How We Crossed Paths with National Geographic
The trade wind has somehow died down over the past few weeks, and we had even begun to doubt that it was strong up here in the northern Marquesas. The wind got wind of our doubts and kicked in—it’s whistling fit to bust. Even in the completely sheltered bay of Anaho, on the north side of Nuku Hiva, where we moved yesterday, it still manages to whip up waves.
The bay is entirely surrounded by cliffs; from the yacht, you cannot see the way out to sea, and under the full moon the crew cannot shake the feeling that they are anchored in the middle of a wondrous lake.
The bottom of this pseudo-lake is covered in coral. The captain checked the anchor and ordered buoys to be attached to the chain every 10 metres, so that the anchor chain would more or less float above the coral heads instead of wrapping itself around them.
The captain’s exclamation, “There are so many beautiful fish here!” prompted our first snorkelling swim. Clouds of colourful fish delighted our young sailor so much that she squealed loudly through her snorkel. The first mate thought sharks had arrived—there are plenty of them here. But Ladunya was squealing at the fish.
Yellow-striped and silvery-blue shoals, a hundred or two strong (is that how you talk about fish?), graze around the coral, nibbling at the edges. A white moray eel with grey spots protrudes from its hole like a ferocious sphinx, swaying slightly. A phlegmatic turquoise-and-pink giant parrotfish processed past.
Conical shells with broad bases lie on the bottom. According to the sailing directions, tourists collect them for decoration and locals for food. We collect them for both. For the sake of the shells, the young sailor even started diving deeper than 2 metres. Everyone was astonished, even the snails themselves.
Dinner turned out to be a restaurant-style shellfish salad, with tart star fruit (carambola), masses of salad leaves, lemon, a little cheese, onion and cucumber. Mmm, absolutely amazing.
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We fled north from the waterfall in the previous report, horribly bitten by invisible midges. In Hatiheu Bay, also in the north, the midges continued to devour the crew. So viciously that everyone looks as though they have had a severe bout of chickenpox. Our bodies are burning; the captain was even gloomy and angry for a couple of days, but he kept going.
Though, to be honest, he did not keep going anywhere. He said, “That’s it, we’re off to the Tuamotus.” But the first mate persuaded him to try a bay with a beach and shellfish. Especially since the wildlife is not limited to shellfish.
Just now, returning from the beach, we entered the water between three small rays (under a metre) and a pair of reef sharks. Reef sharks are not frightening; they are small, under a metre too. And with fish in such abundance, they are hardly likely to fancy biting an elephant on the hind leg. That is how we girls reassured ourselves ).
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And we did not dash to the previous bay—Hatiheu, that is—for no reason. Word had got around that local dancers would be performing there for a cruise ship. Of course, we suspected that all the dancing would happen in the morning, but we hoped it might still be in the evening )).
We always do this, because we cannot be bothered to leap up at five in the morning and weigh anchor. Meanwhile, the ship was already in the bay when we proceeded sedately closer to shore. And it turned out to be National Geographic’s expedition ship Orion.
Can you imagine what the dancing must have been like??? Very cool. Because this National Geographic Society does not churn out rubbish or film just any old thing.
We dropped anchor at one in the afternoon. Until three, we took turns watching through binoculars as people aboard Orion moved about without doing anything suspicious, until we spotted a group of about 30 people going ashore in the village. We raced after them, but somehow, strangely, the group vanished into thin air.
Not giving up hope, the crew of Lady Mary flew up the concrete road where the party had last been seen. No joke: in the forest in that very direction stands the largest ceremonial complex, waiting for the dancing to begin. If Kozhukhov’s film is to be believed, that is precisely where warriors dressed in grass beat their chests to the sound of drums.
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The concrete road ended in a dead end, from which three dirt tracks twisted steeply uphill. We dashed along all of them. The result was nil: no platforms, no people.
Then it dawned on us that we had better return to the main road, which would definitely lead to the platforms. True, none of us could remember how many kilometres away they were. On the day we explored the island by car, nobody imagined that we would later be charging around here in search of platforms and spectacles.
Driven by the thought of making a film better than Kozhukhov’s, the first mate clutched the camera and raced uphill, flailing her arms. Nastya hobbled along at the rear with the tripod at the ready. The captain and the young sailor maintained their neutrality in the middle of the column.
After about three kilometres, it turned out that the ceremonial grounds were empty, but on the way we spotted another platform. With a consoling “at least we got some exercise,” we turned towards it. This sacred site also had a name beginning with the suspicious letter H.
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Ancient Tiki statues bulged their eyes at us and leered. They clearly knew something. A grey Tiki held a writhing stone infant in one arm. In the other hand, he gripped a staff made from a human thigh bone, rendered in stone. Another Tiki was made of pink tuff and had three heads, each more horrible than the last.
The ashes in the fire turned out to be warm. In superstitious terror, we filmed a couple of shots of the empty grounds and began to make our escape. And then, at last, we noticed clumps of long grass that had fallen out of the dancers’ loincloths.
The dancing had been in the morning.
Can you imagine what it must have been like, if they were dancing for National Geographic!? Well, the first mate imagined it too. And she heaped ashes on her head until morning. For now there was no hope of making a film better than Kozhukhov’s.
And where did the group of 30 people go, you ask? We never found any trace of them that evening.
And the gods of the cannibals kept smirking, their bulging eyes following us as we left. They clearly knew something.
To be continued.