Ua Huka Yacht Charter

Ua Huka is the odd one out. Where the rest of the Marquesas are green to the point of saturation, this island is dry, open and tawny, its ridges bare and its valleys narrow, closer in appearance to somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean than to the South Pacific. The effect is startling on arrival and remains the reason the island is remembered.

Wild horses are everywhere. Descended from Chilean stock landed in the nineteenth century, they run in loose herds across the plateaus, and riding is still the most natural way to see the interior. Wild goats hold the higher ground.

Yachts anchor at Vaipaee, in a bay so narrow and deep it is known as the Invisible Bay, or at Hane, which is more open and more comfortable. Both villages are tiny. Fewer than seven hundred people live on the whole island.

What Ua Huka has is an extraordinary concentration of heritage. The museum at Vaipaee holds one of the finest collections of Marquesan artefacts in the territory, and the archaeological site above Hane is among the oldest known settlements in the archipelago. The island also maintains a remarkable arboretum, planted decades ago to preserve Polynesian species, and a tradition of woodcarving as accomplished as anywhere in the group.

Offshore, the islets of Hemeni and Teuaua hold enormous colonies of sooty terns, and the water around them is thick with fish and frequented by manta rays.

Ua Huka is quiet, austere and entirely distinctive, and it stays with guests far longer than they expect.