Nuku Hiva, the largest island in the Marquesas, is green, rustic, undeveloped, and totally unlike the turqoise water and white sand tropical tourist paradises of Bora Bora, Tahiti, Huahine and Rangiroa. This is really off the beaten path.
Here's the ship docked in the harbor, along with a bunch of fishing boats, as seen from the volcanic highlands in the center of the island.
And above is the view from the other side of the ridgeline. From here we drove down into the TaipivaiValley, called by early explorers the Typee Valley and the setting of the Herman Melville novel of the same name.
In the valley, we visited a re-creation of a pre-European Polynesian village, including stone carvings of the gods, dwellings, and ceremonial meeting rooms. The carvings are re-creations because the Christian missionaries destroyed the originals as symbols of “pagan devil worship." They banned the Polynesian practice of tattoos for the same reason. In fact the Polynesians were an oral society and tattoos were how they recorded their personal, family and clan history and traditions. Easy to carry around and never got lost or destroyed.
Above Joani is in the main ceremonial building playing a Polynesian drum. Luckily there are no Christian missionaries around to castigate her for playing pagan music.
This looks like grapefruit but in fact is ten times sweeter and better and is actually breadfruit, one of the main staples of the local diet.
Despite their best efforts, the Christian missionaries did not succeed in destroying the Polynesian cultural heritage. They did succeed in converting the island to Christianity; it is 80% Catholic today. We visited the main church of the diocese, the beautiful Saint Mary of the Marquesas.
I think a carved wooden pulpit like this one would be perfect for our Associate Pastor Jason Micheli to give a sermon.
In a park near the pier there was another stone idol that Joani liked. She bought a much smaller version to bring home for the condo. Jason is a good guy who greatly appreciates the Mayan cultural heritage and so he will be OK with this.
Here's the ship docked in the harbor, along with a bunch of fishing boats, as seen from the volcanic highlands in the center of the island.
And above is the view from the other side of the ridgeline. From here we drove down into the TaipivaiValley, called by early explorers the Typee Valley and the setting of the Herman Melville novel of the same name.
In the valley, we visited a re-creation of a pre-European Polynesian village, including stone carvings of the gods, dwellings, and ceremonial meeting rooms. The carvings are re-creations because the Christian missionaries destroyed the originals as symbols of “pagan devil worship." They banned the Polynesian practice of tattoos for the same reason. In fact the Polynesians were an oral society and tattoos were how they recorded their personal, family and clan history and traditions. Easy to carry around and never got lost or destroyed.
Above Joani is in the main ceremonial building playing a Polynesian drum. Luckily there are no Christian missionaries around to castigate her for playing pagan music.
This looks like grapefruit but in fact is ten times sweeter and better and is actually breadfruit, one of the main staples of the local diet.
Despite their best efforts, the Christian missionaries did not succeed in destroying the Polynesian cultural heritage. They did succeed in converting the island to Christianity; it is 80% Catholic today. We visited the main church of the diocese, the beautiful Saint Mary of the Marquesas.
I think a carved wooden pulpit like this one would be perfect for our Associate Pastor Jason Micheli to give a sermon.
In a park near the pier there was another stone idol that Joani liked. She bought a much smaller version to bring home for the condo. Jason is a good guy who greatly appreciates the Mayan cultural heritage and so he will be OK with this.
And
then it was time to re-board the ship, anchored out in the harbor. Four sea days
until the Big Island of Hawaii. We dock at Hilo and will hike Volcanos National Park,
No comments:
Post a Comment