French Polynesia

Friday 16^th January 1998.

It was a very calm morning getting organised. We had lovely spring morning with new shoots through everywhere in the garden.
Hil and Doug arrived soon after 10 o'clock. And we had coffee and malt loaf, and last minute packups.

A year in Australia 1998

Part 1 - French Polynesia

We left at 11.00 am for Heathrow and had a trouble-free trip, but nothing felt real- we were very calm, but were we really going the way for 11 months? Hil parked the car in the multi-story carpark and we all went to book in.
I handed in my passport and the person asked "how long have you had this passport", which caused me great consternation as it was a new passport but it turned out I hadn't signed it! No one said anything about signing!
We looked in ‘Past Times’ and then had lunch – me fish and chips, cooked to order – it looked good but I didn't eat the batter. Adrian and Hil had pizza and Doug a sandwich. We had great frivolity and jollity and the time went quickly.
We finally said our goodbyes and went through to departures.

Leaving Elm Gable

I bought an underwater camera. Most goods were not particularly cheap. We then went to board, now 2.15 pm. and they called out for our plane to board as we reached the departure lounge and so straight onto the plane and by then we were feeling excited. We had the rear two seats of the plane, which seemed a good position and we felt very excited as we took off.
I loved looking down and seeing everywhere laid out like a map – housing estates making geometric patterns. We went up through central England, with lots of remote country, then Scotland – so much barren country – hills and water, the hills snow covered on top – quite magical. Then the West Coast of Scotland and we hit cloud and gradual darkness. I was very disappointed not to see Iceland. We were served a drink then a meal at 4.00 pm – I wished I hadn't had the fish and chips at lunchtime! The little boy in front looked like Jodie [Hil’s step-granddaughter . I got up for the loo and a lady pointed out the lights of Reykjavik in the distance, which delighted me. There was another town too to the left.
It was then over Greenland and then later Baffin Island and Hudson's Bay which had amazing snow and ice formations. After the near darkness of Iceland it stayed light all the way with very little cloud.
We watched the films "The full Monty" and "In and out" – I was not impressed by either and the scenery was much more impressive. I loved looking down on the meanders of the frozen rivers.

At Heathrow

Then over the amazing patchwork quilt of regular, snow covered fields which we left abruptly for rugged barren country with only a few square fields interspersed on flat land.

The frozen wastes of northern Canada

Then it was into cloud – and I dozed off. I woke up to see Las Vegas!
We arrived in Los Angeles and went into the transit lounge briefly, where there was an official lady with an unpleasant manner. We boarded the Air New Zealand flight to Papeete, Tahiti. We both slept most of the way. We arrived early but then had to wait ages to get through passport control.
We were greeted at the airport with scented white flowers and Polynesian music. It was now Saturday.

The frozen fields of USA

Saturday 17^th January 1998 Tahiti

As we left Tahiti airport at 1.15 am, the heat and humidity hit us (it was like being in the hothouse at Kew Gardens). We took a taxi (2500 Pacific Francs) to the Budget Lodge Hotel, noticing lots of flowering plants along the way. At the reception we were delighted to be handed our tickets for the flight to The Marquesas [We had booked these from a New Zealand travel agent and in those days nothing was online and they would not send them to the UK as they were from a local Airline – Air Tahiti. Also these tickets were very expensive (about £800) , but despite querying it a number of times, between the exchange rates they somehow were a factor of 10 out, which is what we finally paid, so we were never sure we would actually get the tickets].
Our plywood shack, which was to say the least, basic, at least contained a bed, with a shower and a loo behind a plastic curtain. We decided to think of it as camping! Having slept on the plane, we couldn't sleep. Every sound from every other room could be heard. There was a fan, but this added to the noise. A curtain hung in front of the open slatted window.
We had showers about 5.30 am and heard the exotic sounds of the birds. We ate cheese and chutney sandwiches (from home) for breakfast. A maidenhair fern climbed down the corrugated iron fence outside the window.
We left the place spent all day wandering the streets of Papeete. The heat hit us – amazingly hot at 7.00 am! By the end of the day (actually mid afternoon - but which seemed like it to us) we had booked a hire car for tomorrow and a four-wheel drive trip for Monday (we hoped). All this was very hard work and involved us walking up and down the streets and retracing our steps many times.

We also came across a local market where a weight lifting competition was going on – men lifting huge boulders. A young baby with huge brown eyes tried to communicate with me. Babies seem very loved and the people very happy rather like the Fijian's.

Rosie and Adrian in the market in Papeete

Weight lifters in a Papeete market

There were lovely views across to Morea, but sadly there was no swimming beach in Papeete, which we found that really hard today, so we had lots of showers.
For lunch we had baguette sandwiches quite reasonably priced and also French pastries. We had some freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and also a slice of melon. Saw a Citroen ‘H’ van [not surprisingly as Papeete is a French overseas territory ], but Adrian could not get a photo of it.
We walked back to the "Retro" and had a beer (not cheap) looking out over the sea in the late sunshine [Everything in French Polynesia was very expensive].

I was very aware of the strength of the sun, but still we ended up with red shoulders, neck and noses. We found a delightful market selling crafts (I'll have to buy a parea) food and floral necklaces. The flowers are quite exquisite – and huge trees of many different kinds.

Papeete harbour looking towards Morea

Papeete

Papeete harbour looking towards Morea,

'Le Truck' (bus) rank, Papeete

'Le Truck' (bus), Papeete

We then walked along to the market by the sea, where dozens of vans (“called the Roulottes”) moved in for the night as "mobile cafes" – seats etc. included. There was all sorts of food there - steaks, Chinese, crêpes. We chose a pizza – very good and a bottle of water. As we sat there watched a Columbus Cruise ship leave. By then, due to constant heat, exercise and time changes, we felt very tired and walked back and to bed! (About 8.30 pm!)

Rosie around Papeete

In the Bougainville Gardens

Sunday, 18^th January

Had a good night’s sleep. We woke at an early hour - about 5.00 am, to hear wonderful bird song. We packed up and left, and walked down and collected the car, it was now 7.00 am. We got some bread on the way. We came back and managed to park and went to the market. We found it very different today in that there were much more fresh goods, but still not much for us to buy and the upstairs where we were going to have breakfast wasn’t open today, so we bought some bananas and coconut, which we ate some of and drank the coconut milk. We bought some beef to go with our rolls and some cucumber. On the way back to the car, we stopped for breakfast at the “Retro” and I had a coffee and we both had a croissant. We then walked back to the car and drove up to the Budget Lodge hotel and loaded up. We had decided to move on today from the Budget Lodge hotel to the Mahina Tea hotel, which we had sorted out yesterday. By the time we had done all that, it was very hot and sunny and we left the Mahina Tea hotel at 9 o’clock. The Mahina Tea is just out of town amongst a whole load of greenery and outside the window is a pink frangipani and there was a huge ‘love lies bleeding’ as we came out of the drive. On the way out of Papeete, we first took some video and then we passed a ‘Continent’ hypermarket. In Papeete itself, there was a small ‘Casino’ supermarket but the rest were only small shops. One thing we had noticed was many Christmas decorations were still up and there was a small Christmas tree looking very sad with let down balloons on it and also Father Christmases and reindeers in various places and things saying ‘joyeux noël’ - quite amused us. We looked out onto the island of Morea, which looked absolutely beautiful across the blue sea, palm trees fringing it and the waves breaking some distance out with white surf and the blue sky. There was still quite a lot of traffic on the road, and today being Sunday, everything shuts, although we did notice the supermarket was open, so we bought some bread and stuff which we hope will last us today and tomorrow. I took a photograph of a church called St Francis Xavier with some glorious red flowering trees in front of it.

We stopped at the caves of Mara'a and had our ‘pain au raisin’ beside the sea and then we walked across to the ‘grottes’ which rather than caves were caverns with water pouring down everywhere, very luxurious with plants everywhere. Apart from ‘Le Truck’, there are no bus services and people have pick ups and numerous members of the family travel in the open back of them. We stopped for a beautiful swim in the sea in lovely warm water in a tiny little place where only a few locals were and there was even a shower where the water gushed down afterwards. It was approaching midday. We stopped by a little beach of volcanic rock and coral and beside it was a little hummocky hill which we climbed up to, called Marae. The coral reef was missing here and so large waves came right up to the beach, which people were surfing on.

The church of St Francis Xavier

There were magnificent views and we stopped on the beach to have our lunch of French bread, tasty beef and cucumber and ladies fingers bananas and water. We stopped for another lovely swim on a sandy beach in a beautiful setting, with few other people there. We stopped at Vaipahi gardens, very beautiful and exotic, beside the sea, with a crashing waterfall into a pool, very South Pacific looking and there were some delightful Tahitian people – two women and a little boy. We paddled in it, and took several photos, lots of exotic flowers here to – I got pretty wet under the cascade.

Tahiti from Marae de Mahaiaatea

Adrian in our hire car

We visited the Paul Gauguin Museum, which I found rather muddling with lots of his work and other work related to the South Seas, in a beautiful setting in gardens beside the sea and I was quite pleased to find out that his wife was called Meta [because there was a girl at Rosie’s school called Meta who was supposed to be a descendant of Gauguin]. We left there at 3.20 and then went for a few miles along the south of Tahiti Iti and we stopped beside what looked like a beautiful sandy beach, but was actually coral and was difficult to walk on, so we ended up just having a lie in the warm water and then washing ourselves off in some gushing water which was coming out of a pipe on the other side of the road. We left there and then drove a short way down the north side of Tahiti Iti.
We then drove up the eastern side of the island, the road was often by the water and looked very pretty. We drove inland about a kilometre to the tremendously high Fa'aruma'i Waterfalls.

Rosie and Adrian in the Vaipahi gardens

As you can see, Rosie loved these gardens

We could have walked on to two further waterfalls but it was getting late and towards darkness, so we didn’t do that. We stopped just afterwards at Arahoho blowhole, where the water really did ‘blow out’ and made us laugh, and some Polynesian children laughed to. There were lots of large crabs on the rocks here. It was now 6.45. There were no reefs on this side of the island and so the waves were very rough and the road went up and down and round and round much more. It was also much wilder on the eastern side and more areas without houses. There was lovely lighting in the sky as we arrived back at Papeete at dusk.

The Fa'aruma'i Waterfall (with a tiny Adrian at the bottom)

We stopped off at the car park by the sea and this time we had steak and chips, and a bottle of lemonade. We then drove back up to the Mahina Tea and had showers – we felt pretty exhausted, but we drove the car back down to the car hire place and then had the long walk back. It was now some time after 10 o’clock and we collapsed into bed. It had been a good day.

Sunset near Papeete

Monday, 19^th January

But we didn’t have a good sleep – we had been warned about dogs barking, but worse than the dogs were cockerels, who crowed all night long. This together with the hard bed and lumpy pillows meant we woke many times during the night. While we were getting ready to go on today’s trip, I was looking out through the slats of the window and I could see a black cockerel on top of a shed, and if ever I wanted to strangle something, it was him. Adrian went out and found there was a shop next door, so he was able to get some bread, which we ate for breakfast with a banana and a ‘pain au raisin’ with just water, as we don’t seem to have any way of heating water and how I’d love a cup of tea or coffee at the moment. It was now 7 o’clock and we were just about ready for our pickup to go on today’s excursion. We were picked up early at about 7.15 and charged off through the town to pick up another person at which point it started to rain.
A fun day followed – a very long day, having been picked up at 7.15 we didn’t get back to our hotel until 5 o’clock. We initially went along to just outside Papeete and picked up a French couple, from a hotel near the airport, and then went down the west coast along the route we went yesterday. We noticed one or two places we saw yesterday but the weather was nowhere near as good today as it was raining most of the time at this point. When we got to the south of the island we took a track inland, right across to the north of the island. This proved to be quite an experience, leaping around in the back of the four-wheel drive vehicle.
Our two guides, the local one, our leader was called Patrick, and he had a young assistant, who turned out to come from Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas Islands.

The rain was torrential at times and we got absolutely drowned, but it didn’t really matter because it was so warm; later in the day it came out nice. We stopped at lunchtime and the other couple went to a posh hotel in the centre and had a meal which must have been expensive. We had a picnic and sat with the younger driver by a pool with a cascade coming into it, which we later swam in, and which we really enjoyed. We then went back to the hotel and had a coffee there.

They made our trip very very enjoyable for us by explaining all about all manner of flowers and plants and things that we saw along the way, and they kept stopping to do this. The first stop was made very unpleasurable by the mosquitoes, which bit us to pieces, even though we had put repellent on, so I had to take an antihistamine tablet.

Patrick our guide

Miconia saplings amongst orchids

A waterfall in the rain, Central Tahiti

. We were pleased to find out how lush and interesting the centre of the island was, very steep, very mountainous very very green, lots and lots of huge cascades. We crossed water many many times in the vehicle, which did leap around rather but was great fun. We stopped at a site which was a Marae - an ancient burial place and were told quite a bit about the history of Tahiti and Polynesia.

Lake Vaihiria

We passed a big lake called Vaihiria, the river from the lake went to the south of the island and from where we were later the Papeno'o River went to the north of the island and came out to the east of Papeete.

Adrian & 'Fatu Hiva' after a swim

We learnt a lot about the plants – the tarot we wanted to know about, and many other names we had known of from the books about the South Seas or from William Lawson. We were given a bit of bread fruit to eat by the young Marquesan chap – the first time we had eaten that He was great fun, and seemed to laugh at everything like the Polynesians seem to do and have this childish delight in whatever is happening around them, he certainly did. He was wanting to go back to the Marquesas and guide people out there – he was certainly very knowledgeable on the plants and things that we saw today. They delighted in all the flowers that we saw and kept taking off the heads of different hibiscus and we learnt that the indigenous one is more yellow in the morning and turns to red in the afternoon. We had noticed red and yellow on the same tree and we had wondered about this, and they picked every different type of hibiscus flower for us as we went, different shades, different colours, different types. Apart from the hotel in the centre of the island and the few little hydro-electric stations – water is so plentiful here - there was absolutely nothing else.

We arrived back hot and dusty having had an excellent day and I think our guide was pleased that we enjoyed it so much. We felt we had learnt something about Tahiti which we wouldn’t have known without this trip that we made. Patrick was a very serious chap and was very keen about the history of Tahiti and Polynesia and we felt quite privileged at being part of that knowledge and didn’t feel just one of the razzmatazz of tourists who visit the islands.
Back at our hotel we washed off the dust with a shower which cooled us down and tried to organise ourselves for our trip to the Marquesas Islands tomorrow. We walked down into the town and got some more money and ordered a taxi for tomorrow to go to the airport and then went along to the harbour. Tonight we had fish from the stalls in the car park. Mine was excellent fish on a skewer, which was quite reasonably priced from a Chinese stall. Then we walked back, it was about 8.30 and very very hot. It was incredibly hot in our room and airless and we went to bed early and managed some sleep despite cocks crowing as the previous night, but somehow it didn’t seem to bother us quite so much.

A waterfall, Papernoo Valley

Tuesday, 20^th January

We were up very early in the morning, there was a clear blue sky. There was a slight breeze in the room and the air a little cooler. We asked for an 8 o’clock pickup by taxi – we were ready before that having had a ‘pain au raisin’ and little finger bananas for breakfast. We went down and waited for the taxi to come – it was already hot. We had arranged with Rose (the manager lady) to leave one of our large bags there, with things not needed in the Marquesas. When we arrived at the airport we initially couldn’t find our way in and nothing seemed to be happening. We found out that nothing happened until one hour before our flight so we had a half hour wait and went into a little coffee bar and had a coffee. It was a small airport – the size that I like – and we sat around until it was time to be called for our plane. We walked across the tarmac and climbed into the plane, there were no allocated seats, and the plane had just two seats either side. We had a delightful air hostess, who looked like a Polynesian Lisa, who we got to know quite well. The flight was quite lovely and trouble-free.

It was over the sea and we occasionally looked down over some atolls – it was quite cloudy times. About 11 o’clock, we were unexpectedly served a delightful cold meal of fish, probably tunny but the whole meal was very enjoyable – we had bought a filled baguette as we weren’t expecting anything, so that will do for lunch. We became aware of some islands and took a photograph, which later we decided it was Fatu Hiva, and then to our surprise we actually landed first at Hiva Oa, it being Tuesday – it is the other way round on the other days. We just stopped on the tarmac for half an hour whilst the plane unloaded and loaded – a chap in a wheelchair got in and another person who was on a drip, so it was quite slow as they took a lot of getting into the plane, after which the plane was actually full [there are no hospitals on the Marquesas and so if one needs a hospital one has to go to Papeete a 1½ hours flight away!]. It was then a half hour flight to Nuku Hiva passing by Ua Pou, so we took a photograph of that and then landed at Nuku Hiva.

The Marquesas Islands

Where are the Marquesas Islands?

The small airport is on the north of the island, where the land is relatively flat, but all the habitation is in the south of the island. We had flown over the island on the way seeing how mountainous it was, particularly in the south.

Our first sight of Ua Pou from the plane as we pass by

It was still a long way till we got down to the town and we even had a little bit of surfaced road. We saw horses, cows and even a pig roaming free. It was breathtakingly beautiful in the south and we could see Ua Pou in the distance, looking quite out of this world with huge pinnacles in the centre of it and when we stopped outside our hotel it was wonderfully beautiful. We could see why William and Thomas Lawson stopped here. [I should at this point mention Thomas and William Lawson. They were Rosie's great great uncles and were sailors who had come out to the Marquesas on whaling boats in the 1840's/50's, jumped ship and stayed there. They wrote many letters home which still exist and they were the very reason for us going there].

Our route across Nuku Hivafrom the airport to Taiohae

We were unloaded into a small open circular building which seemed quite busy – it was an hour before the plane took off again to go back to Papeete, so some people were waiting to load or to get back on, and other people were waiting to get tickets for the helicopter flight down to Taiohae [It turned out that there was now a helicopter flying between the airport and Taiohae, but nobody had told us!]. There is no made road out of the airport, but we had booked four-wheel drive taxi to take us to Taiohae [How you may ask do you have an airport with no road to it!]. A chap had approached us and said something like Adrian but we couldn’t understand him and he didn’t seem to know anything, hence when things had cleared a bit, we were left not knowing whether we had a taxi lift or not. We were quite amused to see the luggage coming and going and could quite imagine that it could easily get mixed up, as the incoming and outgoing came on little trucks to the same table, plus all the stuff for the helicopter coming and going. By now we were really wondering where our taxi lift was, but there was nobody really to ask [nobody spoke much English] so we ended up asking our air hostess, who was just resting in the building along with the pilot – there was a little room saying Air Tahiti, but she was just sitting along with the rest of the people. She tried to make investigations including the helicopter lady who was booking people and after more than half an hour and many phone calls, we were told we were getting a lift with the chap behind the bar who was the person who approached us initially. Eventually after a lot of discussion about getting us on the last helicopter flight and maybe the hotel, who had booked the taxi for us, might pay the difference, the barman said he would take us. There was also some problem with our paperwork as when we had booked initially, we had got the wrong day, but had later corrected it. So eventually we left in our four-wheel-drive ‘taxi’ for a 2½ hour trip, across the centre of the island [It was only just over 20 miles!]. After my initial excitement setting foot on Nuku Hiva, it was somewhat of a disappointment after Tahiti, because it wasn’t pretty at all.

Our plane at the airport

Nuku Hiva airport

The first part was undulating and low-lying scrub and green and often you could have thought you were in England, particularly as it was quite cloudy. Then we started rising up very steep sided mountains (Nuku Hiva is made up of two extinct volcanoes) planted with what looked like a sort of Scots pine which I think were planted to stop the erosion – we did see quite a lot of landslip on various parts of the ‘road’. The going was very very slow and bumpy – sometimes thick thick mud in the deep red soil, and the vehicle slipped and skidded and higher up in the mountains there was a sheer drop to one side! Afterwards we wondered what would have happened if we had slipped off anywhere because there was absolutely no habitation from the north to the south of the island and it was a very very long way [in time if not in distance].

The main (only) road out of Nuku Hiva airport

View from the central plain

Looking out to Ua Pou

We were shown to our room and, thanks to Lonely Planet which suggested the best room, was looking out over the front. We did discover that we had twin beds, but we decided as it had been so hot, this was probably better anyway, and luckily there was a fan above the beds. Also the room, which was spotlessly clean, was so much better than the ones we had been staying in in Tahiti. The floor was of cold tiles – very welcoming! And there was a loo and shower, which I used to wash all the mud off my legs which I had got when I jumped out of the taxi. We went down and had a beer - there was a charming man behind the bar, who had shown us to our room and we just sat and took in this fantastic view – there was even a breadfruit tree outside, and really it was just like heaven. We ate our French roll, which we had bought this morning, and had got very squashed on the plane, but tasted good. It got dark very quickly, it was dark by 6 o’clock and we are half an hour on from Tahiti. We walked out along the front, it was very warm – it didn’t seem real and in the dark, we could have been anywhere – maybe in the south of France. We came back and went to our room and I read some of William Lawson’s letters, then suddenly the wind blew and it rained very hard. It was lovely to have the fan keeping the room cool.

Looking out from our hotel to Ua Pou (you can almost see it!)

Pae, Pae Marae Vaihira

Wednesday, 21^st January

Adrian slept beautifully – we went to bed about 9.00 pm, maybe even earlier. I woke up more, with the fan going and it raining heavily it was actually quite chilly – the first time we have felt cold. We kept the beds as single beds as we had been so hot in Tahiti. We went down to breakfast at 7.00 am and had a nice breakfast of French bread, tea, coffee and pineapple juice and it was raining heavily on and off. We set off on our William Lawson trail. We stopped first at the Marie, where we were told the records would be, but they seemed not to understand us and were told to go to the police station.

We went there and three very nice policeman told us there was nothing there we should go to the Marie! We then went to an administrative building and tried to talk to a man there who didn’t really speak English, didn’t want to know and more or less turned his back on us. In any case there was nothing there, so we went back to the Marie, having stopped in a shop on the way and looked up the word for deceased, or dead. When we got back to the Marie we found a man who did understand what we wanted and a woman with a fag in her mouth thumbed through the death register books for 1908 and 1909 and said there was nothing in there for William Lawson. She also said that any deaths on Ua Pou would be there and not on Nuku Hiva, so we hoped that would be the case. We bought a doughnut and went back to our room and had them on the balcony. Having eaten our doughnut, we walked to the helicopter pad and booked our tickets for tomorrow, when we are flying to Ua Pou, having decided not to go back by taxi!

Rosie & Adrian around Taiohae

We called into two of the three general stores here selling just about everything. In one a CD of Chris de Burgh was playing. I went into a clothes shop, which had videos of Aladdin! We got back to the hotel about 11 o’clock and booked Charles (the hotel owner) to take us to the helipad in the morning. We walked along the front in the opposite direction and came to the Cathedral, built on an ancient site.

Adrian on the way to the helicopter pad, Taiohae

We talked to 3 little boys who were coming out of one of the several schools and they talked to us with a few words of English – even if they didn’t understand our French! We then came to some Tiki’s in a Pae Pae site on the front.

Adrian on the way to the Cathedral and the entrance to it

We then started looking for somewhere to have lunch. None of the snack bars marked on our map seemed to be there. We walked back a bit and found a building with the man lying prostrate watching telly – there was one filled baguette on show and they said they would make us some more, and gave us two filled rolls and two bananas for CFP 200 Pacific Francs (about £1.50) and we went on our way. We came to a Memorial to Herman Melville, next to a cemetery which we looked around. [Herman Melville was an American writer, most famous for the book 'Moby Dick'. However his first book was called 'Typee' and it was about his adventures in 1842 after he 'jumped ship' from a whaling boat and landed on Nuka Hiva. Rosie's Great Great Uncle Thomas Lawson did the same about a year later and so we were especially interested in Herman Melville]

Piki Vehine Pae Pae, Taiohae with various Tiki's around it

This in turn was next to a sandy beach, and we couldn’t wait any longer and went for a lovely swim and afterwards sat on the beach for our lunch. There were some large spots of rain – it was very very warm. We were trying to find a track which it said in Lonely Planet went out over the hill to Collette Bay, but initially we took the wrong track which went for a way along to the harbour, and after a mile just ended in a headland, so we had to return. We had been joined on this walk by an Alsatian dog, which I was not pleased about and it stayed with us. Having returned we then took the right track up and up over the hill with the dog still following us. The heat was tremendous and it reminded us of our walk in the Dordogne where we were just dripping sweat, and we nearly didn’t go on. At one point the dog turned sharply, just as the helicopter was going over, and I nearly tripped over him and almost went sprawling, at which point I shouted at the dog and with that he left us!. We continued down and down and down and finally came to a beautiful bay, Collette Bay, which I could liken to Nolton Haven (in Pembrokeshire). We immediately took our clothes off and went for a swim, just wonderful so so warm and we really thought it was worth the long long track over the hill to get here - the stuff dreams are made of. Just after that, we heard some noises and a mother and three piglets came down to the beach, wild pigs we presumed.

Rosie by the memorial to Herman Melville

We walked back over the hill and paddled back along the beach – beautifully warm. We sat on the beach, and a Marquesan lad went by riding bareback on a horse – the horses here are beautiful chestnut coloured horses. Also on the beach were chickens one with chicks – we had seen cows grazing near Collette Bay.

Rosie after an impromptu swim, Collette Bay

One of the pigs (a little out of focus!)

We went back to our hotel and had a welcome shower, with all the rain it is quite muddy and our feet in particular get very mucky. It started raining heavily again, but the view being so beautiful and it being so warm it didn’t seem to matter. Later we went downstairs and bought an expensive beer. We had a meal in the restaurant – I had raw fish (sashimi) which came on a bed of grated white cabbage and with a sauce which I wasn’t very keen on. Adrian had raw beef! and then for the main course, he had crevettes and I had fish with vanilla sauce (very strong and is grown here on an orchid, and Polynesia is where vanilla comes from originally) both with a huge portion of chips. The meal was too large for me, and I didn’t eat many chips. We returned to our room where I read some Lonely Planet to prepare for our trip to Ua Pou tomorrow. We swapped beds tonight, as I didn’t really like the fan blowing right down on me.

Adrian above Collette Bay

A Marquesan on a beautiful horse

The chickens running away from the beach

Thursday, 22^nd January

A better night’s sleep and we awoke to blue sky in the morning. We went down to breakfast and this time we had a local exotic jam on our French bread. We spoke to a young chap who we took to be a student but in fact was a restaurant owner from Switzerland who had come here for six months while Charles (the owner) had an extended holiday. We walked up to the tourist information which we had difficulty in finding – nothing is labelled here – and we went into a room and wandered around looking at things and asked somebody about booking, and he said “oh no, not here, it’s round the back”. We found a door with some rather faded photographs and some stuff from 1995, and eventually when we managed to talk to a lady in there, she was very helpful - she spoke good English in an American accent – and she booked us into a place on Ua Pou, and the person would come and collect us from the airport. We also bought a map of Ua Pou, from her. We took this back to our room and saw our “bloody Mary” lookalike lady, who acts as a waitress and also the room cleaner and she asked if she could clean our room while we were out. We then went in the other direction to find another restored Pae Pae, which was a very long hot walk, some half a mile inland, which we found with difficulty, as mentioned nothing is labelled. Eventually we found this “platform” with a tiki and a large banyan tree providing a lot of shade behind it.

We walked back to the hotel, and as we were dripping wet with sweat, had showers and prepared for our journey to Ua Pou. How can I describe the events which happened next. We were sitting ready to leave, quite happily in the lounge, when Adrian looked at the tickets and realised our plane left at 11.50, and our helicopter flight was not until 11.40. We spoke to Charles and he made some phone calls and said we had better leave now. Adrian had just paid and found his card wouldn’t work and so had to use all our money to pay in cash. The young Swiss chap took us to the helipad, not having any time to think.

Along the front at Taiohae

Rosie on the Pae Pae under the Banyan tree

We then had a helicopter flight up over the island, my first helicopter flight so that was a huge event. We went out over the huge crags of the mountainside, over huge steep valleys, arriving at the helipad at the airport, with the plane waiting there.

Rosie walking to the helicopter

We went into the airport building – if you can call it that – and sometime afterwards our luggage came in and we were wondering whether our luggage would get on the plane to go with us to Ua Pou. After about 15 minutes – the plane didn’t go at 11.50 more like 12.00 as we had always thought - we were led out onto the little plane. I did say to the stewardess we were concerned about our luggage, and with that two men came out carrying our luggage one bag each and put them on the plane [the major concern was that there is only one plane a week, so if it didn’t go with us today we wouldn’t have it till we got back].

View from the helicopter on our flight over Nuku Hiva to the airport

We sat on this 20 seater plane for our flight – there were actually two babies on it - and then we were off on our way across the sea to Ua Pou and in no time it seemed we were landing at the Ua Pou airport.

Our plane and the helicopter at Nuka Hiva Airport

We had been told that the airport was between two high ridges, which it was, so we were prepared for that – quite a place to land.

Adrian on the plane enjoying our adventure

We walked across to the terminal – much smaller than Nuku Hiva, where we were met by a person who we came to know as Joel – a Frenchman – who put flower garlands round our necks and said he was going to take us to the hotel.

Ua Pou as we arrive

Ua Pou runway - either a runway with a bend in it or a long taxi way and a short runway

Our plane at Ua Pou airport

He asked us why we had come and we told him about William Lawson and he turned to a beautiful Marquesan lady and said this is your cousin, then turned to someone else and said this is another cousin. He then drove us to the Hotel Pukuee. Joel showed us to our room, which was a funny room looking may be like an Indian room with two single beds and some mats on the floor – nothing else at all. The toilet was some way away, which may cause a problem to me. The site was beautiful – overlooking the valley and Joel seemed to know everything about everybody. We got into conversation with him, while he was getting us some lunch. He was running the hotel at the moment while the people who owned it were in Papeete having an operation. He was a Frenchman, had a pony tail and had sailed the seas a lot and been here three years – a very interesting man and a great ally. We showed him the William Lawson letters, and later he took us down to meet Toti who he said he would know all about everything. Toti wasn’t home from school yet – he was a schoolmaster, so Joel left us at Cafe Vehine.

Adrian at Ua po airport

After about a quarter of an hour Toti (real name George Teikiehuupoko) came, so we talked to him and said who we were and after a while he said he was descended from William Lawson, who had two daughters, so we showed him the letters. We said about Greville [Emma had found an article in the Daily Express in 1995, all about a person called Greville Worthington, who was a descendant of a Lawson, entitled “I am the king of Ua Pou] who had been there a few years ago, and said he was related to the Lawsons of Ua Pou, but we didn’t think he was. He had given them great stories of their ancestors who owned a castle in England. We didn’t want to tell Toti that this wasn’t the truth, but I think he knew. It was a great moment for him to think that he had found his real family, but it wasn’t the one he thought before. It was so overwhelming that I just went along with it all, as it turned out that a great many people on this island were descended from William Lawson. We went up to his house and looked at some records with him. His mother and father were there, but they didn’t seem to want to accept that they had a “new” family, although George by now had accepted it. He took us round to the churchyard and showed us a gravestone which he thought was William Lawson’s gravestone, but we realised it was Thomas Lawson’s gravestone, which William had mentioned in his letters.

Us with our garlands at Café Vehine

While this was happening there was a service going on in the church behind. Toti took us round to a piece of land which William Lawson had owned [William had married one of the local chief's daughters and so inherited land there]. We then met a number of people who were all Lawson descendants and who were all interested and wanted to hear the story. We found out that one of the daughters was called Julia Collete, who George was a descendant of, and the other was Henrietta, which all tied in very nicely with what we knew. The only thing to mar all this was it was extremely hot and we were bitten to death by nonos and mossies. We had had a beer when we first met Toti and also a Frenchman who was the English teacher at the school, a very interesting man.
We went back to the hotel, and had a meal in the evening with the two pilots of plane which bought us over there, who were staying there the night, both very nice, one spoke impeccable English [one of the classic comments we learnt there was – It’s good being a pilot because you can’t miss your plane!]. The meal was fish pate and then fish cooked in coconut milk, with rice and fried bananas, followed by a sort of sponge and fresh pineapple and some red wine. We talked until about 11 o’clock, and it seemed very strange to be the other side of the world, discussing things with three Frenchmen. During the evening we had a phone call from Toti saying he had found some paperwork saying that William Lawson had died on 31 October 1911 aged 88 and that his parents were George Thompson Lawson and Henrietta Clark. We had so much discussion about the Lawson clan that it was difficult to take it all in.
We retired for the night, which was not good one as it was so so hot and sticky. We had two single beds in this little room with a sheet to cover us but it was too hot to have anything on at all, and when we didn’t there were mossies and moths and flying things, so we didn’t have a good night at all. There was also the problem of the loo being some way away. Adrian had a shower in the middle of the night as he was so hot.

Thomas Lawson's gravestone, carved by William in 1864

Some of William Lawson's 'inherited' land

Friday, 23^rd January

The pilots left to fly the plane back to Papeete and we went for breakfast of French bread and jam, coffee and tea on the veranda overlooking the bay.

There were 20 to 30 people there who all sat around discussing we know not what, as it was all in Marquesan or sometimes French. It seemed all about trying to arrange things discussing dates, but like all village hall meetings it went on and on. We were there about two hours and to pass the time we looked at Lonely Planet and in there it said that Toti was the leader of the group who were trying to bring back Marquesan culture [the French like many imperialists had tried to stamp out all local culture].

Tenei Pae Pae, Hakahau, Ua Pou

It was nice to think that William Lawson’s descendant was paramount in trying to do this. After the meeting Toti introduced us to some more ‘cousins’ and we then walked around the village with him and he introduced us to more ‘cousins’ including some in cars, shops and other places. He then said that he would pick us up tomorrow and take us to somebody who had more letters and records. He also said that his grandfather burned a box full of letters etc., because the catholic priest had told him to do so because William had been writing things about the priests, like saying they had wives (women) here. Yesterday we had found out that William didn’t like his father-in-law as he was instrumental in getting women for the sailors on boats when they came in.
We said goodbye to Toti and walked down to the beach, where the French - English teacher (who looked a bit like John Bland) came along and we had quite a chat to him, he said he was pleased to be able to chat to somebody in English. We then thought we’d better get something to eat - we didn’t want a big meal tonight. We couldn’t sleep after last nights meal because we were so hot, so we went in search of a snack bar where they made us up a roll each, which we had sitting on the beach with a beer.

Rosie at a meeting at Tenei Pae Pae with Toti (centre) & Ben (left)

The roof of theTenei Pae Pae at Hakahau

Then it rained a little and one of the ‘cousins’ we met yesterday came and chatted to us. We walked up to the cemetery and looked at Thomas Lawson’s gravestone again and also one of Henry Bruneau who married Henrietta Lawson, one of William’s daughters. We walked around the village, and looked at the Museum, which unfortunately wasn’t open, and various children came and tried to chat to us, usually saying “hello - what’s your name”. We got to Snack Vehine which Toti and his wife own, and his wife (Claire) runs, at about 12 o’clock and Toti and a few others were there and said to come in, and we chatted to him and showed him the article about Greville, which he was very amused at. After some time chatting, we had lunch of marinated raw fish in ginger and chips which was very nice and then he said do you want to come to a meeting, which was in the Pae Pae (this one was used like a village Hall).

We had a swim in the little pool and then we set off to walk down the hill into the village of Hakahau. Our first stop was the bank where we managed to get some money, which was good as we used all ours for paying for the hotel yesterday. The next stop was the Marie, where we made ourselves understood and managed to get the death certificate of William Lawson, so we felt really good about that.

The veranda at Hotel Pukuee

View from the veranda at Hotel Pukuee

Rosie with William Lawson's Death Certificate at Hakahau

We then walked round to the pier where a boat was being loaded up with copra, although we could only see the boat rocking in the swell.

The beach at Hakahau

The front at Hakahau

We then made our way back up the hill to our place, which was quite a climb, and Joel asked us if we wanted to have a meal tonight, but we told him we had already eaten at lunchtime. We had a very refreshing swim in the little pool and then a shower and as we came back out, the wind suddenly blew and it rained quite hard. Our French teacher who we spoke to earlier had said the weather was not good for the Marquesas, as normally it would be less humid and blue sky at this time of year, although it’s probably good for us that we are not having more sun but we could do with less humidity. We felt quite tired and it was cooler tonight and we went to bed early – about 10 o’clock.

As we walked along the front a 'canoe' came past

Saturday, 24^th January

Adrian slept well, but I was hot in the night, and had to get up for the loo, during which a dog started barking at me – not good! We had decided today that we would move from this pension to somewhere else today

. There were several self-contained little bungalows in the village and with the help of Joel and the young girl who works here, we arranged to go and look at one of these at 4 o’clock this afternoon.
We had met a person called Jean-Louis with Toti the other day. He was very quietly spoken and we had some difficulty in understanding him but he said he was a historian and had some information on Thomas Lawson. We were a bit sceptical about whether it was our Thomas Lawson or not, but we had arranged to go see him today with Toti. However, in the end he came up to see us, with lots of documents, and as soon as we started reading them we realised we were into a goldmine and we just couldn’t believe what we were reading. Thomas Clifton Lawson came to the South Seas in 1843, and knew the Marquesas really well and wrote copious letters about the ways of Marquesan life and the fall of it, and drew lots of maps and as Jean Louis had told us before he had a reef named after him. We also realised that it was because Thomas was here in the South Seas that William came here and it all fell into place. We also found some things not so good about William today - it appears he took opium and because of this his wife went off and left him. But we were very pleased about the things we learnt about Thomas and how there were lots of letters and in one from home mentioning all the people we knew of, so that was really exciting for us.
We did go later with Toti to photocopy most of them on his school photo copier, but there were a lot of them and the significance of them will take us some time to assimilate. By the time we decided to leave it was 1 o’clock and we walked down into Hakahau and found most of the places were closed by then, so we ended up having lunch at Snack Vehine with Toti and Claire. We told Toti all of the things we had found out about Thomas, but at that point he didn’t seem very interested, even though he was the brother of his great great grandfather. We then went down to near the front where there were two little bungalows and the person who came to open them up and show them to us was another distant cousin (Marguerite) and she was very amused at this as she looked quite Polynesian.

Joel, our host, , with his carvings at Hotel Pukuee

We were very pleased with the place – it had a lounge, a small kitchen area with a fridge, a shower and a bedroom, in fact two bedrooms. Not everything works brilliantly like one of the taps is dripping and the shower can’t be fixed on wall, but we were still very pleased with it. There was a pretty bowl of exotic flowers including Strelitzia in the lounge which she had obviously specially put there when she knew we were coming and there was even a television if we wanted to watch it in French.

The thought of not having to traipse along to the loo in the middle of the night was very nice and so we said we would take it. Adrian of course then had to climb all the way back up to the Hotel Pukuee to collect the bags, taking two journeys and as soon as he had done this we went across for a quick swim in the sea in quite big waves which was good fun. On the way back we stopped in a little shop and bought a sad looking French loaf which I crisped up in the oven. We then had a bit of tea and made ourselves at home.

View of the sea from 'Chez Marguerite', Hakahau

'Chez Marguerite' the bungalow we rented from Yvette, Hakahau

Sunday, 25^th January

We had a better night’s sleep, despite the fact that it seemed to rain tropically all night. It was slightly cooler and we had a double bed for the first time for five nights. My watch had stopped and so we didn’t know what the time was until Adrian went out later and found out, as we are due at Toti’s at midday to have lunch with them. We thought we would have a cup of tea in bed, but being so damp, it took a long time to light the matches – sometime later we found a cigarette lighter, that we hadn’t noticed before. It was really nice to have our own place. We both had slightly upset stomachs, but even so we enjoyed one of the grapefruits from the tree in the garden for breakfast – it was sweeter than grapefruits we have in England.

We had it together with some crisped up French bread again – the French don’t seem to do that, they just serve the bread damp and soggy. Everything here is a bit archaic. It was then nice to have time to do some washing which had been mounting up, and then hang it out on the line. The day was still warm, upper 80s, cloudy but some blue sky. We had time to laze around with Adrian reading some of Thomas Lawson’s, amazing achievements.
It was now time to walk up to Toti’s for lunch, it was now hot and sunny and we found him with Claire, at the snack bar at the bottom of their house. It turned out, the rain had given them a bit of a problem last night, it had swished down and covered the cafe floor with mud and he hadn’t had much sleep – he’s normally a pretty dour fellow and he seemed even more so today. After a while Claire gave us a drink, I had said water but she gave us a punch, which was made of rum and pineapple, very pleasant. Later we went up to their house, which overlooks the village, in a lovely situation. There was a pleasant breeze and a very large outer balcony with just one table in it which was where we were to have lunch. Apart from us there was Ben, who was the big chap we had met when we went to the meeting at the Pae Pae the other day – a very jolly chap who spoke good English, very very pleasant and great fun. His wife Rosita, a very pretty lady, who is excellent at cooking Marquesan food, and her father was there too – he obviously didn’t speak English and had little communication with us. The other lady who was there is a rather large lady who works in the cafe. We had another punch and then we had the meal, which was prawn fritters with a sauce, and for the main course we had breadfruit cooked in foil (it would have been cooked in banana leaves in the past), some popoi, which is fermented breadfruit; some raw fish caught by Ben, some cooked fish and red wine to drink. Afterwards we had some bananas. There were beautiful views out from the balcony, and it was a very pleasant time for us.

Adrian picking gratefruit outside 'Chez Marguerite', Hakahau

It was interesting to listen to Marquesan people having a Sunday lunch and chatting. They were very much talking about the Marquesan way of life and keeping it alive and it seems to be only three people, Toti being instrumental, in keeping this going. The young children don’t want to know the music, the guitar and ukelele – although I was interested because it was only introduced by the Europeans – they want to have the pop music like all teenagers everywhere. Older children here all go to boarding school in Tahiti. Ben was very aware that they must all speak English because that is the language of world trade, he seemed to have his head screwed on well. The meal seemed to end abruptly and they left and we left soon after, with a plan to go to see Rosita tomorrow to see her making the genuine popoi (the fermented breadfruit). We went back to the bungalow, it was very hot – we felt like a laze after the red wine but it was too hot to sleep, so we made a cup of tea. We then set off for Anahao beach which was a walk over the hill behind the hotel where we had stayed. It was late afternoon so the sun wasn’t too hot – the Cathedral spires, great rocks, in the centre of the island were very visible.

Having lunch. Left to right - Rosie, Toti, Claire, Café lady, Rosita's father, Rosita and Ben

Adrian on Toti's bancony, Hakahau

We walked up and over the hill and down to an Anahao beach, passing a four-wheel drive pickup with children in the back – we had earlier seen one with four little brown babies sitting in the back. Apart from that the we passed a couple with a child, and that was all. As we came down to the bay it looked like a south Devon beach, but sadly here there are lots of nonos (mini biting mosquitoes) so we didn’t hang around on the beach, but splashed around having fun in the waves and then made our way back again. At the top of the little ‘pass’, we came over, there was another track going up to a cross on top of the hill, and even though it was getting quite late in the day we decided to take that, but it was very uneven after last nights rain. The view from the top was quite amazing looking down over the Hakahau and the bay, out to sea, and up to the Cathedral spires in the centre, with the grasses being lit up by the sun going down.

Adrian on Anahao Beach with the spires behind

We were glad we had done it as the Cathedral spires are often in clouds so it was wonderful to see them clearly and as the sun wasn’t too hot. We made our way down and went to the shop we had been to the other day, to buy some more bottles of water which we were glad of when we got back. By now it was 6.45 and getting dark so we had a quick shower and after supper Adrian got down to looking at all the Thomas Lawson stuff.

The Spires of Ua Pou

Monday, 26^th January

Awoke to a hot sunny morning, and had a cup of tea. Adrian went along to the shop and bought a French loaf, very cheaply, for breakfast - a bit limp and soggy [it should be mentioned that when these started off at the shop they were reasonable, but walking along the road, in the extreme damp, by the time we got back at the bungalow, the loaf was to say the least, limp] – eaten with fresh grapefruit. After breakfast we went along to the Post Office and bought some stamps for the postcards and then we went along the bank to get some more money out. Adrian had forgotten the passports so had to go back to the bungalow. When we had finished the bank lady had got chatting and was also a Lawson descendant and was very interested. [The bank was tiny and there was only room for one person at a time in there, so one waited outside in the heat until it was was your turn and only then went into the air-conditioned room!]. We did some more photo copying of Thomas Lawson’s stuff, which we needed to do. We returned to the bungalow and it wasn’t long before it was time for Rosita to come and collect us, to take us to see how they made the popoi, the fermented breadfruit. She picked us up in a four-wheel drive car, but in fact the house was not that far away, and in her backyard was her father and four young boys, picking breadfruit from the trees.

We saw the whole process then of laying the bread fruit under leaves for 3 days and then it was cut up put into a pit lined with more banana leaves and can be left there for maybe years. Flies abounded and one had to close one’s eyes and not look because they were all over the breadfruit everywhere.

Rosita at her house, Hakahau

There were bunches of bananas hanging around the place to dry. Rosita showed us all these things and we tried some dried banana looking a bit like a roll of salami, but tasted really nice, a bit like dates. One of the boys was making a fire in the ground and another was de-scaling fish, which Ben had caught. We left at 11.00, but Rosita wanted us back at 11.30 to see more things being prepared and we were invited back for lunch. We also saw some large drums with carvings on the outside. We went back to Rosita’s for 11.30 and by then the breadfruit had been cooked on the fire that they had made, and the boys had erected a platform to work on and stripped off the peel of the bread fruit and then pounded it with a pestle on a flat wooden mortar. They then kneaded and stretched it rather like a dough and put into a pot.

Breadfruit fermenting at Rosita's, Hakahau

Breadfruit cooking in the fire at Rosita's, Hakahau

This we later ate for lunch, with raw fish in coconut milk, with Rosita and Ben who had come home for lunch from teaching. The kaaka, which was the name of the pounded bread fruit, was covered in coconut milk and we had it with raw Roussay fish and cooked mackerel, both of which Ben had caught. We tried to be careful and not eat too much as my stomach in particular was feeling not too good.

Some of the boys came and ate afterwards and Ben went back to work for the afternoon and it appeared that after the meal it was time for us to leave, which we did, walked back to the bungalow and tried to rest. However it was extremely hot (in the 90's) and a man was strimming grass behind the Post Office which is next to us, which made it difficult to rest. People only cut the grass here with strimmers and as it grows so fast because of the rain, it is a constant problem (to us). We walked down to the beach which was littered with washed up debris, but had a lovely swim, in the warm water.

'The boys' preparing the Breadfruit, Hakahau

'The boys' pounding Breadfruit, Hakahau

Adrian, Rosita, one of the 'boys' and Ben having lunch, Hakahau

We came back and had showers and then went to the shop to buy water, beer and more insect repellent. We went back and it came on to rain torrentially. We had been expecting both Toti and Jean Louis, but they never came. Eventually it got dark and we had some tea of crisped French bread with bananas from Rosita and a beer and later we played Yahtzee and wrote some postcards. We wrote down some details about Thomas and William Lawson.

Children at the nursery School we passed on the way

Tuesday, 27^th January

We had a good sleep. Adrian went to the shop to get some bread about 6.45 am. There were lots of people about as school starts at 7.00 am. Adrian said the Cathedral spires were very clear, so we went out to take a picture, but clouds already had come up. We had breakfast of grapefruit, French bread, bananas, tea and coffee. We then went to phone and spoke to Paul and Emma. We walked around, went up to a Pae Pae and we tried to organise a four-wheel drive trip for today, The first place we went to, the lady wasn’t there at first but she soon came back and was a jolly lady with a very basic vehicle with doors that didn’t shut and a wooden bench seat. She had two small children, one about 18 months with very blond hair. We wanted to go to Hohoi, but she said the road to it wasn’t good at the moment, so she took us down the muddy road to another chap and eventually he agreed to take us later – we thought in one hour. We sat around till about 11 o’clock waiting for him to come – we had bought some filled rolls for lunch luckily. Then Adrian went back to see him which was when he discovered that the man was coming, but at 1 o’clock. As we now had an hour and a half to spare, we walked up to the church and spoke to the priest about records of William Lawson. There was a Frenchman there called Serge who seemed very nice and translated for us. However most of the records were much too late for William Lawson. We chatted to both of them and found out that Serge was going back on the same plane as us to Nuku Hiva and then presumably onto Papeete. We looked in at the large modern church which had some interesting wooden carvings.

We then had another look around the graveyard. Because of the heavy rain, Thomas’s gravestone had become mucky again. We then thought we would walk back past Snack Vehine and pay for Saturday’s meal and found Toti and Claire and a few other local ladies celebrating Claire’s 42^nd birthday. We shared cake and champagne with them and several of the women said they were Lawsons, or married to one and really wanted to converse with us if they could speak better English. They also said that tonight, as it was Claire’s birthday, Toti and her would make “strong love” and laughed riotously.

Inside the Catholic Church, Hakahau

We then went back to meet the chap who was taking us on our trip and although it wasn’t yet 1 o’clock he was there waiting for us hence we didn’t eat our lunch till much later. He was very dubious that the road would be clear enough for us to get through after all the bad weather, and he was rightly so. The road was pretty bad in places and we had to negotiate several rivers across the road. The scenery was dense primaeval forest, very green and the track was very bumpy. At one point the road was blocked by two trees and we had to wait some time for them to be cleared. There were two large vehicles there. Soon after it started rain torrentially and we could see very little. We eventually reached Hohoi and got out in the pouring rain and paddled across to look at a little church.

Toti & Claire (her birthday) at 'Snack Vehine'

A person in the house next door told our guide, called Piri, that the road was not negotiable to reach the sea as the river was too deep to cross. This seemed a great pity as we had come this far and we asked Piri whether we could go on foot. Piri said maybe, so we set off down the track perhaps a quarter of a mile and found a swollen river, quite obviously why the road was blocked and we started wading across the river. Piri almost immediately lost his flip-flop and we decided this was a no go as the river was flowing too fast and were about to despondently give up and were walking back to the Land Rover, when another vehicle appeared. In there was a French couple, she was like a stick insect and must be the thinnest person I’d ever seen, he was actually driving and there were three other people in the back – maybe they were from the ship the Aranui which is stopped off Ua Pou today. They got out and decided they were going to cross, and it was then decided if we all made a chain we could pass people across which is what we did. The water was up to the top of our legs. We then walked down the track to Hohoi beach, which is famous for its flowerstone pebbles, but search as we may, we couldn’t find one, but Piri’s brother was there (he has 11 brothers and one sister and they are all Lawson descendants) and he gave us one. He was a harpoon fishermen and he was cleaning fish. Piri was so pleased to see him that he sat chatting with him for a long time and I think he forgot that he brought us. Piri and two of his brothers are a singing group, and on the way back he played a tape of his music, some of which was recorded on a Pae Pae here. He showed us where and how he did the singing and how he went galloping off on a horse, so there must also be a video as well. He seemed a remarkable chap with many ideas – he’s building a house which he thinks he will let out for tourists; he has some sheep on a hillside; he owns six horses and several scooters for when the tourists come. He seemed a very likeable chap and we were only sorry we couldn’t converse better with him. We had of course got to get back across the river and although the level had dropped a little and wasn’t so violent, we still got our shorts wet.

The little Church at Hohoi

We left about 4.40 pm, the weather was good by now and very warm still. We set off back and the journey was fairly uneventful except there were a number of vehicles going in the other direction and it was difficult to pass. One of them was another brother of Piri with a woman with a young baby in the front and three people in the back and they had difficulty getting up a hill, slipping and sliding, but did make it. We stopped once and walked along a rough jungle track to a viewpoint, high above the sea, which was obviously one of Piri’s favourite places. We looked down to a steep sided densely wooded valley and to the deep blue sea – very beautiful.

Piri and his brother on the beach Hohoi

Piri (cousin)and Rosie (looking very bedraggled) on the beach Hohoi

Piri (cousin) and his fisherman brother on the beach Hohoi

Piri and Adrian crossing the less swollen river on the way back

We drove back to Hakahau to the quay with the intention was of looking back to the Cathedral spires which looked wonderful, although there were light clouds. We looked back to Hakahau which also looked wonderful and from a place we had not seen it from before.

Piri (cousin) at his favourite spot between Hakahau and Hohoi

There were two six man dugout racing canoes practising out in the bay. Piri dropped us back at our bungalow about 6.30 pm, so it had been a long trek. He gave us his name and details of the tape that he and his brothers had made. We had a shower to wash all the mud off and Adrian then went to the shop for water and cheese. We are very aware that water is the one thing we are spending a lot on, but also aware that we don’t want to upset our stomachs. I baked some French bread, some bananas and with the cheese made a nice meal.

Piri on the quay Hakahau with the spires behind

Wednesday, 28^th January

A pretty good night, but we were still hot despite not eating very much. We were up quite early and had a cup of tea – there was a very nice sky at that point although it clouded over later. Just as Adrian was leaving to get some bread, Jean Louis came and we discussed more records about William Lawson, over the wire fence between us and the Post Office. After Adrian had got a loaf we had breakfast of bread, bananas, grapefruit and the dried banana that Rosita had given us. We left about 9.15 and wandered up round the village calling in at one or two shops. These were an old-fashioned jumble of everything imaginable, foods and other bits and pieces – at one we bought a bun and a doughnut, and it turned out to be the stalest one anybody could imagine. In one we bought one postcard of Ua Pou, and then another we bought a Ua Pou T-shirt each. On the way back we passed Jacques, the French teacher who teaches English at school and had a few words with him. We went to the bank, it was now 10 o’clock and we had to sit outside for three quarters of an hour and there were only two people in front of us! We then went in, she seemed to be very busy doing shops accounts, we got some money and then asked if she’d fill in some of her family as she is a Lawson, but she said she was too busy. We went back to the Post Office and bought a stamp for France and then went back to our bungalow and wrote the last few postcards, which will presumably leave on the plane with us tomorrow. We walked out again and I posted the cards and then we walked on to the end of the harbour and along the harbour wall and then went up to the hotel to see Joel and to thank him and say goodbye – we found him quite superficial, as we had imagined. We walked back down the hill, it was very hot, and onto the beach and had a swim. We then went back to the bungalow, the man was strimming grass again and it was very humid. We had lunch. After lunch Adrian had a little rest – this humid weather really makes you feel tired, and I busied myself cleaning and tidying up. Later, it started raining torrentially again, so we decided to have a cup of tea (reusing the tea bag as we have almost run out) and when it had stopped we walked out around the right of the bay, but the only way was along the road, which is the road to the airport. It wasn’t very exciting but it was nice to look at the town from a different direction. It was very muddy and mucky everywhere.

Some men had been clearing out the river with an excavator and had broken the water pipe which was attached to the bridge, and water was bursting out everywhere. We went back and looked at what we thought was an open-air church, and also at some boys who were surfing in the waves. When we got back, our feet were thick mud so we had a shower – we have at least six showers a day as it is so hot. We decided to walk out again and go and see Toti as he said he had some more information, but we met him in his car outside one of the shops and he said he would come and see us later on. He also said that his aunt, who runs one of the shops, had told him that William had had a marble grave, near the beach, but it had been washed away by a tidal wave in 1947.

Looking round bay from the west, Hakahau

Rosie at the western end of the bay, Hakahau

We carried on up the valley looking for the owner of our bungalow, to pay her, and organise transport for tomorrow to the airport. We came across a shop we hadn’t been into, but like the others it was just a jumble and we found it difficult to find anything to buy. We ended up buying a tin of sausages and sauerkraut, and we were able to buy our first bottle of wine! When we came out of the shop we met Serge, who offered to take us to the airport tomorrow and as we weren’t sure of the location of the owner of the bungalow, we gave up and walked back, passing another shop, and had a chat to its pleasant owner, another Bruneau. We had our “wonderful” last meal, including the wine which we enjoyed, and waited for Toti to come. When he eventually arrived he brought some more information particularly about all his father’s brothers and sisters and their families. This was our last evening on Ua Pou.

Palms on the beach near where William's grave was before it was washed away, Hakahau

Adrian looking through William Lawson records at 'Chez Marguerite', Hakahau

Thursday, 29^th January

It was a fine morning, and we breakfasted on grapefruit, French bread and the brie cheese. Rosita’s father and two of the boys were cutting breadfruit from the tree in the garden and continued despite a sudden tropical rainstorm. A man was as usual strimming the grass, when Yvette (Marguerite’s sister?) arrived to collect the money, which was less than we had thought so we were happy. We got her to write down all her brothers and sisters – she was one of 11 plus three more who had died.

We then went along to the shop (the glums number two) and bought a filled baguette each, which they did for us, so we had something for lunch. We then walked round to Rosita who gave us a bead necklace each and we said our goodbyes to her and then walked up to Snack Vehine, but Claire was up at the house. We went up there and she was doing washing in a tub – still looking lovely even though she had her wash clothes on. She talked to us quite a bit, gave us a bead necklace and then telephoned down to the bar so when we arrived back down there, we were given a rum and pineapple punch. We walked down to the beach to say goodbye to it and then round to the bank and spoke to Leontine, who had more time today and was obviously very interested in the family history. She also gave us a bead necklace. We went back to the bungalow, the man was still strimming, and we had a showers and collected together all our things and put them over the fence so we could sit outside by the Post Office and wait for Serge to come. While we were sitting there, Yvette came back and gave us a garland of flowers, so we looked very decorative with all our beads and flowers. She showed us a photo of Greville and his mother, who looked a bit like Chris Cook. Serge came with his wife, Marie Louise and we were all taken to the airport by Christian (a disinterested cousin).

We had to wait a long time at the airport, which included us being weighed on some scales [The runway there can either be looked on as a reasonable length runway with a bend in it, or a short runway after the bend. Either way the takeoff distance is very short and they needed to know the total weight on the plane to make sure they could take off, as the runway ends abruptly in the sea!].

Adrian & Rosie with farewell garlands, at the 'airport', Ua Pou

Serge and his wife Marie Louise at the 'airport', Ua Pou

On the plane we were disconcerted to see vapour coming from the cockpit and along the floor, rather like the special effects in a theatre – we didn’t find out what it was. We had a long wait at Nuku Hiva, most of which we spent talking to Serge and his wife, who turned out to be Jehovah’s witnesses [why was he chatting to the Roman Catholic priest in the church at Ua Pou?]. He told us about the animosity between Toti’s family and the mayor’s family who are two of the three main families in the valley and it explained Toti’s reaction, when we told him the Museum wasn’t open, as it turned out the mayor didn’t want it. A young English chap came while we were there, who was trying to export fish from the island to Tahiti, the loading of which was the reason for our delay. He had obviously become a Jehovah’s Witness, and we had a short chat to him, but he was busy supervising the loading of his fish. The flight to Tahiti we had expected may have been a bit turbulent, as we had heard of the end of a cyclone, but it was quite smooth and I slept most of the way. We had a bit of a strange meal of a sort of club sandwich with rice and yoghurt, which was very welcome. The clouds kept coming and going and we were able to see two or three atolls below us and we were soon landing at Papeete, where it had obviously rained very heavily. We were soon through the airport and collected our luggage and were taken by taxi back to Mahina Tea arriving about 6.30 pm (7.00 pm Marquesan time), where we met Rose (the manager lady) and collected the luggage we had left behind. We walked down to the “Roulottes” on the quay and had crêpes, which were very good. We came back to have a reasonable night despite the bed having a horrible plastic type bed covering which creaked all the time.

Rosie being weighed as baggage at the 'airport', Ua Pou

Our plane on the 'bent' runway at Ua Pou

1998-01-29 The runway at Ua Pou - ending in the sea (Luciano Ragivaru 2021)

Friday, 30^th January

I did get up at 1.30 to hear cocks crowing, dogs barking and again raining torrentially but mostly we stayed asleep and woke up at about 6.30 am and started getting ready for the next stage of our expedition. We had breakfast of a roll we had bought yesterday and I still had a yoghurt from the plane. We left at about 8 o’clock and walked down to what we thought was the Tribunal, and we got a person on the second attempt who spoke English, told us we were not in the right place and directed us to the right place. When we got there it was the Law Courts, a very big building and there were lots and lots of people there, with all sorts of departments. We saw a sign saying to a genealogy department – open Monday to Thursday - and this was Friday morning and we were leaving that night. Our hearts sank. We went to a bureau type place and they sent somebody down who spoke English and after some discussion they very kindly let us into the genealogy section, where all the information was on cards, and we did extract some information on William Lawson, his two daughters and his wife. We spent the rest of the morning walking around Papeete. We went to the Retro and I had a coffee and Adrian had a beer. We bought an ice cream each, and we went into a very large bookshop and spent a long time looking at lots and lots of books on Polynesia. We bought some postcards, went back to the market and I bought my Parae, and we also bought a cake and a roll each for lunch. We also managed to confirm our flights for that night to New Zealand and the onward flight from New Zealand to Australia. We also tried to find a place where there was a “South Pacific Society”, but it had moved and so we gave up. We then had a long long trek up to a place called Loti’s Bath, which was at least a mile up a hot and busy road through the poorer areas of the town, and when we got there is was just a pool area in the river, the river being mostly rapids, and was packed out with children, leaping off the high up rocks and swimming around and thoroughly enjoying themselves. However we were so hot by now that we changed into our swimming things and climbed down a very rickety and dangerous, rusty ladder to have a refreshing “dip” into the water.

We managed to catch “Le Truck” back into Papeete, and we passed again the mortuary which we had passed when walking up, and were amused by their “Lits Refrigerante” – refrigerated beds.

Kids at Loti's Pool, Papeete

Adrian at Loti's Pool, Papeete

We whiled away the afternoon by walking around Papeete and down to the front, sitting on seats here and there overlooked by the “Paul Gaughin”, a cruise ship, docked here on its maiden voyage. We ate some sweets - flying saucers and wine gums brought from England, watched by a little urchin who was playing with tin cans at the waters edge and walked up to the taxi rank and checked the price, and generally wasted time. We watched the sun go down across the sea, but the island of Morea was almost totally in cloud. It was still warm and by 6 o’clock we were just ready for a shower – but of course none available. There was a little hole in the ground near where I was sitting and at one point a huge crab came out. Down by the market bit on the front they were doing some entertainment and a whole lot of women were standing there singing, and a band was playing, but it looked a bit like the over 60s club as they were matronly ladies doing a dance not far removed from the “Birdie dance”.

Adrian on 'le truck' Loti's Pool, Papeete

We went down to the Roulottes and had chicken and chips, drank gallons of water and generally whiled away the time until 9.30, when we went across and got a taxi to take us to airport. There were no facilities there, and so we had more hours to while away until our flight at 3 o’clock (am).

Ladies dancing, Papeete

Saturday, 31^st January (Simon’s birthday)

We managed to get a little bit of rest, lying on wooden bench seats, which was all that was there. Sometime after midnight (on Friday), we managed to book in and once we went through into the departure lounge there were in fact some comfortable seats so we managed to get a little more rest. The plane from Los Angeles came in about 1.15 and the departure lounge began to fill up with people and eventually we got onto the plane, and left on time at 3 o’clock. We were given breakfast, a strange time for that, and after about 1½ hours we landed at the Rarotonga in the Cook islands, and had to get off the plane while it was re-fueled [an amusing incident occurred here, not recorded by Rosie. When we went to get off the plane the air hostess insisted that everybody removed the New Zealand aircraft blankets, which they had been sleeping in and everybody dutifully obeyed. However one “little old lady” decided she wanted to keep hers wrapped around her, since it was dark and relatively cool outside, and after the air hostess had asked her number of times and the lady steadfastly refusing, the air hostess said “Oh, go on, take it!]. We all had to walk across the tarmac and go into the lounge, where there were gifts shops, the whole place looking similar to other parts of Polynesia and after about half an hour, we all got back on again, and were given another breakfast. We crossed the international dateline, so sorry Simon this was the end of your birthday and then it was :-

Sunday, 1^st February

We mostly dozed and arrived about 9.00 am (New Zealand’s time) at Auckland airport. New Zealand has very strict quarantine rules about animals and vegetable goods, and the only thing that we had a problem with was our walking boots. Adrian had scrubbed his when he packed but mine still had a little bit of earth on them, and so they took them away and when the boots came back they were beautifully clean! We went out to the front of Auckland airport, got some money and phoned for the bus to the Gateway hotel and then walked out into sunshine and blue sky and a much drier heat. The temperature was very pleasant, the problem in Polynesia was that the nighttime temperature was very little different from the daytime temperature and it was humid all the time. It was lovely to feel not constantly sweating and dripping. We soon got the bus to the Gateway hotel and were shown to our room, and the difference was amazing. For almost the same price as each of our two hotels in Papeete, we had two bedrooms, one with a double bed and one with two single beds, with pretty pastel covers, carpeted floors, a nice bathroom with a bath and all the extras that one expects in hotels (which were non-existent in Papeete), tea and coffee making facilities and a fridge with milk in it, and finally the patio doors opened out onto a small swimming pool – so not surprisingly we thought it was wonderful, including free transport from the airport. Adrian turned on the television (which of course was now in English) and found a programme on computers, which he enjoyed. I had a bath and Adrian had one later. I made some tea and coffee, with some cake that we’d kept from the aircraft. We both slept a bit and then had a swim in the pool which was lovely, had showers and afterwards sat around enjoying the non-humid atmosphere, which we’d had for the last fortnight.

New Zealand for the day

About 5 o’clock we walked down the road and bought some crisps and a chocolate bar at a shop which we realised was where we bought our food when we came to New Zealand last time. About 6 o’clock the McDowell’s arrived [Rosie had taught the 2 children at Priors Court school and they had recently emigrated to New Zealand] and we went off to Mission Bay and had a meal in an Italian restaurant with a beer and then a nice Chardonnay wine.

Adrian watching television at Gateway hotel, Auckland

Rosie by the pool at Gateway hotel, Auckland

We then drove back with them to their house, seeing the Skytower (which Yve, the daughter, was going to for her birthday in about a week) and Auckland all lit up. We saw Oliver’s (the son) school on the way there. We stayed a little while and then Andrew (the father) drove us back to our hotel, being held up a little bit by an accident on the way and about 10 o’clock we went to bed.

Rosie & The McDowells, Auckland

Oliver & Yve McDowell, Auckland

The driver did stop once or twice for us to take some video and pictures, but he didn’t say much - he didn’t speak much English. Sometimes the countryside was green, looking like England by the vegetation that we saw, but we often went through thick slushy mud and crossed streams and rivers. Altogether quite a hazardous journey, and it was with immense relief that we crossed the last hill and looked down to Taiohae, nestling below.

Looking down from the viewpoint to Taiohae, Nuku Hiva (Pascal Gerard 2022)

The bay looks out exactly to Ua Pou and the hotel we are in, in an idyllic situation in the middle of this bay looking out over the beach.

We then walked down to the front to where we thought William Lawson’s gravestone had been

Rosie with cousin(3rd) Yvette outside bungalow, Hakahau