“We are on the chief’s road,” she said. “He lived nine miles inland, for protection.”
Maria had told us how the cove would have filled with the canoes of the next tribe over, the warriors tattooed head to toe and carrying javelins. “How old is all this?” I gestured to the markers.
“Over 2,000 years. It is not certain.”
We walked on. A mile further upstream, we rounded a corner and I stopped cold. We were on a little promontory, and the canyon opened enough that I could see the forest below and half a mile across the valley. Volcanic landscapes are the most dramatic. Unlike bedrock, the more they erode, the sharper and more tortured they look. Here, the cliffs were covered in vegetation, with knife-edge spurs and basalt towers that soared into the dark clouds above. A waterfall cascaded more than a thousand feet before us, a slash of white against all the green. A faint rush thrummed in the basin. High up along the cliffs, birds glided and gyred. Terns and phaethons with long pointed tails silently circled and climbed.
“It’s like Avatar,” Kim murmured. It was. To the left of the falls, gouged halfway up the cliff face, was a cave. Maria pointed out a long white object on its shelf. “Do you know what that is?” she asked. “A coffin?” Kim answered. “Yes. For the chief. It’s white because it is carved out of uru, breadfruit. It is carved in the shape of a canoe, so he can paddle into the afterlife.”
We hiked back. Two hours later, at the first house we reached, we were joined by Maria’s cousin Kua, two nephews, two more dogs, and a small cat who stared down every canine. As we ate a lunch of fresh tuna and breadfruit grilled over coconut husks, Maria told us that 8,000 people once lived in the valley. They were mostly wiped out by diseases brought by the French in their warships and Americans and Europeans in their whalers. “My clan has been living here for thousands of years,” Maria said. “We leave it open for anyone to visit, but this is our land. We will never sell it.”
The evening before, we had driven across Nuku Hiva and come upon the tiny village of A‘akapa. A single 500-year-old mango tree shaded a marae, or sacred stone platform, where chiefs and priests once presided over rituals. A saddleless horse loped up and down the main drag, carrying little girls who screamed with glee. More children ran after it yelling, and dogs ran after the kids. At the top of the street, the whole pack turned around and did it again. Below, men and women, boys and girls played boules; others played soccer. Above, the steep rampart of the mountains was swept by veils of rain and sun. I wondered if life could really be as sweet as this scene. Probably not. Half of these kids most likely wanted to blow this backwater and travel to Papeete on Tahiti, the teeming capital of French Polynesia. And yet, on this afternoon, a score of young men and women sat on that stone wall, chatting and laughing.
