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Air Power - Apr 3



The last entry should have been dated 29 Mar. The Marquesas were named by a couple of Spanish explorers in the late 1500s. However, the name in the local dialect is Fenua Enata. "The Land of Men". Whoa. Don't tell Gloria Steinman. She'd have a cow. Speaking of cows, the islands are somewhat of a breadbasket. Everywhere you go, mango, banana, papaya trees. Goats and wild pigs roam the islands. Most folks grow all their own vegetables and have chickens. Considering the island population was decimated from an original 100,000 when first discovered by Europeans to a paltry 2500 inhabitants in the early 1900s, there is plenty of land to sustain the current population of around 12,000.

During our visit to Nuku Hiva, the tourism board put on a barbeque sort of like a Lua. Plenty of roasted pig, breadfruit and you guessed it, mangos, bananas and papayas. The poi is much more palatable than the Hawaiian variety. Marquesans eat very little taro, and mix coconut with their concoction. The dancing was very energetic.

A couple of days later we hiked up to a waterfall had another traditional Marquesan meal of pig and fruits, then headed for a our last island in this archipelago, Ua Pou. We are now currently heading for Tahiti approximately 750 miles to our southwest. We'll pass through another archipelago called the Tuamotu Islands. These are famous for their pearl farms. How long we stay there depends on how easy they are to navigate between passes. These are atolls, not volcanic islands with deep water around them.

Dave & Jill


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