In Tahuata …

In Tahuata we will find a palm-fringed white sand beach with turquoise water so clear that you can see the bottom under your boat.  In Tahuata we will find trees laden with pamplemousse.  In Tahuata we will stop worrying about wifi and email, but sit and watch the sun light and shadows unfold on the surrounding hills and valleys, sighing as the sun dips below the clear horizon and cheering as the full moon peeks over the ridge top.  In Tahuata ….

It was time to see the rest of the Marquesas.  Leaving the ghost of Gauguin and the muddy anchorage of Atuona behind, we set sail for Tahuata.  What a glorious afternoon of sailing!  With a fresh wind and light following sea we brisked through the Bordellaise Channel between Hiva Oa and Tahuata on a single tack, leaving the dark mountains of Atuona behind in their solemn brooding and approaching the sun bedazzled white beaches along the northwest shore of Tahuata.

There is an unexpected excitement when leaving an anchorage.  As you prepare the boat for sailing again you are thinking about raising halyards and running jib sheets, about securing things inside the boat so that the coffee pot does not go airborne in a knockdown, and about removing snubbers and raising the anchor.  There is a slight apprehension as you imagine the ship heaving in breaking seas and rising winds.  If you’ve been in the anchorage for anything more than a week you wonder if you still remember how to sail.  But once you have that anchor raised and you’re cruising out to sea there is an exhilaration!  Freedom once more!  Goodbye to [mud, mosquitoes, cars — whatever it is you are escaping from] and hello to [fresh wind, sea rhythms, stars — what you are dreaming of].

We anchored in Hanamoenoa for a couple of days before moving along to Vaitahu.  While Hanamoenoa is an undeveloped beach and Vaitahu is the primary village on Tahuata, there were a dozen boats anchored in Hanamoenoa but only three or four in Vaitahu.  The two bays exemplify the contrasting aspirations of the modern sailor:  one bay with a wild palm-fringed shore and sandy beach offering a primitive isolation and seclusion, and the other bay presenting a convenient wharf for going ashore to find fresh baguettes and pamplemousse.

In Vaitahu we had a mission — to get tattooed.

Our friends from Ariel 4, who we had met in Mexico and who had come there from Sweden via the famous Northwest Passage, had been tattooed when they had visited Tahuata a few years previously.  Eric’s manly arm band around his left bicep showed the unusual motifs of the Marquesas, casting him as a savage when he removed his shirt and displacing his otherwise serious demeanor as a modern physician.  When I saw that I decided that I too would go to Tahuata to get tattooed.

In Vaitahu, many have come before me with a mission.  The Mendaña the Spaniard anchored here in 1595, “discovering” Fenua Enata (the true name for the Marquesas, the Land of Men) and naming the islands after his patron, Marquesas de Mendoza.  He named Vaitahu “the Bay of the Mother of God,”, then went ashore to celebrate mass.  Soon a fight broke out and Mendaña killed a couple hundred islanders before leaving to continue his search for terra australis incognita, the fictitious southern continent.  Captain Cook himself anchored here in 1774 during his second great Pacific expedition aboard the Resolution.  Pastor William Crook came in 1797 on a London Missionary Society ship to evangelize the people of Tahuata who were rather hostile about the idea.  The French Admiral Dupetit-Thouars arrived here in 1842 with the treaty in which France took possession of the Marquesas.

Stepping ashore on the concrete wharf and following a dirt road along the black rock beach we passed a few houses hidden in groves of banana and hibiscus.  Several huge mango and breadfruit trees drooped with ripe fruit.  Shaded under a noni tree at the edge of the beach a pink hairy pig grunted as we passed, while chickens ran squawking across the road in their ridiculous fashion with necks outstretched as if inviting one to prepare early for Sunday dinner.

We came to a small church on the edge of the village with a rusting tin roof and a simple unadorned steeple.  Some of its side boards had holes big enough to put your fist into.  Inside, its pews were rough-hewn and small.  On a grassy lawn in front of the church a collection of fishing piroques rested, each painted in bright primary colors.  As the afternoon sun splashed on the church and the piroques, I declared that I loved Vaitahu and would be happy to get tattooed in this magical place.

We discovered fresh baguettes at a tiny magasin in the village, with intermittent wifi just outside.  We were looking for a tattoo artist named Felix.  A young lady at the cash register knew him of course, for there are no more that 600 people on the entire island.  She indicated that he would be back in the morning.

“Environ le neuf heure?” I asked.

“Oui.  Dans le matin.”  That sounded pretty simple.  Come back to the village tomorrow morning and simply look around for Felix.  Since he’s the tattoo artist, he’s probably the one not wearing tattoos.

We explored the village in the ten minutes it took to do so and found a splendid modern church newly built on the village green, supposedly built from river stones that formed the ballast of ships visiting Tahuata in the past.  There were no locals at the new church, whereas the small wooden church at the edge of the village always had a small gathering of locals on the stoop.  The new church was built to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Catholic missionaries.  The Marquesans don’t seem particularly bitter about the missionaries who changed their culture and insisted that they wear clothing.  They seem to have forgiven the missionaries from chiselling off the carved penises on hundreds of tikis guarding the holy maraes up every valley.

Across from the village green and bordering the waterfront were a group of young men playing pitanque (like bocci ball but with heavier steel balls and a small white ball that served as the target, called a cochonet, or “little pig”), while the young women from the village played volleyball.  I declared that I loved Vaitahu even more and would be happier than ever to get tattooed here.

The next morning we tied up again at the wharf, this time with a small stern anchor to prevent the ocean swell from banging the dinghy against the wharf with each rise and fall.  We purchased our fresh baguettes for the day, then made our way over to the village green past a schoolhouse with a room full of singing children.  Outside on the lawn a small band of Marquesan toddlers played a game of leapfrog to the rhythmic meter of a stern schoolmarm, who seemed to believe that these fun-loving youngsters would stoop to wanton frolicking if not kept in check by her exhortations.  Past the new church we met two women sitting in the shade with a basket of flowers they had collected.  We exchanged Marquesan greetings of ka oha nui and me tai and they asked us if we were looking for pamplemousse.  We said yes, and tattoos as well.  One of the women called to a man in a small house up the hill and he came down in a truck to take us looking about for pamplemousse on the way to where Felix lived.

Up a steep road we climbed out of the little village.  Overlooking the bay we spied Pamela and Mintaka resting at anchor and pointing to windward in the blue waves far below.  We had no clear idea of where we were going, or for that matter who this man was, but we grinned at each other as the adventure unfolded.

We came to a shack high on the hill with several fruit trees in the yard.  The man, whose name was Kooki, showed us how to get the best pamplemousse.  I climbed high into one of his trees as he gestured to show me which of the grapefruit to get.   An enormous hog clambered up from a mud pit as we walked through Kooki’s garden.  Next he asked us to take some bananas from two huge clumps hanging under the eave of the shack.  He presented a morsel of delicious banane sechèe (dried banana) for us to sample, describing in French and Marquesan how to dry the banana in the tropical sun until it turned a sweet leathery brown.  He told us to leave the bananas and pamplemousse in the back of his pickup, walk down a ways to Felix’ house, and then Kooki would meet us later in the village.

Not quite sure we heard the directions correctly we walked back down the hill as the adventure unfolded.  Felix was in his truck and about to head back down the hill when we approached him saying, “Felix?  Tattoo?”

“Maintenant?” he asked.

“Oui, aujourdhui,” I answered.  He smiled warmly and I knew at once that he was the one to give me my Marquesan tattoo.

Into his truck we climbed and rolled back down the steep hill to the village and to a tiny unadorned white shack that was Felix’ tattoo studio.  He explained that there were two tattoo artists here, himself and his good friend.  Felix had few tattoos on his body, mostly on his legs, whereas the other tattooist was completely covered, courtesy of Felix.  In his simple studio we saw a poster showing the other man, his face, head, even his ears, all tattooed in an intricate display.

We also saw an unsigned plaque from the William Spaulding Manufacturing Company, Inc., certifying that this tattoo studio used only the finest and safest modern techniques.

“Il faut avoir confiance — have confidence in me,” Felix told me.  He motioned to a plastic chair and told me to sit.

I leafed through a collection of books on a bench.  They showed many varieties of Marquesas tattoos.  I found one that looked like Eric’s arm band.  “Comme ça,” I pointed.

“D’accord.  It will be like that.  Only different.”

I closed my eyes as Felix began drawing an outline.  I yielded to his pen.  He was a great artist and he would give me a great tattoo.  If not, I might have to wear a sweater permanently, like Mr. Rogers of children’s television fame, who wears his sweater to hide tattoos that indicate the number of enemies he has personally killed with his bare hands as a Navy Seal.  Or worse, graft some skin off my butt to cover the mistake, or perhaps lop off my arm to add to the piratical effect.

After some time Felix showed me his drawing and asked me what I thought.  I thought it would be hard to erase with an abrasive ink eraser.  “I love it.  What exactly is it?”

“Here is the whale,” he motioned.  I had seen several whales in Mexico at the start of our journey.  “And here — the manta ray.  And here another manta.”  In Hanamoenoa I had swum with a huge manta under Pamela’s keel.  “This is the Marquesan cross.”  Very cool.  Just what I was looking for, a primitive archetype from the early days.  “And here — this is the turtle.  Here the male and here the female.”

“How do I know which is the male and which is the female?”  A reasonable question, which is not at all obvious with turtles.

“Ici, regard,” he pointed.  Sure enough, the male turtle had a point that the missionaries did not know about, while the female had “c” shaped opening to receive the point.

Now came the hard part.  While I waited, Felix assembled his tattooing equipment.  A raw battery provided power to a tattoo gun that he switched on and off with a foot pedal.  He told me to lie down on a table, then adjusted his lamp, switched on the gun and went to work.

It felt like a swarm of killer bees who were pissed off because they couldn ‘t find any flowers.

Felix jabbed and poked with the needle gun and stopped briefly to blot up the excess ink and blood.  I tried to imagine a serene mountain scene but could only think of sitting in a dentist’s chair and measuring the torrent of sweat dripping from my palms.

The ordeal lasted an hour and a half as he made his way around my left bicep.  I tried not to think about the poster above me with the young man with tattoos in his ears.  I found consolation in the fact that Felix had done the tattooing on this guy, and in the promise of the William Spaulding Manufacturing Company, Inc.

Finally he was done.  The tattoo looked much better than the ink drawing.  Now that the buzzing of the needle had stopped, I felt manly and strangely … Marquesan.  I was ready to do the hakka dance, stick out my tongue, and find some missionaries to eat.

Now it was Pam’s turn.  She wanted a dolphin, not just any dolphin, but a special dolphin.  It was her totem.  It guided her through the difficult times.  She showed Felix a picture of one, but it should be turned this way, not that, and here should be some Marquesan architypes, and the face should be different.  Felix had his work cut out for him.

Felix drew the perfect dolphin behind Pam’s right shoulder and I took pictures so she could see it.  Watching the tattooing on Pam was worse than getting mine done, but I dutifully photographed the event for future generation.  She grimaced painfully for the hour and a half that it took to produce the perfect dolphin.

And what a dolphin!  Such intricate detail, including a small bug-eyed tiki in the tail section with his skinny arms folded across his pot belly.

Immediately after finishing with Pam, Felix retreated to the back room of his studio and fired up a joint.  Exhausting work!

The next day I set out to explore more of Vaitahu and the surrounding valleys and cliffs.  As I walked past Kooki’s place he shouted a greeting.  Further on up the steep mountain road a friendly young man walked with me for a spell, conversing in French and telling me that he was off to cut bananas after he fetched his machete.  I followed the road high above the ocean cliffs for several miles to the overlook of Hanamoenoa’s coconut-filled valley.  On the way back down I passed Felix, waving, carrying a load of kids from school.

I felt that I had achieved something special in Vaitahu.  Not just an armload of pamplemousse and a tattoo, but a relationship with some of the special people there.

I am proud of my Marquesan tattoo.  Which is a good thing, because it won’t come off.