Hiva Oa

The approach to Hiva Oa by air is unlike any other in French Polynesia: the island emerges from the Pacific as a dark, heavily vegetated mass, its volcanic slopes plunging almost vertically into the sea with none of the lagoon shallows or pale sand bars that characterise the Society Islands. The coastline has no fringing reef to soften the transition between land and ocean.

The village of Atuona sits in a valley flanked by steep green ridges, and the Gauguin Museum — a replica of the artist's final home — stands on a hillside above the village, its position chosen deliberately to offer the same view of the bay that Gauguin painted from his window in 1903. The replica was built on the site of the original house, which no longer stands.

The burial site of Paul Gauguin is marked by a simple stone plaque on the hillside above Atuona, where the artist chose to be buried after his final, impoverished years in Polynesia, a choice that reflects the depth of his attachment to the island despite its harsh conditions. The grave is accessible by a short walking path from the village.

Jacques Brel, the Belgian singer, also chose Hiva Oa as his final home and is buried in the same cemetery as Gauguin, a few metres away, and the coincidence of these two artistic biographies is one of the more remarkable stories of any Pacific island.

The stone tikibase statues found in the ancient village of Puamau are the finest in French Polynesia outside the better-known sites of Easter Island, and the setting of the site on a coastal plain backed by volcanic ridges gives it a solemnity that photographs cannot fully convey. The statues are estimated to date from the 13th to 15th centuries.

The island has no lagoon and no overwater bungalows, and the steep terrain means that roads are winding, narrow and sometimes in poor condition, making the experience of getting around feel more adventurous than on any of the more developed islands of French Polynesia. The roads are mostly unpaved outside the immediate area around Atuona.

The vegetation on Hiva Oa is characteristically Marquesan: dense tropical forest covering the mid-slopes of the volcanic interior, with the coastline alternating between rocky headlands and small dark-sand beaches. The forest is thick enough that many interior areas are inaccessible without a guide.

The absence of mass tourism on Hiva Oa is not an accident but a reflection of its remote location and the difficulty of access, and the island rewards those who make the effort with an authenticity and sense of discovery that is increasingly hard to find in the Pacific islands. The absence of crowds means that the ancient sites and natural landscapes feel genuinely undiscovered.

The ancient tikibase statues at Puamau are the most significant Polynesian sculptural site in the southern Marquesas and one of the finest in the Pacific.

The artistic heritage of the island — Gauguin and Brel both chose to die here — gives Hiva Oa a cultural significance that few islands of comparable size can claim.

The dramatic volcanic landscape, without the tourist infrastructure of the Society Islands, offers an experience of the Pacific that is raw and genuinely remote.