Fatu Hiva Map
Maps of Fatu Hivadp="mw-headline" id="Name">Namespan class="mw-editsection">[edit]>>
The Fatu Hiva (the "H" is not pronounced, see part of the name below) is the most southern of the Marquesas Isles, in French Polynesia, an area of the Pacific Ocean. Motu Nao is the nearest neighbour and the most remote of the populated isles. The Fatu Hiva is also the name of a volume by the researcher and archeologist Thor Heyerdahl, in which he described his visit to the 1930'.
Fatu Iva is the name of the archipelago in the city of Márquesan ("h" is not included: [?fatu ?iva]). However the name was registered by Europeans as Fatu Hiva, perhaps under the impact of other Morquesan Isles with the Hiva elements (Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa) and also because in French the character "h" is mute.
Fatu Hiva's notation has now become formal. It was called Isla Magdalena ("Magdalena Island") by Spaniards in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a name seldom used. Fatu Hiva's east coast is characterised by a series of small rivers running through small gorges leading inland. There are two important coves on the west coast, Hana Vave (also known as Bay of Virgins or Bay of Four) to the west, one of the most scenic spots in the southern Pacific, and the well-protected port of Omoa near the southern coast.
In the centre of the isle is a plain largely shrouded in high grass and pandaanus. On the southern side of the plateaus, to the southern side, is a Tauauoho hill whose highest point of 1,125 metres (3,691 ft.) is the highest point on Fatu Hiva. There is a Fa'e One mound to the northern and northwestern side of the plain, the highest point of which is 820 metres (2,690 feet).
Fatu Hiva is the administration of the community of Fatu-Hiva, part of the Marquesas-Islands. The community is made up exclusively of the Fatu Hiva area. Omoa on the southwestern side of the isle is the municipal town. Fatu Hiva had 587 inhabitants in 2007, mainly in three villages:
Sharp, Andrew The Discovering of the Pacific Islands Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960, p.51. The Wikimedia Commons has got coverage on Fatu Hiva.