Apataki atoll
Racing the pass at Apataki on the National Geographic Orion.
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Aakapa’s community blaze
Everything in Aakapa, on the island of Nuku Hiva, is steep: the hillsides, the shore line, all the roads and driveways. The dried coconut industry, called copra, is important all across French Polynesia, and this village of 120 people is no exception. The municipality of Aakapa invested in a coconut drying oven in 2018 to…
Tour de l’ile: Nuku Hiva
The planning was pretty simple: a conversation between me, Eric, and our local contacts Debora and Kimi. We had a map, a mango, a dog, and a mission. Nuku Hiva has some spectacular hiking trails, and Kimi would take us to them. Kimi is a life-of-the-party kind of guy, with a zany photo collection,…
Crossing Nuku Hiva to reach the beginning
The views from the air were beautiful. When we came here by ship, just over a week ago, it took a day and a half to reach the Marquesas, the most distant archipelago in French Polynesia. Now we would return to the largest island, Nuku Hiva, in a matter of hours. Before traveling here,…
Meet our director: Matt Mastrantuono
Matt has been making films for over a decade. His feature film, Chasing Sarasota, had a theatrical tour in over 30 cities on four continents. Matt was also a writer and producer for the Showtime documentary, Glena, where he helped take the no-budget, indie feature from a living room in Portland, Oregon to a major…
Marquesas arrival
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The little things
Arriving to a new place I’m often drawn to the small things. A new landscape, in its entirety, is too overwhelming. I have to take it piece by piece. So this is one of the first encounters I had in French Polynesia once we embarked the National Geographic Orion and headed out into the blue….