Ua Huka is one of the normal islands we have experienced in French Polynesia. As you walk around you can tell that the small villages care about the appearance of their island and take care of garbage or old houses. The primary road are well maintained around the entire island, but everyone drives 4×4 pickup trucks with extended cabs because there are so many hills! The town is one mile from the anchorage so we pulled out the bikes, but we can only cycle as far as the Pension because of the steep incline. At first glance the town might not look like it has much going on, but we have been pleasantly surprised.
The first magasin we approached we met a friendly gentlemen that connected us to Johanna and Arii who manages the pension. When Johanna picked us up for an island tour she didn’t realize we barely spoke French. She kindly stopped by the Pension Mana Tupuna Village and asked her husband to translate the entire tour, which only cost 3,000 Francs ($30 US) per person. We visited several vistas, museums, and wood carving shops. While visiting the best Marquesan museum in French Polynesia we met Karen, Arii’s aunt from a different village, she explained that her sister teaches basket weaving and Sara jumped at the opportunity to make her very first basket from palm leaves.
We have been searching for a large Marquesan wooden bowl, and Arii offered to carve a bowl for us if we did not find one that we enjoyed. After seeing the carvings in Fatu Hiva and Tahuata we both agree that Ua Huka has a larger selection of tikis. The Ua Huka signature tiki is the fishing tiki, which has a nose that resembles an elephant. We find this extremely fitting because we both love fishing and Wade’s favorite animal is an elephant. We were unable to find a bowl that depicted exactly what we wanted and so we commissioned Arii to carve us a bowl. Not just any bowl, but a huge bowl! All of his carvings are done by hand and he is very talented so we are super excited! Another advantage while we wait for Arii to carve the bowl we get to explore the island and because he manages the Pension he allows us to use the internet access.
After Sara went swimming with her iPhone lobster hunting in Apataki Tuamotus the phone has been slowly fading and it finally died. We’ve put off updating our electronics because of the weak internet connection but too bad that only Sara’s phone had the Navionics and Google translator apps and Apple will not let Wade’s iPhone install the apps until after we have updated the iOS. Thankfully Arii has let us leave Wade’s iPhone at the Pension because it says that it needs 22 hours to download the 360 megabyte update, haha, and his internet is blazing fast compared to what we have experienced in much of French Polynesia.
We had a “license” to fruit pick today while we visited the botanical garden. Arii explained that anyone can pick the fruits in the garden if they can find them because the trees are older and they do not produce as much fruit. We were so sad that we actually left our fruit picker at home, haha. Wade still managed to climb trees and carry home another 60 lbs of fruit. We have been eating and drinking smoothie’s more than we ever have in our entire lives.
Arii says that he’ll be done with the bowl by tomorrow, but we think we’ll probably be here until Saturday. Still this has been an amazing place to visit. Many cruisers do not anchor here because of the rolling anchorage and dragging anchors. Our big anchor is in the center of the channel inline with the white and red beacon with 75 feet of chain. Minus one 30 knot wind squall that popped our anchor snubber off we have enjoyed the anchorage. The rolling is nothing compared to anchoring outside the break wall in Autona Hiva Oa and Waikiki HI.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Boat Position At Noon: 08 degrees 56.405 minutes south and 139 degrees 34.374 minutes west
