Daniel's Bay- a.k.a Danger Bay

Daniel’s Bay in Nuka Hiva was our last anchorage in the lovely Marquesan Islands. We arrived and saw 7 boats already anchored, 5 of which were Canadian. Although we see a fair amount of Canadian boats just about everywhere, it has never felt like a Canadian bacon invasion before.  Felt as though we were anchored off one of the Gulf Islands outside of Vancouver.

The bay is beautiful and the water inviting so we dropped the anchor and swam over to our neighboring boat who we had met before. After climbing aboard, we were told that they had just recently watched a hammerhead shark banging up against their inflatable dinghy. Eeks. The swim back was a quick one…

We enjoyed everything the bay had to offer. Small fun waves that were surfable, a delicious meal hosted by a local family, hiking and, of course- fruit picking.

We soon discovered that the bay is famous for a few things. Firstly, one of the tallest waterfalls is a short hike away and it is the place where a German tourist was murdered a few years ago.  It was hard to imagine a crime like that happening in such a pristine serene place.  

Forgetting about the creepy crawly stuff, we set off for the waterfall, which sounded spectacular. And spectacular it was!  The 1 hourish hike to get there was beautiful and we followed a path that weaved in and out of the trees and through rivers- some deeper than others. Before we arrived to the waterfall, we are greeted with a sign: “Beware of falling rocks” and a bag of helmets.  The waterfall is at the end of a deep gorge that has stunningly high rock walls surrounding you as you approach. You are rewarded by a crisply fresh swim in the pool beneath which we did in the rain. It was spectacular.

As we dried ourselves off and started reminiscing about the swim we just had, we heard a big loud splash in the pool about 10 feet from where we were standing.  We quietly looked at the ripples in the water then slowly craned our heads up to the see the top of the massive cliffs looming over us. Time to pack up and wear the helmets.

We survived the walk and the only injury we suffered was a sore neck from constantly craning our necks upward to spot any loose looking rocks or cocos.