Cruise Port Guide · 4 cruises visit Atuona →
The bucket-list things to do — and the private, expert-led way to do each.
Here’s the bucket list for your day ashore: the most extraordinary thing to do at each stop, and the private, small-group, or expert-led way to make it yours — your own pace, real access, none of the crowd.
Venture deep into the hauntingly beautiful Taaoa Valley to encounter the largest concentration of megalithic stone tikis in the Marquesas — an open-air sanctuary of Polynesian ancestors untouched by mass tourism.
Stand at the graves of Paul Gauguin and Jacques Brel in the hillside cemetery of Calvaire, then tour the painstakingly reconstructed 'Maison du Jouir' and the Espace Jacques Brel — the most emotionally charged cultural double-bill in the Pacific.
Cross Hiva Oa's mountainous spine by private 4WD to Puamau, home of Te I'i — the largest restored tiki in all of Polynesia — and pause at enigmatic roadside petroglyphs carved into ancient lava flows along the way.
Slip beneath Hiva Oa's cobalt surface on a small-group boat excursion to encounter blacktip reef sharks, leopard rays, and densely coloured coral gardens in one of the least-dived bays in French Polynesia.
Hike a guided jungle trail through Hiva Oa's mist-soaked interior to a hidden cascade, listening for the haunting song of the Marquesan kingfisher — one of the rarest birds on Earth — in forest found nowhere else.
Share an authentic umu earth-oven feast prepared by a Marquesan family — goat, breadfruit, fei bananas, coconut — and receive a private demonstration of the sacred art of Marquesan tattooing, the most complex geometric tradition in Polynesia.
⚓ Your bucket-list concierge
Tell us your sailing and we'll send the bucket list for every port — the most extraordinary thing to do at each, and the private, expert-led way to make it yours.
No spam. The honest plan, even when it says skip the ship’s tour.