Pitufa.at

Yesterday we hitchhiked from Taipivai over the mountains to the maintown Taiohae, because we still had some errants to run there and simply couldn’t be bothered to sail to the uncomfortable bay of Taiohae where we would have had to set a stern anchor again, etc. Instead we took the dinghy along the river to the village of Taipivai early in the morning, walked a few metres up the road to Taiohae and just a few minutes later we were lucky and got a ride with a crew of young construction workers on their way to town. The way back was just as easy, every car’s willing to take along a few more passengers (the typical friendly Polynesian behaviour), but as there’s so little traffic here between the rush hours, it can sometimes take half an hour until the first car comes by. Today we lifted the anchor early in the morning to sail up to the bay of Anaho on the northern side of Nuku Hiva. All cruisers who had been there described it as gorgeous, one of our guide books calls it the best anchorage in the Marquesas, so we couldn’t wait to get here. We expected it to be a nice sail reaching up the island, but first we had strong noserlies around the cape and then ended up with very little wind, but high waves and swell plus the reflections of the waves coming back from the cliffs–a nightmare of cross-seas with flapping sails. We didn’t catch a fish either… We reached Anaho around noon and it looks pleasant enough at first sight well protected, but it’s just a wide bay with palm trees, a few beaches, a fringe reef in unfortunatley AGAIN murky water. Maybe we’re just spoiled from all the perfect postcard places we anchored at in the Gambier, but Nuku Hiva’s not exactly our idea of paradise. Especially as we know that the beach that’s twinkling enchantingly in the sunlight from afar, will be covered in biting bloodsuckers again