Marquesas Islands

Hiva Oa is known as the ‘garden of the Marquesas Islands’ because of its very fertile soil and lush vegetation. The intense green countryside hides roads and houses from view. The craggy mountains and deep valleys are home to a multitude of archeological sites and vestiges of an ancient civilization. Among these are the biggest tiki statues in The Islands of Tahiti. The beaches of Hiva Oa are of volcanic black sand and lie in the shade of rocky cliffs. Atuona, the main village, is deep in Taaoa Bay, at the foot of Mount Temetiu, which rises to 1,276 meters and Mount Fe’ani which is 1,016 meters high. The village cemetery is the last resting place of the artist Paul Gauguin and the singer Jacques Brel.

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Ua Huka is reputed for its dry soil and magnificent countryside. Wild horses gallop around on the arid plains and wild goats climb the slopes and ridges of this mystical island. Ua Huka is unspoiled and authentic, a land where the ancestors are part of the everyday life of the islanders.

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Fatu Hiva is the most isolated of the inhabited islands in the archipelago. Accessible only from the sea, it is a small, but beautiful island with high mountains and lush green valleys. In 1937, Thor Heyerdahl and his wife exchanged their modern lifestyle for the natural authenticity of Fatu Hiva. It was here that he developped his erroneous theory that the Polynesians originally migrated to these islands from South America. The inhabitants live close to the village of Omoa, where they make traditional tapa cloth from the bark of the mulberry tree. One of the most picturesque sites in the South Pacific is the ‘Bay of Virgins’ at Hanavave, where the setting sun makes the mountain peaks glow like burning embers.