have you ever seen something so unique this is one of the most remote valleys on earth
a place where people live off the land without wi-fi refrigeration or even roads an island
that's over 3000 miles from north america it's nearest continent it's not at all a stretch to
say that this is one of the most remote jungles on earth and you know what else
this is an island where they used to eat people here the cannibal story says the people eating
but i have long dreamed of seeing places like this that so few people have visited i mean i
hike a lot even at altitude but in the jungle with the humidity it's a way different feeling i'm like
so much more easily exhausted so i'm meeting up with tangi and anna and the valley of kings
it's the kind of place where you need radical self-reliance and a little bit of adventurousness
the adventure begins i'm at the small fishing port now about to hitch a ride to the valley just me
and captain martin my journey begins taking about 30 minutes away from the main town to the valley
oh my gosh this is so pretty
i'm here with anna hi she's actually originally from croatia but you've lived here for three years
yeah in this beautiful seriously beautiful valley so now we're going to hike to a waterfall
lipo waterfall this is called the valley of kings it got its name because there were three different
tribes who lived here and you can see the evidence of it all along the hike into the waterfall
on phi pai which is a sacred place for the marquesans ah so this is a sacred and you have the
uh the tree as well it's a banyan tree usually my pigeons they they would plant banana trees
on fire you might be surprised to see anna here of all places and her story could fill its own video
but to summarize she hitchhiked from her home in croatia around the world to bora bora and then
the other direction back again here to nukahiva in the marquises here she met and fell in love with
tangi a local who grew up in this valley living off the land and in harmony with his environment
our first adventure takes us through the dense jungle in search of paradise
apparently during the rainy season this is like completely impossible
there's a lot of cleaning so i guess i'm glad i'm here at the end of it
i lost the drone i was flying it and then it just
didn't know home anymore even though i had all the satellites and it's just stuck in a tree now
so we're trying to find it but oh my god we're in the jungle
well we hiked through the jungle to try to find it but it looks like my drone is moving in full time
but it's okay you know if you buy one you know at some point at some point it's gonna meet some kind
of unfortunate end and thanks for trying to find it with me we tried our best we did try our best
it's okay though yeah rit r.i.p onwards to the waterfall though it looks looks awesome for the
most part the waterfall is actually best seen from afar especially because of falling rocks it can
actually be pretty dangerous to get up close to it and try to swim but we got as close as we could
he's a good boy
so this is a breadfruit it's very starchy you can make french fries with it i love it actually and
grows on a tree and what else can i say about it it's delicious let's have some
so this is goat curry in coconut milk okay and then breadfruit of course and then tomato salad
in coconut milk this is my first time trying goat meat
oh wow that's really soft yes do you like it that's a very traditional
dish i was afraid i wouldn't like it but i like it after lunch i wanted a chance to ask tangy more
about traditional marquesan beliefs and culture prior to european settlement this was a thriving
society of over a hundred thousand people on the island of nucohiva however with settlement brought
diseases and over 98 percent of the population was wiped out tangy also remembers a time when
he was not allowed to practice his culture or even speak markesian outside of his home
thankfully there's been a revival and a lot of that culture has come back and is now celebrated
one of the most interesting aspects to me is the concept of the mana or the life
force energy that's present in all things so i wanted to ask tangi to share about it
in his own words you're from this valley yes you lived your whole life here yes and
i think the mana is so beautiful can you tell me what it means to you for me the manager is the
power of the spirit from my land my valley from nature the natural give me that that's the real
say for the moment for me and i don't know other people we need to protect natural not need nature
need to protect if you don't need to know mana from i don't have mana you need from that
if you know nothing everything's broken no good we need natural form give that strong power speedy
and if you're curious about the cannibal history don't worry we talked about that too
and we'll get to it later although it's not part of the culture i was raised with i find the mana
to be something relatable it's knowing that it feeds you and nourishes you and provides
everything that we need it's knowing that we have to respect and love it it's hard to put
into words how like truly beautiful this is just to be standing here um they did warn me
about the no no flies which are like all over me despite wearing d they do not care and they're
these little tiny black sand flies that just that just like eat the [ __ ] out of your skin
and apparently itch like a [ __ ] so i guess i'm gonna find out really soon how bad that gets
i'm definitely noticing that it's really hard to not get lightheaded because it's just so humid and
hot too and like dense and jungly and it's crazy because it is so
so beautiful maybe the most beautiful place i've ever been but at the same time i'm light-headed
a lot so i just need to keep hydrating but i really don't know how these bites may materialize
i hope it's not crazy i hope i had enough bug spray on we will find out soon
these nuts used in the past to burn like a candle to make fuel basically so you take
the shell off that's right you take the shell off and then you take the part of the palmly
tiny branch and then you do it like a brachet you just pick it straight through it and then it burns
and burns very slowly so in the times when there was no light it was very convenient
and practical it's called an ama and amma means light in marquesan right that's so cool
here we have the barbecued goat which is really soft and delicious
and these like bread breadfruit nuggets which are also amazing
so important thing is not to hit it with the
edge okay but to hit it with the other side that it's not so sharp like this
but like this and aim for the middle okay so that's the important thing and just when you do
the motion you have to be bomb very um strong it's because it's very heavy sometimes people like just
drop it on the floor okay just turn it and you do it again and then you just open it like that
here we go you can do it oh stronger stronger yep
it'll be strong like bam more yeah yeah that's right you got it okay i'm just gonna keep going
okay it's nice yeah and now you stick the machete inside and open it with the uh-huh like that
yep yep oh good job kristen you got it perfect perfect amazing
you always try to get the return going i read them
just keep going it takes practice that's all that it is time and practice wow what headway
you don't need to like have a gym here no no no we don't work out it's like we don't wake up our
life is just a constant workout yeah it's all like pretty much living off the land right yeah
yeah everything we get here it's from the nature so there is no really need for gym no i love
coconut milk but i never really thought about what it takes to uh yeah to make it we're not even done
that's right
it's just for a coffee we're gonna just use it for coffee so we don't need a lot but this is
perfect yeah i'm using all of my muscles like give me some pretty good guns though yep yep
good job that's it yep that's it and then you filter it one last time
look at all of that meal
what does the master say it's good yeah i think it's perfect
oh yeah
but i want to show you something that is sort of unique to the marquis of because
in so many other polynesian cultures they eat taro but here what's it called again
this is what it looks like it grows from an alukasya like leaf
that's what it looks like so you boil
that so that's these pieces right here time to suit up
no trail we just got a our tongue he has to hack the trees with the machete so we're
just kind of making our own way but word on the street is that the view at the top is amazing
also where my people at out there who excessively face sweat because that is me one thousand percent
so hot
i'm not used to this humidity
okay we made it we made it oh my
this is called the warriors checkpoint and then they would look out for the enemy ah so the enemy
of the tribe you can see the enemies coming from here i guess they came by water that's where cool
i loved getting a taste of life in the valley with anantangi
but there was one question i had lingering in my mind i wanted to know more about the cannibalistic
history in the marquises although it hasn't been practiced here for over 100 years i'm still
just so darn fascinated by it aren't you i can do that but the cannibal they say cannibal here
notice they eat people like that and they need to make a lucky return how to say it
it's always part of the ceremony for the ceremony they don't eat people like that
yeah she's the priest the priest to give the order for buddha yes to sacrifice to sacrifice people
because they get for seeing they haven't happened to not natural if they don't give any any fruit
or no good for go fishing or hunting no good they need to sacrifice one people
and sometimes it would be someone from another tribe right yeah yeah they always
they call the other driver you know the same tripod always they they they freeze
they did the orientation the order they had to order and then go if you they said the
days they're going the east they're going to east the west the west they don't go like that just for
no the chief would listen to the priest okay
and then would everybody eat to get some of the mana as well
from the from the warriors just the the sheep the sheep the kid the brand
yeah the brand they eat just they take the head and the brain the strong manager yeah the strong
mana from the brain not the body they give for some people for everybody but then they also had a
tribal wars between themselves when they would uh capture the warrior and then they would share that
they would take the mana from the strongest warrior or the day captured and then they would
eat that person as well but this is over now yeah of course there is no more connie yeah
long time ago the last cannibal died in 1983 1903 is just
where you come from
yeah the cannibal history can be a sensitive topic for some people i think it's up to all
of us to be open-minded about history about culture and to remember that there were lots
of cultures all throughout history that believed in human sacrifice and for my time in the valley
i feel honored to have gotten a peek into what life is like here to what the history was like
and to be a part of it for just a little while my time at this beautiful place is coming to an end
and i'm hopping on a boat and heading out of here but if you find yourself on nuko hiva honestly
come here and experience this beautiful valley it's truly magical and it feels like pandora or
another planet or just i don't even know how to describe it you gotta experience it for yourself
you