Ua Pou Yacht Charter

Ua Pou announces itself from a great distance. A dozen basalt spires rise from the centre of the island, several of them approaching a thousand metres, and in the right conditions the cloud sits below their summits so that the columns appear to stand free in the sky. There is nothing quite like the profile of this island anywhere in the Pacific.

The anchorage is at Hakahau on the north-east coast, a working village behind a small breakwater with a fine church, a bakery and an entirely unhurried pace. Ua Pou is one of the more populous Marquesan islands and it feels it: there are people in the valleys, children in the road, and the sense of a culture being lived rather than displayed.

That culture is unusually strong here. Ua Pou is a centre of Marquesan music and dance, and the island produces some of the finest carvers in the archipelago, working in rosewood, tou and the local flower stone, a phonolite found nowhere else, flecked with pale crystals and worked into small polished pieces.

The valleys reward the effort. Hakahetau has a waterfall and a coffee plantation. Hakamaii, on the west coast, is reached by a track over the ridge with views down into bays no road serves. Petroglyphs and tohua sit in the undergrowth throughout, most of them unmarked and none of them ticketed.

Swell can make the anchorage lively and landing occasionally sporting, but Ua Pou repays it. Few islands anywhere combine landscape this theatrical with a community this welcoming. For guests working north through the Marquesas, Ua Pou is the island that makes the strongest first impression.