Location, location, location

20 January 2008

Nuku Hiva

For a long time now I’ve had this fantasy tucked away in the back of my mind about the house that I would like to retire to. I can see it there in my third eye and I’ve always kept a look out for it wherever I go, just in case. Yesterday in Nuku Hiva I came the closest I ever have to finding, maybe not the house itself, but certainly the setting that I always pictured it being in. If location, location, location are the keys then this place had the first two easily, it was just the third that presented such a large problem.

Nuku Hiva is a tender port so I had to wait a little longer than if we had been docked before I could get off. This meant that I could sleep in and make my way leisurely to the tender; all I had to do was be quiet because my cabin mate was still asleep. Unfortunately for him this was one of his port manning ports and after 8 days at sea all he was going to be able to do with the first bit of solid ground we had seen was stare at it from the deck. Or do his laundry.

I got to the gangway and joined a small queue for the tender, a half dozen passengers and myself, climbed into the boat and the first pleasant surprise was that it wasn’t humid. It was warm but there wasn’t that blast of hot, moisture saturated air hitting me as soon as I stepped out of the air-conditioning and into the tropical outside. This was dry by comparison to the Caribbean and not what I was expecting of my first breath of a South Pacific island.

The tender ride took us past a number of yachts moored in the harbour with a number of different registrations painted on their sterns and a variety of national flags flying. It seemed to be a place that attracted wandering sailors from around the world. We had to wait for a while as another tender left the dock and as we sat bobbing I got to have a good look at Nuku Hiva from a distance.

The first thing that you notice is the hills behind the town. They seem to rise straight up out of the water, ragged and broken, with patches of rock showing through the greenery. The clouds passing overhead create a patchwork of light and dark that strengthens the shadows in the clefts and folds and brightens the green, giving a sense of depth and character that would have been lost in full light.

The town itself wound along the base of the hills, a few white houses visible higher up but the road and the rest of the town sat at water level, acting as a ribbon tying the hills together and squeezing them upwards. Poinciana trees loaded with bright red flowers dotted the shore and the line between the green of the hills and the blue of the water. It was a spectacular setting and everything that you imagine would have greeted Captain Cook and those other early explorers, sans cars.

Turning back to look I would have been happy to see a tall wooden ship, sails aloft and men climbing the rigging. Instead the Amsterdam sat there but even it seemed impressive, lacking the overwhelming size of some cruise ships it seemed to fit the small bay. Impressive but not dominating.

Reaching the pier itself the little portable security podium that had been set up and the white uniformed crew seemed a little incongruous next to a few locals lounging under a tree a short distance away. The only sounds were small waves collapsing onto the boat launching ramp and the amplified “tropical music” coming from a building a bit further up the road. I walked down to the end of the concrete pier, took a few photos of the ship anchored in the bay, standing out starkly in its black and white, and then walked out of the dusty car park, passing passengers who all seemed to be going back to the ship.

Reaching the road I noticed that most people were turning left and heading towards the music. I turned right and began walking up a rise, away from the water and up to what I hoped would be a view of the entire area. Instead the road headed down the other side, turning, becoming a dirt and gravel track and leading me towards the water again. As soon as I dipped below the top of the rise the music disappeared and I was left with just the sounds of waves falling gently on the shore ahead of me, the call of birds in the trees and the clucking of families of chickens in the undergrowth.

There was a large house set a distance back from the road, screened partially by trees and this is where my fantasy took life. It wasn’t the house so much as the location. As I walked further down the road and turned a bend at the end where it met the water I realised that this house had the setting that I had pictured so often in my mind. The lawn was green, studded with trees dripping with tropical flowers and stretched a couple of hundred metres between the house and a view of the water that would never be built out or blocked by anything but nature.

The foreshore was a wide strip between the water and the road and as I walked further I came across families picnicking at roughly hewn tables and benches set up under trees. The beach itself was an unfolding patchwork of sand and rocks with the sand a reddy brown colour rather than the pure white you imagine. The colour of the sand also influenced the water, turning it from the blue of the deeper bay to a muddy colour as it flowed up and down the beach in small gentle waves. The colour denoted nothing unclean; rather it reflected the deep volcanic richness of the soil. It certainly didn’t stop the number of children who splashed about under the watchful eyes of their parents.

I followed the road until it came to what appeared to be the fuel supply dump. A collection of buildings and containers perched on a point that must have given easy access to ships. I turned around, retracing my steps, passing my dream piece of land with a small side trip up a promontory overgrown with long grass, in search of a better view. The view wasn’t to be as the grass had taken over and even though there was a stone bench set up in an ideal position there was no seeing past the thickly growing stalks. I did have sudden questions about whether there were snakes on this island I as battled my way back down though.

I passed the pier again and headed the other way, intending to walk completely around the bay and to the point opposite the one where I had just been.

The town is really just a ribbon of buildings scattered along the waterfront. The hills keep the amount of level ground to a minimum and there are only a view houses climbing up, although if there is any sort of development in the future I can picture the slopes becoming more and more crowded with people trying to get the ideal view across the bay. It’s easy for me to visit once and say that it would be a pity to destroy the beauty that is there now, and it would be, but if the town does grow then there is really little choice about where. Those green hills will inevitably become pocked with white houses.

The beach this way was the same as I’d seen on the other side; intermittent patches of sand and small rocks. There was nothing of surf so much as small waves collapsing on the beach and as they washed back over the rocks, trying to pull them back out to sea, there was a sound almost of distant thunder as the rocks slid and rubbed over one another.

It was a Saturday so there were many children swimming and even a few paddling outrigger canoes made from attaching wooden outriggers to conventional sea kayaks. They paddled them like they would a traditional canoe, single bladed paddles switching from side to side rather than the double bladed one I’m used to using in a kayak. I may have looked a little wistfully at the kayak and wondered at the modifications but there was no denying the almost clichéd view of the canoes as they passed. The kids paddling even seemed to be aware of the image as they raised their paddles in salute when I stopped to take pictures.

I passed what seemed to be the only restaurant in town, noted that it was open and made a mental post-it to stop there on the way back. There were already a number of passengers sitting at the outside tables on a small balcony and the sight of a few glasses with brightly co loured drinks was pretty tempting.

Further along there was a small park, delineated from the rest of the foreshore by a low rock wall around it, that contained local rock carvings. Some seemed to have been there for a long time, the details having worn in the face of weather and storms that must sweep across the Pacific and hit the island. Others seemed much newer and the faces of the statues reminded me strongly of the Maori ones I’m familiar with and drove home that I am now in a different ocean and heading to the place of my birth.

I reached the end of the road and the end of the bay, found a patch of grass at the edge of the sand and sat to watch the water.

I had a view of the yachts at anchor and the Amsterdam off to my right. A few kids were swimming and a father was waist deep dragging his young daughter around on the back of an inflatable dinosaur while she screamed in a mixture of terror and delight. Apart from a very occasional four wheel drive passing the only sounds were the water and the children.

I sat there, closed my eyes and just tried not to think. The breeze dried my shirt where I had sweated under my pack and the waves surging up and down the sand started to take on a heartbeat like rhythm. I don’t know how long I sat there like that but it wasn’t until I opened my eyes again that I realised how much pain I was in from having old and damaged knees folded under me in an attempted lotus position. Funnily I hadn’t noticed the pain with my eyes shut and my mind elsewhere but it came rushing in, surging in like the waves in front of me, as soon as I came back from wherever I was.

The one thought I can remember having there was a realisation that I was sitting on a tiny speck of land in the middle of an enormous expanse of water. In my mind’s eye I had zoomed out in a Google Earth like way from the centre of me to the rim of the island and then out to imagining the ocean around me. It’s an awfully large world and we are awfully small in it.

I sat there unmoving for about an hour, until my knees threatened violent protests and I had to stand up. The plan was to head back to that restaurant and enhance my insights with alcohol.

On the way I passed a very neat and tidy looking school, people having a noisy and happy Saturday afternoon on the verandas of their houses and many horses tied up on empty pieces of land between houses. When I reached the restaurant I stumbled in and ended up trying to negotiate a menu written entirely in French, having a fascinating conversation with a Swiss traveller and drinking the most expensive beer of my life.

The beer was a local one, or as local as you can get having been imported from Tahiti. It cost me $8 so I can only assume that it was imported first class. The menu was in French, something I will freely admit is all Greek to me but after finding out the price of the beer I demurred on the food. That may have been a mistake as it turned out because using local ingredients that cut down on the cost of importing the food meant it was reasonably priced and, as I found out later, quite impressive. Fortunately the beer was in a half litre can so it lasted a while, pretty much the whole conversation I had with the Swiss passenger who asked if he could share my table.

He was an older man, in his seventies probably and he had had a fascinating life. I sat and listened to his tales of having attempted to drive from Switzerland to Australia when he was in his twenties, the attempt having failed and he was forced to catch a ship from Ceylon to finish the journey. After working in Australia for a few years he returned to Switzerland but the wanderlust took over again and he successfully drove from Switzerland to South Africa. He’s still travelling and seems to have been everywhere. A great life, even if he has spent it single which hit home a little for me. The time passed quickly and pleasantly sitting there with an expensive beer and someone interesting to listen to. I told him he should write a book but he just laughed.

We finished our drinks and walked back to the tender. There was still an hour to go before I technically had to be back but the sun was starting to set, colouring everything with that soft orange glow and I had to have time to get ready for work. Once I got back to my cabin and looked in the mirror I found out that it may not have been humid but the sun was still tropical and I was more than a little red in the face.

It was a pleasant day. It may not be the cheapest place but it had that tropical simplicity that you only read about in books. Apparently we are going to be hitting islands that are much bigger and more developed so this is a great introduction to the South Pacific.