Many outsiders think of these islands, the coral atolls of French Polynesia, as paradise, but there is no escaping the harsh conditions here.
Although I LOVE to swim, I have never really explored the underwater world. Here, it was more than beauty that called to me from below the surface, it was a curiousity about how to survive here.
Cultures built from the ocean.
The landscape of this island, Nuku Hiva, is so extreme it can be hard to find flat ground. That’s why the airport is on the opposite shore from the main town, Taioha’e: there’s only one runway compatible patch of ground. After landing in a small plane, you drive an hour through stunning hills and valleys…
Nicolas Haiti lives in the valley of Taipivai on the island of Nuku Hiva. We heard about him and his family because of their oven. Copra, or dried coconut, is an important industry in French Polynesia, including the Marquesas Islands and here in Nuku Hiva. Coconut is dried and then shipped to Pape’ete, Tahiti to…
Eric Guth is a photographer with extensive field experience in remote and polar regions. He is a naturalist with Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic and a field technician for James Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey in Antarctica as well as glacier cave research in Oregon, Washington, Patagonia, and Greenland. His portraiture spans both hemispheres, and his stories and photos…
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,…
Principal Sponsor Sven-Olof Lindblad, President, CEO, and Founder of Lindblad Expeditions, was born in Switzerland and traveled extensively with his father, renowned adventure-travel pioneer Lars-Eric Lindblad, who led some of the first non-scientific groups of travelers to Galapagos (1967) and Antarctica (1966). In 1979 he launched Special Expeditions, the adventure tourism company that became Lindblad…
