Festival in Ua Huka

We arrived at the island of Ua Huka on the afternoon of December 15th. The island has just one bay suitable for anchoring, and of course most of the boats in the Marquesas had gathered there for the festival. Which meant about 30–35 boats, all anchored in very tight quarters. When we arrived, we happily found a spot to drop the hook—but by the next morning it turned out our joy had been premature.

The wind in the bay is extremely unsettled, causing boats to swing in all sorts of directions, and not in unison. This leads to some dangerously close encounters. The next morning we were forced to weigh anchor and spend several hours circling the bay, trying to anchor here and there—either the anchor wouldn’t hold properly, or we realized we were simply too close to other boats. Annoying! Eventually we did anchor, and managed to stay put for two days, until once again we found ourselves uncomfortably close to our neighbors. So, in the middle of the final night of the festival, we moved yet again. We somehow anchored and then stayed awake all night with a flashlight, making sure we didn’t hit anyone. By early morning we gave up, left the bay, and sailed on to the neighboring island—without seeing the closing ceremony. I’m rushing through all of this just to get it off the table and move on to the fun stuff.

One last thing before the fun: closing the chapter on Crazy Johanna. Before she joined the passage, we agreed that once we reached the destination she could stay one more night to get herself sorted, and then she’d leave the boat and let us have our privacy. The day after arrival, she tried to drag things out until we had to make it very clear that she was getting off the boat now. Unpleasant. And then, of course, she “forgot” to give us the small amount of money we had agreed on in advance as a symbolic contribution toward food expenses for the passage.
That’s it. Enough complaining.

The festival itself was absolutely stunning. Every evening, two dance troupes performed, each representing one of the six Marquesan islands. Each troupe had more than fifty dancers, accompanied by a band of drummers playing enormous drums, with completely wild energy. The men wore “warrior-style” costumes and movements; the women danced in grass skirts, with dizzying hip-shaking. I’m attaching photos and videos here that will convey the experience far better than any description I could write.

As mentioned, the dances took place in the evenings, and during the day we mostly rested—except for one day when there was an insane food event at the festival grounds. Each island set up a tent to feed everyone at the festival, for free. The night before, much of the food was prepared in underground pits: hot coals at the bottom, meat and various roots wrapped in banana or coconut leaves, buried and then unearthed after about twelve hours. On top of that, there were countless raw fish dishes in different sauces, crabs, clams, and many other local specialties, all generously piled onto plates by local mamas.

Local arts and crafts were also on sale at the festival—wood carvings, tapa (a kind of coarse paper made from processed tree bark, decorated with traditional motifs), and beautiful shell necklaces.

Tapa

All in all, the feeling was that this was a completely authentic event—a true gathering and celebration of local culture, not aimed at tourists at all (and there weren’t many of those anyway). We also got to meet and get to know many of the sailors who had arrived, and it felt like we were meeting “our kind of people”: mostly monohull boats (not catamarans), sailing long distances and for long periods of time. This is very different from the Society Islands, where we’d been earlier, where many of the boats are charter catamarans rented for short trips.

An experience!