Nuku Hiva
Thank GOD an AMerican keyboard! NUKU HIVA the largest of the Marquesas...with a total population of 2200...it is July 12th and it is about 845 AM and already 90 degrees...but the wind blows...sometimes.
ARANUI: She is comfortable...the passenger list is not what I had expected at all: 130-odd French, about 20 AUstralian, 8 Germans, 7 AMericans, 4 ITalians, 2 Austrians and one Swiss (from Lausanne who knows the Lobkowiczes well and who went to their fancy dress ball when they regained ownership of their castle at Melnik!)...small world...wear clean underwear. The Americans consist of 4 women traveling together, two from Sullivan County NY, two from St Louis and 1 school teacher, a plucky lass from South Bend...all nice, very nice people....I have teamed with the Australians one German (from Hamburg) more often...Dacre ("acre with a d") is the retired admiral of the Australian Navy and is an amateur and quite good painter and his wife Jenny is a love, very Melbourne and pukka sahib....My cabin is nicely large on the very top STAR deck...meaning a fair amount of motion but that is not entirely unpleasant...it has a huge TV (which I have not watched), a large head with a tub and hair dryer and other modcoms...a queen sized bed...a tiny balcony...a big picture window...it is first rate...the dining room is nicely decorated, lots of fresh fresh flowers (bird of paradise which I think terrifically ugly and some different kinds of orchids and some flower which looks like a chenille bedspread)....the cuisine is admirable...a pleasant breakfast with lovely flaky croissants, eggs to order, odd cheeses (including very good braunschweiger which may not be a cheese at all)....lunch and dinner both resolutely 3 courses, appetizers (terrines or soups or anti pasto) a main course (often nicely cooked fish...last night en papilotte (sic?) and especially delicious.....a good desert (last night ile flotant and I had two)...open wines, decent bordeauxs or curses of curses merlot (which the flick SIDEWAYS makes me loathe perhaps), a decent chardonnay.....not THAT much better than our Arkansas POST Chardonnay which believe or not is drinkable!
The reason for this trip in French Polynesia is certainly not the ship, the hearty ARANUI, its affable staff or the very decent chow...it is the Marquesas.....
Our first stop out of Papeete was in a group of atolls called the TUAMOTOS....by definition low-lying with a barrier island around a lagoon...in their case, a huge lagoon...the industry of the atoll is the black pearl: the Polynesians stole the craft of creating these from the Japanese (lovely that SOMEONE stole technology from them rather than the usual vice versa)...the resulting pearl comes in shades from Beluga-caviar-grey to coal black...the very best ones have an inner essence a bit like an opal (which they look not a thing like) and are prized....most of the women on ARANUI have bought one...or more.....I sort of wonder why.....I swam in the lagoon (very few fish)...and then pondered the rather vacuos life of the locals)....on board the ship we have a French artist who seems rather respected though I haven't really caught his name.....he lectured yesterday on Matisse...and what he said was interesting.
Matisse came to Papeete in 1930 (sort of in the steps of one of his mentors, Gaugin, who by then was dead) to paint. Matisse was already a rich man, famed etc.....and he simply could NOT paint in Polynesia saying the light was vastly too bright, the colors possessing no nuance etc....he only did a couple of drawings, illustrated some letters to his wive and did a minor painting...yet on return to France showed the influence of Tahiti for the rest of his life.
Curious. Our on-board painter echoed some of the same thoughts more or less saying that French Polynesia was so in-one's-face obvious and the sky is SO bright that one is robbed of creativity. I feel somewhat the same: my analogy is like a lump of dough which has been kneaded once, has risen, but still isn't right and needs to be kneaded again and again. The mind tends to go to sleep, not uncomfortably in the last.....the torpor is rather delightful.....but choose someplace else (Greenland?) to write the great novel. Perhaps this is why I find the Polynesian novels of Melville so tedious and without flair.
The Islands are astoundingly different...great erose peaks and needles, a sense of a precocious land, nothing looking quite like anyplace else. The villagers are friendly and a bit shy but their faces (much like Turks) break into great smiles upon real contact.....speaking of locals I met a youngish guy at the bar on the Aranui last night....he had wandered the world, had help build the second Bosphorus Bridge at Istanbul of all things and we spoke limited Turkish together.
I have not quite gotten the rhythm of the islands yet....I know there IS one....everyone talks of manana and that sort of thing....not unexpected.....the staple foods are breadfruit and taro and pork....sort of like eating bacon with mush and tapioca...not inspiring. But the islands are so outrageously beautiful that any complaint dims. I think there is nothing on earth QUITE like the MArquesas, these islands settled early on by the Polynesians but only discovered in the 16th century by Europeans...
The only word I can find which COMES from the Marquesan is "tabu".....but very little seems tabu as I watched the locals who were commuintg from Ua Pou to Nuku Hiva last night on board dance....pretty sexy....quite awfully innocent: I guess most sex IS....at least if it is by mutual assent.
With that odd thought I say goodbye and hope everyone is in a great way.
FRED
ARANUI: She is comfortable...the passenger list is not what I had expected at all: 130-odd French, about 20 AUstralian, 8 Germans, 7 AMericans, 4 ITalians, 2 Austrians and one Swiss (from Lausanne who knows the Lobkowiczes well and who went to their fancy dress ball when they regained ownership of their castle at Melnik!)...small world...wear clean underwear. The Americans consist of 4 women traveling together, two from Sullivan County NY, two from St Louis and 1 school teacher, a plucky lass from South Bend...all nice, very nice people....I have teamed with the Australians one German (from Hamburg) more often...Dacre ("acre with a d") is the retired admiral of the Australian Navy and is an amateur and quite good painter and his wife Jenny is a love, very Melbourne and pukka sahib....My cabin is nicely large on the very top STAR deck...meaning a fair amount of motion but that is not entirely unpleasant...it has a huge TV (which I have not watched), a large head with a tub and hair dryer and other modcoms...a queen sized bed...a tiny balcony...a big picture window...it is first rate...the dining room is nicely decorated, lots of fresh fresh flowers (bird of paradise which I think terrifically ugly and some different kinds of orchids and some flower which looks like a chenille bedspread)....the cuisine is admirable...a pleasant breakfast with lovely flaky croissants, eggs to order, odd cheeses (including very good braunschweiger which may not be a cheese at all)....lunch and dinner both resolutely 3 courses, appetizers (terrines or soups or anti pasto) a main course (often nicely cooked fish...last night en papilotte (sic?) and especially delicious.....a good desert (last night ile flotant and I had two)...open wines, decent bordeauxs or curses of curses merlot (which the flick SIDEWAYS makes me loathe perhaps), a decent chardonnay.....not THAT much better than our Arkansas POST Chardonnay which believe or not is drinkable!
The reason for this trip in French Polynesia is certainly not the ship, the hearty ARANUI, its affable staff or the very decent chow...it is the Marquesas.....
Our first stop out of Papeete was in a group of atolls called the TUAMOTOS....by definition low-lying with a barrier island around a lagoon...in their case, a huge lagoon...the industry of the atoll is the black pearl: the Polynesians stole the craft of creating these from the Japanese (lovely that SOMEONE stole technology from them rather than the usual vice versa)...the resulting pearl comes in shades from Beluga-caviar-grey to coal black...the very best ones have an inner essence a bit like an opal (which they look not a thing like) and are prized....most of the women on ARANUI have bought one...or more.....I sort of wonder why.....I swam in the lagoon (very few fish)...and then pondered the rather vacuos life of the locals)....on board the ship we have a French artist who seems rather respected though I haven't really caught his name.....he lectured yesterday on Matisse...and what he said was interesting.
Matisse came to Papeete in 1930 (sort of in the steps of one of his mentors, Gaugin, who by then was dead) to paint. Matisse was already a rich man, famed etc.....and he simply could NOT paint in Polynesia saying the light was vastly too bright, the colors possessing no nuance etc....he only did a couple of drawings, illustrated some letters to his wive and did a minor painting...yet on return to France showed the influence of Tahiti for the rest of his life.
Curious. Our on-board painter echoed some of the same thoughts more or less saying that French Polynesia was so in-one's-face obvious and the sky is SO bright that one is robbed of creativity. I feel somewhat the same: my analogy is like a lump of dough which has been kneaded once, has risen, but still isn't right and needs to be kneaded again and again. The mind tends to go to sleep, not uncomfortably in the last.....the torpor is rather delightful.....but choose someplace else (Greenland?) to write the great novel. Perhaps this is why I find the Polynesian novels of Melville so tedious and without flair.
The Islands are astoundingly different...great erose peaks and needles, a sense of a precocious land, nothing looking quite like anyplace else. The villagers are friendly and a bit shy but their faces (much like Turks) break into great smiles upon real contact.....speaking of locals I met a youngish guy at the bar on the Aranui last night....he had wandered the world, had help build the second Bosphorus Bridge at Istanbul of all things and we spoke limited Turkish together.
I have not quite gotten the rhythm of the islands yet....I know there IS one....everyone talks of manana and that sort of thing....not unexpected.....the staple foods are breadfruit and taro and pork....sort of like eating bacon with mush and tapioca...not inspiring. But the islands are so outrageously beautiful that any complaint dims. I think there is nothing on earth QUITE like the MArquesas, these islands settled early on by the Polynesians but only discovered in the 16th century by Europeans...
The only word I can find which COMES from the Marquesan is "tabu".....but very little seems tabu as I watched the locals who were commuintg from Ua Pou to Nuku Hiva last night on board dance....pretty sexy....quite awfully innocent: I guess most sex IS....at least if it is by mutual assent.
With that odd thought I say goodbye and hope everyone is in a great way.
FRED
posted by ultimatetraveler at 10:55 AM
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