Tiki Shopping

The view of Hapatoni Bay from above townWe’re in Baie Hapatoni on the Island of Tahuata in the Marquesas Group of French Polynesia (S09 57.836 W139 07.136 on Google Earth). The beauty of the Marquesas continues to marvel us at every stop. After three years in Latin America we’ve got to admit it’s quite refreshing to be in a place where the locals keep the rubbish picked up. The houses, yards and streets in these little villages are all absolutely sparkling clean. And the Polynesians couldn’t be any friendlier.

We, sadly, don’t speak a work of French beyond hello, goodbye, please and thank you. Which is a total bummer for us. After three years of studying Spanish and finally making enough ground to have a basic conversation it’s heartbreaking to be back to square one. I remember the first time at a grocery store in La Paz when I walked up to the deli counter. Besides only knowing Spanish at the level of a four year old, I had no idea how much a kilo even was. At the last deli counter I visited in Costa Rica I explained to the girls that when I had been in earlier in the week there was some ground pork in the other cooler and now it was all gone and did they have any more in the back. OK, it may not have been in perfect Spanish, but we definitely had that conversation because I walked away with 2 kilos of ground pork for Italian sausage.

Buying a carving from the artistToday we went to the local village to shop for some Marquesan carvings. Some friends had been here earlier in the week and bought some beautiful pieces and we wanted to see what we could find. Whenever we can we prefer to buy crafts directly from the original artist rather than supplement the income of craft shops in the big cities. And today we were rewarded with a beautiful hand carved wood, fish bill and bone tiki. We dinghied into the village where we walked to the little market and asked for carvings. There were none on display because this is not a typical tourist stop. The girl in the store pointed us at a local’s house where we were invited into the living room to see what they had on display. We were looking for something a little smaller so we managed to communicate that and they sent us off with another girl towards what looked like the community center.

The carver working on another pieceAn older gentleman started taking beautiful carvings out of a box where he likely was accumulating items for the gift shops in Papeete or Taiohae. Our plans to find something small were completely abandoned when we saw the stunning pieces he was unwrapping and laying on the table. 7,000 Polynesian Francs ($75) later we walked away with a 30″ tiki that will look absolutely beautiful on the wall in our main salon. We certainly could have bargained hard and probably gotten it for much cheaper but after we finished our walk and saw him sitting outside carving another piece with hand tools and without a dremel we were happy we could afford to pay for his hard work.

Tonight about 2:00 we’ll get up and head for the northern group of islands. It’s too far to get to in daylight in one day so we leave before daybreak and arrive before dark tomorrow afternoon. If we can make it all the way to Nuku Hiva we’ll go there and try and get some diving in with our friends Brit & Axel. If we can’t make it to Nuku Hiva we’ll stop at Ua Pou on the way for a day or two. We’re enjoying the Marquesas tremendously and feel we’re definitely getting our reward for all the hard work it took to get here.

Teresa

Hapatoni is here