By Helen Anderson
Copyright brisbanetimes
Along with the entertainers are crew you don’t usually encounter on a 12-day cruise. Crane drivers who play ukulele. Hard-hatted sailors as skilled in handling horses and bulk fuel as passengers. A Marquesan tattoo artist (Aranui has the only tattoo studio at sea) who manages the restaurant.
It’s not just diverse skill sets that distinguish the 110-member crew. Most of them are Polynesians, the line has Polynesian owners, plus it’s a true hybrid cargo-passenger ship – the only one of its kind in the world – and it turns out that makes a world of difference to travellers and their destinations.
To understand the split personality of Aranui, you need to grasp just how far-flung the five archipelagos of French Polynesia are. It’s 2500 kilometres from the Austral Islands in the south to the Marquesas in the north-east. Our voyage from Papeete to the Marquesas is about 1500 kilometres one way. There’s a mere sprinkle of regional airports across the nation and only a handful of freighters, so the Aranui’s fortnightly visits are like a lifeline. Six of the 12 Marquesas are inhabited and the Aranui is sometimes referred to as “the seventh island”.
With 1800 tonnes of cargo and 176 mainly French-speaking passengers, Aranui arrives at dawn in the black-sand harbour of Nuku Hiva, the largest of the Marquesas, and the unloading begins.
