This is Paradise — Exploring the South Pacific's Most Beautiful Island

Taiohae Bay, on the southern coast of Nuku Hiva, lured Herman Melville to jump ship in 1842. (Dmitri Alexander)

The young sailor stood at the rails of the whale ship Acushnet and beheld a mountainous, emerald island rising from the sea. Slipping into a horseshoe-shaped bay filled with azure water, the boat dropped anchor. The sailor was the not-yet-famous writer Herman Melville, and he had arrived in July of 1842 at one of the South Pacific’s most beautiful archipelagos, the Marquesas Islands. As he later wrote, “Had a glimpse of the gardens of Paradise been revealed to me, I could scarcely have been more ravished with the sight.”

More than a century and a half later, I rowed an outrigger canoe across the same bay on the south coast of an island called Nuku Hiva. To my left, I could see a scattering of bungalows in the greenery that comprised the island’s only luxury accommodations, the Keikahanui Nuku Hiva Pearl Lodge. Straight ahead was the town of Taiohae, population 1,600, nestled against the base of mountain slopes. Locals cruised slowly by the waterfront in dusty pickup trucks; a horse ridden by a boy galloped along the beach and charged into the surf.

Lodging in the Marquesas for contemporary visitors is low-key but luxurious. (Dmitri Alexander)

This clearly wasn’t Hawaii, clogged with condos and high-rise hotels; it wasn’t even one of those manicured island paradises, so common elsewhere in French Polynesia, with overwater bungalows fanning out over an electric blue lagoon. Located 3,000 miles west of the nearest continental landmass and 900 miles northeast of Tahiti, the sparsely populated Marquesas Islands were rougher, wilder. A handful of casual, open-air restaurants served local delicacies like goat curry and poisson cru, raw fish marinated in lime and served over rice. I lounged on golden sand beaches and hiked to a silvery waterfall at the head of a 1,200-foot-deep gorge. Young men performed haka warrior dances to the fierce beating of pahu music; traditional artisans carved wood and bone sculptures and sketched intricate designs on bark cloth, a form known as tapa.Marquesans aren’t burned out from hosting hordes of tourists; in a weeklong stay, I rarely saw other visitors and was even invited to join a ukulele jam session.

Related: Hawaii or Tahiti: Which Is the True Polynesian Paradise?

Lost, injured, and hungry, Herman Melville trekked through the jungle of Nuku Hiva, which remains wild and green. (Dmitri Alexander)

After pulling the outrigger ashore, I met up with a guide named Richard Deane, who was helping me to chase down the story of Melville. Stir-crazy after 16 months at sea, he had jumped ship. He blundered through the jungle for five days, was captured by a cannibal tribe, and fell in love with one of its members, a woman whom he dubbed “Fayaway.” Or so he claimed in his first book, Typee, which sold more copies during his lifetime than Moby Dick. Standing by the beach, Deane and I studied a sculpture with a map carved onto its wooden face showing Melville’s escape route. Then we started hiking uphill, hoping to retrace part of the deserter’s path.

Traditional Marquesan culture has undergone a revival that locals are proud to show off. (Dmitri Alexander)

A few minutes on a narrow trail brought us to a man whose every inch of visible skin, including his face, was covered with geometric tattoos. Then we crossed a dirt road where a couple of men were selling live crabs from a cooler. Leaving these meager signs of civilization behind, Deane and I entered the jungle, the broad leaves of hibiscus trees shading us from the sun. It was easy to imagine Melville staying hidden from the French colonial authorities, who, if they had spotted him, would have returned him to his ship. Melville also needed to avoid being spotted by local Marquesans, and that would have been a stiffer challenge. The jungle was home to hundreds of local people, and as Deane and I hiked, we passed dozens of pae pae­ — ancient house platforms of giant stones.

For food, the forest offered Melville a bounty: I saw mangoes, apples, and breadfruit, even peppers and basil. But Deane reminded me that it wasn’t always easy for an outsider to know what was edible. According to the oral histories on the island, Melville tried to eat pandanus, a fruit that looks like pineapple but is actually inedible. “He made himself sick,” Deane said. The route out of the valley also might have confused him. Deane retreated short distances and tried new tracks as we continued uphill, sweating even in the shade as the humidity rose. “There is no path, so Melville tried to make his own way,” Deane said. After a couple of hours we reached a small clearing overlooking Taiohae Bay, and I imagined Melville standing in a similar spot and smugly chuckling about the other sailors who were still stuck on the Acushnet. He had escaped.

The next morning, Deane and I drove over the mountains behind town on a narrow track of hairpin turns. Then, just like Melville had on foot, we dropped into the verdant Taipivai Valley, which lay to the northeast. Did it really take Melville five harrowing days — battling hunger and injury, jumping from the top of a cliff and landing in the treetops below — to complete this journey of only five or so miles? Not likely. Typee’s veracity has long been challenged by academics. In 2003, more than a dozen Melville scholars even traveled together to Nuku Hiva to conduct field research. Melville majorly stretched the truth, the scholars all agreed. For instance, he was on the island only a month, not the four months he claimed. Noted Marquesan archaeologist Robert Suggs argued that “Melville’s account of his wanderings in the hills of Nuku Hiva appears as a virtually complete fantasy.” But not everyone dismissed the entire tale. John Bryant, an English professor at Hofstra University, wrote that “numerous textual ‘facts’ in Typee … correspond accurately to physical and historical data giving us reason to believe that Melville escaped as he says he did.”

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The verdant Taipivai Valley, where Herman Melville claimed that he was held captive by a cannibal tribe. (Dmitir Alexander)

My goal was not to look for the lies but instead for the shreds of truth that made the book, and the Marquesas themselves, so enticing. The Taipivai Valley was where Melville had supposedly been held as a captive, and in a small village tucked under coconut trees, Deane introduced me to an old man named Teikitekahioho. He was a descendant of the family of Peue — the book’s “Fayaway” with whom Melville had fallen in love. “There were many stories about Peue and Melville,” Hu’uveu, the old man’s brother, had told Suggs. “My family told me Peue was very beautiful and that she had a child by Melville.”

Teikitekahioho gave us directions to the site where Melville had stayed with the Taipi tribe. After driving 10 minutes on a rutted road up the valley, we parked and wandered into the tangled jungle. Deane wasn’t sure if we were in the right place, but then we saw the mossy stones of numerous pae pae. A stream ran through the bottom of the valley, and we searched for the spot where Melville had gone swimming. There wasn’t a lake as he had described, but there a swimming hole hidden under the jungle canopy. The water was deep and cool, and I plunged in.

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