CRUISES: Exploring the Marquesas Islands on the Aranui 3 Freighter

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

The crew have physiques to rival Arnold Schwarzenegger's and tattoos wilder than any at today's rock concerts. Blue-light bug killers hang on the walls of the passengers' dining room and all the passengers -- up to 200 -- ride in the stern because, up front, squat two giant Liebherr cranes capable of lifting 25 to 35 tons. This is not your typical cruise ship. It's the Aranui 3, the freighter lifeline to the most isolated archipelago in the world: the Marquesas Islands.

Sixteen times a year, the Aranui brings the necessities of life to the six inhabited islands of the Marquesas chain. The islands, remnants of volcanoes, present sheer cliffs to the sea with few beaches to make fishing easy. There is little flat land to cultivate.

The Marquesas, part of French Polynesia, lie almost 1,000 miles northeast of Tahiti, just south of the Equator. It's a remote, almost mystical place, a land where Herman Melville jumped ship and later wrote his thinly disguised autobiographical novel Typee. It's the land visited by Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London and beloved by Paul Gauguin and Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel, both of whom are buried on Hiva Oa, one of the islands. And those islands are romantic: explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his bride, Liv, honeymooned here in 1937.

Every island is different.

Ua Huka, for example, has more wild horses than inhabitants. With wide bays backed by the greenest of coconut palms and soaring volcanic spires it is probably the most beautiful of the islands.

Tahuata, less beautiful, was the first French settlement. Its sprawling church financed by the Vatican has, like all the Catholic churches on the islands, exquisite wood carvings by local artisans, including a pulpit carved from a single piece of wood in the shape of the bow of a ship.

The cathedral on Nuku Hiva has similar carvings: the Stations of the Cross represented as if the scenes had occurred on the Marquesas, the spectators shown as islanders.

Despite their clear differences, the islands tend to merge into a composite of dark blue, almost black, waters; volcanic peaks with trees scrambling up them to the skies; cheerful little coastal villages with smiling children; and craft centers full of shy local artisans charging prices that surely aren't shy for their bone and wood carvings.

The Aranui uses local drivers in convoys of SUVs to take passengers to different museums, craft centers, churches, panorama lookout points, and beyond. They discover mystical cemeteries, ancient religious places, petroglyphs on rocks, and life-sized stone tiki statues. One passenger said she thought she was like the subjects in Gauguin's painting titled, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? 

Yet where we were going was to one of the most fascinating places in the Pacific Ocean.

If You Go

French Polynesia is very expensive. The French Pacific Franc is based on the Euro -- unfortunately for U.S. travelers. But Air Tahiti Nui the major airline, often has special sales at short notice. Its Web site, however, is not very user-friendly and is cluttered with resort and vacation information not related to flight data or pricing. Furthermore, there are formalities in French Polynesia including possible taxes that can run as high as $600 per person.

The Aranui website, although a good start for information, is somewhat coy about revealing prices. Cruise prices without air run from about $2100 per person, dormitory; to $4,500 per person.

On the cruise, though, all meals are provided including some in special restaurants or picnics on the islands. All shore excursions are included, unusual for cruise lines. If ever a cruise needed a phone call to complement online booking it is this one. A travel agent could make life easy and the price of the cruise could be the same whichever travel agent you use. One possible online agency is TravLtips, a booking service out of Flushing, NY (800-872-8584), which has prices of air and land packages for this freighter cruise. At the bottom of the TravLtips Aranui Web page, check out the reference to discounts on Voyages 8 and 12.

We know people who have traveled with TravLtips and speak highly of it. It offers a complicated menu of prices -- depending on dates -- but at the moment for, say, an average cruise the costs including air from LAX, three nights in the upscale Sofitel Resort in Papeete, and airport transfers to the hotel and ship, would be about $5,500 per person for a basic Cabin A (twin beds) or an additional $750 per person for the Deluxe Cabin A, which has a queen bed. The basic A would be ideal for most passengers, bearing in mind it is a freighter.

Another worthwhile site to check is the Marquesas' Web site and Tahiti Tourisme North America can be very helpful in arranging stays. Its transportation by van and bus is a lot cheaper than using cabs.