Hiva Oa, our least favourite place.
09 May 2012 | Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands
Hugh
After a couple idilic days in Fatu Hiva (friendly people, amazing walks ashore) we did a day sail to the larger island of Hiva Oa with the intension of checking to French Polynesia and finding some internet. Well we found internet but otherwise it's a murky, cramped and rolly anchorage 1 hours walk from the village. Emboldened by a blog article describing a 30min shortcut and the recommendation of great pizza we were enthusiastic about our first meal ashore in 3 weeks. To cut a long story short the shortcut involved us swimming to a disused staircase, bashing through the subsequent thick undergrowth followed by Mike stumbling into a wasps nest resulting in 4 very sore bites from the blighters. To top it all off when we eventually made it out onto the road above, we found the pizza place shut, in fact the whole village shuts down between 1:30pm and 6pm and seemingly this is the centre of the Marquesas Islands! I'm sure we must be missing something though, why would anyone stop here? We're now back onboard wishing we never left and planning on sailing to our last stop in marquesas, Nuku Hiva in a few hours.