Learning about Paepae

This blog will be a little bit of a back story and a recent update. Hit fast-forward if it is too boring! Last you heard we were in Fatu Hiva, our anchor dragged multiple times, and after a night sail we ended up on Tahuata.

So the back story! When we were on Hiva Oa we had rented a car, and Bill, who has aspirations to be a formula one driver, drove the 4×4 Suzuki over the interior up to Pauma’u, location of one of the notable archaeological sites in French Polynesia. The drive was entertaining – tight mountain turns, switchbacks, goats and cows and rocks on the road, some hardtop some gravel – but amazing views and cool jungle/forest.

Pauma’u is well known for the “largest Tiki” statues in French Polynesia. Tiki were carved to revere chiefs in their time. These images show up in stone carvings, statues, tattoos, wood carvings – everywhere.

After Pauma’u we travelled to Ta’aoa, west of Atuona on Hiva Oa, the location of Upeke, one of the best preserved Paepaes – large stone platforms on which the chief and supporters lived and community events where held. Not an Egyptian pyramid, but massive and totally amazing!

Bill and Sharon on Upeke Site

Unfortunately the history of the Marquesas, like most stories of colonialization, is horrific. The first confirm visit was by the Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña in 1595 and the name “Marquesas” is in honour of his patron, the Viceroy of Peru. Some estimates are a population of 400,000 in French Polynesia at that time with about 200,000 in the Society Islands (Tahiti) and a matching number on the other islands (Marquesas, Tuamodos, Cook Islands). The region was introduced to new diseases and epidemics that are estimated to have killed half the population. They were also considered a good location for slaves for the mines in Peru. Almost 200 years later n 1773 Captain Cook estimated the population at about 204,000. The Marquesan Islands today have a population of under 10,000.

The Bay we were in on Fatu Hiva (and dragged) was originally named the “Bay of Penises” because of the rock formations, but renamed by the Church to Bay of Virgins. I believe the local name was more appropriate, but let me say the Church has left a massive impact on the people of this region.

Even the smallest communities like the one beside our first anchorage here on Tahuata had a well maintained church. The school was one room with maybe 6 kids and the village had about a dozen homes.

The church and graveyard were built into or sat on some of the stone platform of the paepae, much the way the church in Europe built their buildings on the sites of celts to subsume the ground considered by locals to be significant.

Back to the present, we were well entertained by our neighbour in the anchorage who enjoyed being unclothed and provide a Cirque du Soleil performance.

After the show we watch him, butt naked, raise the anchor with a manual windlass and a lever he pushed and pulled back and forth.

We decided it was time to raise the anchor as well and go in search of baguettes, but that is a story for another post.