Time in the South Pacific just flies by without noticing, as there is always some new mental, sensory, or scenic stimulation. One of the first things I always notice about a new place is the smell. Papeete smells like fresh ocean breezes, French bread, frangipani, and the famous fragrant Tahitian gardenia named Tiare. Tiare is the signature fragrance of Tahiti, and is found in the flowers and leis they give you in the airport; fragrant oils scented with tiare, sandalwood, and coconut; flowering bushes along the waterfront promenade; and toiletries provided in the hotel.

I arrived at the airport late, but was still greeted by vahines (women) playing the ukulele, singing, and handing out tiare flowers. Papeete is a big and bustling city, but not without a tropical French colony charm. I stayed downtown and spent two days exploring the very walkable city with an oceanfront promenade. Papeete has all of the conveniences of a French city, including fresh bread, fantastic café au lait, and sidewalk cafes with a view.

The dinner scene in Papeete is memorable. Every evening at 6:00, about 20 mobile café vans pull up to the oceanfront wharf that is lit with thousands of white lights. In true French style, these mobile restaurants called roulottes provide table service and fantastic, cheap food. The choices include wood-fired pizza, poisson cru (raw fish in coconut milk with cucumbers, lime juice, and tomatoes), crepes, Chinese food like chow mein, and grilled fish. It's fine outdoor dining with a view, a social scene, and for $10 or less. A gourmet gourmand's paradise.

The bustling Papeete Public Market is the Pike Place Market on tropical steroids. Inside the covered building you can find exotic fruits and vegetables, colorful fish that you've only seen in an aquarium, entire pig's heads, bakeries, snack bars, flower stalls, scented toiletries and oils, and brilliant tapestries, materials and sarongs. All mixed with Tahitian music, exotic-sounding Tahitian spoken, along with rapid-fire French language. It's exotic sensory overload, with so many brilliant colors, sounds, and smells it's tough to absorb it all in just one day.

I wander the streets and practice my French in the sidewalk cafes. The favored snack is a casse-croute sandwich, made from the everpresent wonderful French baguette. Half a baguette, vegetables, mayonnaise and mustard, and meat or seafood, for a takeaway treat for $2-$4. You can eat cheaply in Papeete; the breakfast necessities of baguette and butter and coffee will keep you full all morning for just $3.

Off to the Land of Men
The next step in my journey was an Air Tahiti flight to Hiva Oa, the central island of the southern group of the Marquesas, known as "the Land of Men" in Marquesan. The 15 islands are 1,400 km northeast of Tahiti, and are the farthest islands from any continental land mass. They have quite a different flavor from the other islands of French Polynesia. While the Society Islands have placid turquoise lagoons surrounded by protective coral reefs, and the Tuamotus are barely 10 feet above water, the volcanic Marquesas have towering spires, 3,000 foot mountains, and rugged black cliffs that plunge abruptly into the seas. The six inhabited islands contain a total population of 6,000 people.

The Marquesas were initially populated between 300 and 600 B.C., and the skilled Marquesan navigators and sailors are said to later have populated the Hawaiian Islands, 2,000 miles northwest. The Marquesas were accidentally discovered in 1595 when a Spanish sailor searching for Australia ran into them and named them after his Peruvian sponsor, the Marquis of Canete. Captain Cook arrived here in 1774 to restock. Herman Melville jumped his whaling ship and lived with the Marquesan cannibals for several months. The influx of Westerners continued through the 19th century, bringing diseases like syphilis and measles that decimated the Marquesan population. The population in 1842 was 18,000; falling to 5,264 in 1887; and plummeting to 2,096 people in 1926. The rich sandalwood groves were also plundered and traded by Westerners.

My three-hour flight from Papeete brought me to the island of Hiva Oa, and the main town of Atuona (pop. 1,300), which is a primary landfall for yachts coming from Central and South America. I stayed in a bungalow overlooking the Bay, and Marc arrived on August 20 after 22 days at sea from the Galapagos. I had cold beers and a hot shower waiting for the sailors, and we had a great birthday/landfall party with the crew of S/V Avalon.

Atuona is a small town that is dominated by incredible views of 3,000 foot Mt. Temetiu, and is centrally located between three archaeological sites on the island. It was also the home of such notables as Paul Gauguin, who lived here for the last three years of his life. Jacques Brel, the Belgian singer, also lived and died here. Both men are buried in the cemetery at the top of the hill with a view of the ocean.

Marquesan Heritage
The next week was spent exploring the incredible archaeological sites.

• The Tehueto petroglyphs were an easy 40-minute hike from town through the jungle, with huge stone platforms and etched petroglyphs with symbols of people with outstretched arms.
• The Taaoa ruins contain an ancient temple site, a tiki, and more than 1,000 stone house foundations.
• The jewel of these expeditions was Iipona, a restored series of platforms that covers more than 5,000 sq. meters. We reached this site via a 2 ½ hour drive along winding dirt roads with scenic views and precarious dropoffs into the ocean. Here, we found five intact and clear tikis, including the largest tiki in the world -- a warrior standing tall at 8 feet. Other tikis include a reclining woman with her arms outstretched to the sky and giving birth; the warrior's wife; a male tiki with six fingers; and a graceful female figure. Other carvings were head-shaped carvings, which are surmised to represent the decapitated heads of human sacrifice victims.

Local Gems
Everywhere you turn in the Marquesas, there are breathtaking views of turquoise water, rock spires, and lush green vegetation. We have had a bonanza of fresh fruit, which the sailors appreciate after the long voyage. The locals have been incredibly generous, showering us with huge bunches of bananas, papayas, coconuts, breadfruit, and the incredibly juicy and sweet pamplemousse, a grapefruit almost the size of a soccer ball. We have met so many incredibly generous locals who have gone out of their way to help us. It's impossible for us to make the 40-minute trek to town on foot, because we never get very far without a local resident picking us up and driving us to our destination. People we've met drive to the dock to drop off fresh baguettes for us, saying that in a French country, it won't do to eat bread that is more than a few hours old!

The pastor of the Presbyterian church happened by one day when we were preparing a feast on the beach with the crew from Avalon. We were attempting to cook breadfruit, a local starchy staple, over an open fire. He showed us how to cook it, created a forked stick to turn it in the fire, and even gave us his family recipe for creating poe-poe, mashed breadfruit with lime and coconut juice. We had a memorable feast of poe-poe and green papaya with green curry and fresh coconut milk.

See photos of our cooking experiment.

The next night, he invited us to his home for a typical Marquesan feast. We gorged ourselves on:

• Poisson cru, a local delicacy of raw fish mixed with onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, lime, and coconut juice
• Fried breadfruit chips that tasted like starchy and very crispy French fries
• Curried chicken
• Chicken with fresh lemon sauce
• Giant, football-sized mangoes for dessert

See photos of our dinner at Endy's.

Poisson cru and sashimi are staple foodstuffs here, and are served at every meal and restaurant. Herman Melville, in his book Typee, was shocked at the natives' love of raw fish:

"I grieve to state so distressing a fact, but the inhabitants of Typee were in the habit of devouring fish much in the same way as a civilized being would eat a radish, and without any more previous preparation. They eat it raw: scales, bones, gills, and all the inside. The fish is held by the tail, and the head being introduced into the mouth, the animal disappears with a rapidity that would at first nearly lead one to imagine it had been launched bodily down the throat.

Raw fish! Shall I ever forget my sensations when I first saw my island beauty devour one? Oh heavens… so vile a habit … However after the first shock had subsided, the custom grew less odious in my eyes, and I soon accustomed myself to the sight. … When at Rome do as the Romans do, I held to be so good a proverb, that being in Typee I made a point of doing as the Typees did. Thus I ate poee-poee as they did; I walked about in a garb striking for its simplicity; and I reposed on a community of couches; besides doing many other things in conformity with their peculiar habits; but the farthest I ever went in the way of conformity, was on several occasions to regale myself with raw fish. These being remarkably tender, and quite small, the undertaking was not so disagreeable in the main, and after a few trials I positively began to relish them: however, I subjected them to a slight operation with my knife previously to making my repast."

In Typee, Melville came into contact with these horrible beasts, and he describes it better than we can:

"a minute species of fly, which, without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will perch upon one of your eyelashes, and go to roost there, if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion, I was so inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the open apartment, and began walking around its ceiling; the sensation was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor creatures being enveloped in inner darkness, must in their consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been precipitated into the gulf beneath. At any rate, though I afterwards charitably held my mouth open for at least five minutes, with a view of affording egress to the stragglers, none of them ever availed themselves of the opportunity."

So, we drift through paradise and plan to spend a few more weeks in the Marquesas before making the passage to the Tuamotus. The next islands we visit will be Ua Pou, Ua Huka, and Nuku Hiva. Stay tuned for more excitement!