Nuku Hiva Yacht Charter

Nuku Hiva is the largest of the Marquesas and the fullest expression of what the archipelago is. There is no barrier reef and no lagoon. The sea meets the land directly, at cliffs and headlands falling sheer into deep water, and behind them the island rises into ridges, plateaus and valleys of dense cloud forest.

Yachts anchor in Taiohae, a wide amphitheatre of a bay beneath a ring of green peaks, with two sentinel rocks standing at its entrance. It is the administrative centre of the northern Marquesas and where most voyages here begin, but the real interest lies in the valleys beyond.

Hakaui, reached by tender and then on foot or on horseback, ends at the Vaipo waterfall, which drops several hundred metres down a basalt wall into a pool at the head of a canyon so narrow the light barely reaches it. Taipivai, inland from Controller Bay, is the valley Herman Melville deserted ship for in 1842 and later wrote about in Typee; it remains agricultural, green and largely as he described it.

The archaeology is exceptional. The tohua at Kamuihei and Hikokua hold stone platforms, petroglyphs and monumental tiki beneath enormous banyan trees, and they are still used for festivals rather than fenced off and preserved.

Wild goats and horses run on the high plateau of Toovii. Manta rays feed off the western capes, and the fishing in the channels between the islands is as good as anywhere in the territory. Taiohae is also the one place in the northern group with reasonable provisioning, which makes it the natural base from which to work the rest. Nuku Hiva is not comfortable in the way the Society Islands are comfortable, and that is entirely the point of coming.