SHARK!!!
24 June 2012 | Nuku Hiva, Marquesas
Lisa Anderson
Grey Shark getting scraps at the dinghy dock
June 2012
Shark!
These should be called the Shark Islands-not the Marquesas Islands. I am not kidding! This place is not for the faint of heart! I am trying to remember the episodes of the TV show "Survivor Marquesas", once filmed here. Surely they didn't let the contestants swim in the water... or did they?
After a week and a half in Hiva Oa - sweating - the island of our first landfall - sweating - with meager (and I do mean meager) provisions from our daily 30 minute treks to town each way ( I have never felt like such a drowned rat from the heat and humidity before) sweating - 600 liters of diesel for the mere price of $950.00 that we begged for in my best French off the freight cruiser the Aranui lll (all hand carried and dinghied 22 five gallon jugs) sweating - a tattoo for me (a well earned Marquesan tradition) sweating (pain!) - my God are these hot flashes or what (?!) sweating, a now twelve year old son who celebrated a very fun birthday with his fellow cruising friends (thanks to all who were there - especially Boden Anna for the live re-mix of Proud Mary into Ben's" Lisa Kay" song!) sweating - we pulled up our anchor eager to travel the few hours to the island of Tahuata where there was supposedly clear blue water that you could jump in and swim with the manta rays that come by daily and perhaps see the sharks coming at you? Tahuata did not disappoint. The turquoise waters with visibility to 30 feet, white sand beach, and yes - jumping in the water and swimming with a manta ray was amazing. Sharing sunset drinks and food on our back deck with Local Talent, Sea Wings, Cat Weazel, Reine Margrit, and Boden Anna helped to provide the buoyancy we all needed to keep us emotionally afloat at this time. Screech (insert sound of car tires skidding across pavement)! I know for most of you, sitting on your comfortable couch with your high speed internet with your TV blaring with your car in your garage with your washer and dryer running with your cold yummy water and ice cubes from your jam packed full 'fridge door with your fancy take out dinner are probably sitting there shaking your head at me saying, "She sure sounds ungrateful." Let me assure you I am not...but this is hard...and there are only a few of us out here doing this...and we each have our own set of unique issues with our boat problems, and our own food and water limitations, and our own fears...which get me back to my opening topic of Sharks! Yikes! They are EVERYWHERE here! Now, don't get me wrong, Tahuata was great to jump in the water and snorkel and clean the bottom of your boat and everything but...okay...here is how one evening conversation went;
Eiliv: (a magnificent young studly blonde Swede who talks in the sing songy way they do, on the sailing vessel Boden Anna): "So, did you guys see the shark today?"
Me: "Huh?!" My eyes grow wide.
Eiliv: "Yeah, it was like 3 meters long." (Now that's like 9 feet for you Americans out there!)
Me: "Noooo...what time?" (This can't be happening...I was in the water this afternoon cleaning the bottom of our boat!)
Eilive: "Oh, around four. Yeah, I was real surprised how big he was."
Me: (Gulp...oh my God, this can't be happening!)
Margarit: (the sweet Swiss beautiful mother with a soft Frenchy kind of accent on the sailing vessel Reine Margrit): "Ah yes, I saw one...about 2 meters long I think."
Me: (I am now choking as I guzzle my wine as if it might be the last gulp I ever have!)
Lou: (our new sassy cute Aussie friend, mother of two boys around Ben's age): "Yeah, right mate, I sawr'em too! 'Bout 1.5 meters I reckon. Hey, pass another beeeeeeer here will 'ya?" (Okay Lou, I know you wear prescription glasses even stronger than me so I'm not buying the meter and a half thing!)
By now my jaw has come unhinged from the excessive weight of my mouth hanging open and there's Larry looking at me, "Yes Lisa, there are sharks in the ocean, where do you expect them to go?"
As I sat there nursing my wine and everyone else continued in their different conversations paying no more mind to the SHARKS(!), I started thinking - there weren't any manta rays around at that time...I bet the rays leave when the sharks come...yeah, that's it...I just won't get in the water to do more work on the bottom of the boat if there are no rays tomorrow. I cross my arms hugging myself thinking smugly, yeah, that's my plan.
Next day, the three of us jump back into the water to finish cleaning the city of barnacles, green grass, and slime that grows over time on any part of the boat that is in the water therefore slowing us down when we move. This is the only time I regret having a boat this large - it is a lot of work! We were lucky enough to have Sea Wings loan us their hookah, a scuba like re-breathing thing, therefore Ben could attach himself to the keel - usually upside down- and scrub away breathing sweet air under water. This child has no fear - he really is very funny. Needless to say, Ben saw a shark go by right away when he got in, came up told dad, at which time they decided they were just better off not telling me...until later when we were finished. Thanks guys! I cheated death again!
On to Ua Pou, a different island with these green spectacular spires that shoot up into the sky. It was nice to see another island but being a small, tight, very rolly anchorage unless you can maneuver your boat behind the breakwater, personally I would skip this island if we were ever to come back although we met several other boaters who particularly loved this island and the relationships they built with some of the locals. Definitely no swimming here because of the..."you knows" we were told, yet the local children were swimming at the pier everyday in the green murky water.
Moving on to our last island Nuka Hiva, after a "Mr. Toads Wild Ride" passage (it can get very rough between the islands here) we first pulled into a secluded anchorage called, in our cruising guides, Daniel's Bay. This is where they filmed Survivor. I think a man named Daniel, a white dude who married a Marquesan chick, who was very welcoming to cruisers used to live there in a small home on the beach - hence the name. They had a son together. What we heard was that they had passed away within the past year or two - from what we don't know. Now cruiser's minds go crazy with information like that (mine thinking - surely they weren't all three eaten by sharks at once)! I think we all came to the joint conclusion that maybe it was a really bad case of ciguatera , another thing to worry about in these parts of the world, or maybe the producers of Survivor paid them so well for their gorgeous slice of paradise that they went off to find another but who knows. Yes folks, a good number of the fish in the South Pacific are poisoned with a neuro-toxin called ciguatera. And yes, a few cruisers have suffered from the poisoning by eating fish given to them by other well meaning cruisers. Definitely not a mistake we want to make.
Daniel's Bay is a beautiful, calm anchorage where Ben and Brian - Ben's new adult/kid friend - had a great time looking at and trying to catch a shark. Here we could drive our dinghy over the stunningly gorgeous corals in clear water (how I wish we could jump in!) and see the sharks, turtles, and colorful fish, as well as walk on the beach and see the baby sharks swimming in the shallows. Yes, just like baby everythings, they are even adorable. They finally succeeded in catching one from shore and after a great look at it, it was peacefully released. How many other 12 year olds can say they caught a shark?
The hike to the waterfall is what most cruisers come here for, the third highest waterfall in the world. This was truly the most gorgeous hike I have ever taken. It was like walking in a dream through the "jurassic type" setting - two hours up, two hours down, crossing several very fast moving streams along the way, passing many ancient tikis and archeological sites, and one freezing cold swim in the pool at the base of the waterfall punctuated by a falling rock now and then from the very high cliff above. Let's just say we didn't linger in the middle of the pool, thinking our families would not be very understanding if one of us died by getting hit in the head by said rock. It's a bit of work, but if you swim then crawl over a huge boulder and some rocks, there is another pool behind with an amazing cavern carved in the solid rock, making the cold, treacherous swim totally worth it. On our way back, we had been asked by a lovely local woman and her husband (and their dozen cats who crawled everywhere) to come in her home and share coffee and sweets she had prepared for us. What a beautiful experience and once again here I now struggled with my French (why are we Americans so inept at learning other languages when we are younger unlike so many of the other people we meet?). We were able to buy some fruit, picked fresh from their yard, and was gifted a huge bouquet of basil. Ooh-la-la! Another truly great day!
Our last stop in the Marquesas is the main anchorage on Nuka Hiva, to provision and to receive several boxes we have had shipped in. I have to give a huge shout out to my brother in law Steve, who patiently researched and shipped to us our life sustaining parts for our generator. Larry installed the new heat exchanger and now we can run it without spraying salt water all over our engine room. This was an extremely difficult task, in a very hot and humid environment, where after contorting himself in an uncomfortable position, the only way he could see to remove the old part and put in the new was in a small handheld mirror he held with one hand. Needless to say, for several days after he could hardly walk from terrible sciatic pain. Not a day goes by that he doesn't suffer from terrible back pain, but he knows he would be in the same pain if he was just lying on his couch at home (with the exception of this last stint) so he chooses to continue with cruising while he can.
Last repair to make is to install new membranes for our water maker, just shipped in yesterday. Our water has not been drinkable the last few weeks, due to shot membranes, and once again Rich Boren from Cruise RO has efficiently gotten us what we needed. Thank you Rich! One of these days when we meet I'm gonna give you a big hug! Water is a prized item here in these islands as the tap water is unpotable. Most cruisers don't have a water maker like we do (another words with such a high output), so we try to help out and supplement others when we can. I'm talking - some cruisers have not showered for months! We on the Lisa Kay are VERY spoiled.
Tomorrow we head out to the Tuamotus, famously known as the "dangerous archipelago" (insert another "yikes" here!) due to a number of vessels that have run aground on reefs. We are going to try REALLY hard NOT to do this. These are the largest chain of atolls in the world spanning an area roughly the size of Western Europe. It will take us four days to reach our first stop. Our planned stops at this time are Fakarava, Anse Amyot on Toau, and Rangiroa, although this is not carved in stone.
We are praying Dory, our autopilot will cooperate as Larry has worked diligently on this "issue" as well. We have a new fluxgate compass awaiting us in Tahiti that will hopefully remedy the "situation" for good. Seems like part of the problem might be my fault, again, (I still will never live down the wine bottle in the fuel tank incident of 2011), but this at least gives Larry something new to ruminate over. It seems that this special compass lives under Ben's couch in his berth (who knew?), a perfect place for me to have stored toys such as Matchbox cars, an aluminum bat, and his wii balance board etc...made perfect sense to me... but lo and behold, apparently when you place such said metal items near things such as "special compass's" that help feed the proper information to your autopilot it screws it up. Sigh....
What is an atoll you ask? Quoting from my new favorite read, The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost, a coral atoll is the crest of a dying volcano. The coral replenishes itself by matching the rate of a sea volcano's dissolution. As the land far below the water surface steadily recedes into the depths, coral polyps grow from its slopes, seeking the sun, rising first to become a barrier reef, and then, as the volcano continues to disintegrate slowly inching towards its base, an atoll is formed, the living crest balanced atop layers of dead coral and far below is the volcano itself. This creates an aquarium like lagoon where we will seek anchorage once we have carefully navigated, only possible once daily at a specific time due to the tides, through the pass - a narrow channel through the coral - into what will be our shangri-la for a few weeks (yes, with lots of sharks but supposedly these are friendly sharks you can swim with!). Very exciting stuff!
The Marquesas are truly gorgeous and we have loved wandering the hills and small towns and the easy going nature of the people. We have loved going to the local festivities as they prepare for their big holiday next month. Witnessing the dancing and their music and singing in a non tourist performances felt like we were able to witness their day to day lives through the back door. So different from the Central American countries, here no one expects anything from you. Accepting a tip is unheard of. There is no pressure put on you of any kind. What a remarkable group of people, who were almost wiped out by white man's diseases, to still have a smile on their face and such positive attitudes. Maybe it's the fact that practically everything shuts down Mon - Sat from 11:30 - 2:30 for their afternoon break, and on Sundays they are just plain closed. Or maybe it's because, so we've heard but have not been able to confirm, the locals receive some sort of a pension from the French government assuring a comfortable life for them, or maybe it's because they can grow all the tropical fruit right in their back yard if they want. Whatever it is, it works. And despite, what I thought initially, was unbearable heat, we've just had to acclimatize to the humidity. Some days are warmer than others, some days are really pleasant if there is cloud cover, but all the evenings cool down perfectly so that we all sleep downstairs in our cabins comfortably without air conditioning. And despite what I initially thought was meager food for provisioning, once again I have not starved. One could live on baguettes and imported French cheese, crepes, and French wine forever, right? And I have adjusted to rising at four AM'ish to dinghy in (through the shark infested waters due to the local fisherman washing the blood and guts from their daily catch into the ocean RIGHT where we tie up our dinghy and hoist our bodies up the concrete wall praying that we don't accidentally slip and fall in) for the veggie market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I actually have gotten used to the sharks now, admiring their sleek bodies and their sense of survival in knowing they will have an easy meal daily right off the dock. Even though we feel really ready to move on, the Marquesas Islands will truly be missed by us.
"Nana", which in Marquesan means goodbye. Next posting won't be until we reach the land of internet in Tahiti, so don't worry, it will probably be several weeks if not a month away. XO
Note: We should have photos posted in a gallery called "Marquesas" later today if there is enough bandwidth for us to send them. Also, to find us on google earth just click on the map on the right hand side of our website. It will take you to another page with a general map. Scroll down to the next map, which is google earth. These tiny islands are hard to find, so says the ships navigator!