Post #739270 by Club Nouméa on Fri, Mar 13, 2015 11:22 PM

Taiohae - A Tiki Tour: Part 3

Wandering around to the western end of Taiohae Bay, we pass by the local intermediate school, which features more concrete tiki poles.

The tiki in the courtyard appears to be a mother pushing her unwilling child off to school. :)

Our first stop is the Hee Tai Inn, which features some nice awning poles hidden around the back of the building:

Note the thatch; I'll come back to that later...

Having seen so many concrete posts, I initially thought these ones might be concrete too, but they were painted wood.

The Hee Tai Inn is run by Rose Corser, an American lady who has amassed quite a collection of Marquesan artifacts over the years and who has set up her own small museum in an annex to her office.

She has rescued various small stone tikis from the ravages of the local climate, and they are now in cases in her climate-controlled museum:

She also has various wooden tikis in her collection:

As well as various traditional weapons:

I was particularly fascinated with her collection of nose flutes, which were reproductions of pieces from the 1840s, the originals of which are held in a museum in Paris:

Not much is known about pre-European contact Polynesian music, and I attempted to ask her about these flutes and precisely how they were played, but seem to have hit on a sore point or something and she went off in a huff. She brightened up when I subsequently purchased some carvings off her though. I seem to have caught her on a bad day as she had earlier greeted me with the comment "I hope you're not going to complain about the lack of captions in English". I replied that as French was my second language that would not be a problem. It was an odd visit, but she does have a good collection and it is worth a look.

If you follow the dirt road that arcs up the hill behind the Tee Hai Inn, you will soon arrive at the Keikahanui Nuku Hiva Pearl Lodge:

Inside is Nuku Hiva's best bar and restaurant:

I kept coming back to this place for lunch and dinner as they do very good cocktails and the food was wonderful too:

Apologies for the loss of focus on that one but I was on my third drink by that stage...

The view of Taiohae Bay was great too:

Up over the hill from the Pearl Lodge is a winding road that leads to Colette Bay. Unfortunately it is not signposted, and features numerous dead-end turn-offs. I got to the summit on the third try. The view looking back on Taiohae Bay:

Colette Bay:

The hills around the bay are quite bleak and rugged and reminded me of Bank's Peninsula:

Although there are a couple of homes nearby, the beach was deserted apart from this girl who came out to say hello:

This is also where Survivor Marquesas was filmed, so I was curious to search for the site where they filmed it. I did not have to look far:

A big swathe of sand cutting right across the middle of a stony beach. It looks like the sort of thing they would have done for TV...

Following the swathe of sand inland I found a stone marking a meeting place and a pile of rubbish left behind:

The remains of an overgrown firepit filled with plastic bottles:

Most of the site was overgrown with new saplings:

It is ironic that one of the big claims made by the makers of Survivor Marquesas is that the people in it were roughing it, struggling for survival on some godforesaken island in the Marquesas. In fact, they were only half an hour's walk or ten minutes' drive from the best bar and restaurant in the archipelago, and Taiohae, the islands' administrative centre, with its various shops and cafés. So much for reality TV. :P

In the next instalment, we push inland, up behind Taiohae, to explore the Pakiu Valley....

Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-04-20 01:52 ]