uwe Rahn) from Hamburg (I list these names which I know must bore you because I want a record of them), two terrific women from Sullivan County in the W Catskills...one, Janice van Nostrand, was heavily in publishing...an interesting guy born in London on a Canadian passport managing circuses and has worked all over the world and comes from a Georgian jewish background...A couple of super pleasant French families, one resident in London (ex Bronxville of all places) and another in Dubai..

Food is very decent....and, considering that it is cooked for 125 passengers plus crew, rather inspired...last night, a lovely poisson cru (the best food in these islands), a magret of duck, a tiramasu....wine flows gratis...acceptable bordeaux, rather horrid merlot, rather bad chardonnay....the bordeaux gets one through the few turgid menus....there are pretty good lectures, a happy cocktail hour (at wretched Tahitian prices and the Europeans drinking all manner of elaborate vile looking libations made with 3-4-5 liqueurs and potions.)...oddly most fruit juice is tinned, save lovely pampelmousse and pineapple...we don't starve.

It is a healthy routine, up for 700 AM breakfast usually....coffee after dinner until about 1000 PM and early to bed. My stateroom has a TV but I have never turned it on....getting into the whale boat (which carries us for wet landings at some anchorages), I hit a wave wrong and scraped my shins pretty badly...though nothing alarming: the doc on board is a terrific young guy from Toulon (half Corsican) who insist on giving me alot of attention and demanding that I stay out of the water (a bummer)...the crewmen who assist people in and out of boats were so alarmed...but it was not their fault...getting ME in and out is sort of like landing a rhinoceros.

So all goes well in paradise...and I am so happy to be here...


-FRED

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