Nan Madol and Kepirohi Falls

Nan Madol  One of the must see historic sites on Pohnpei is the Nan Madol ruins.  I signed up for a tour with an interesting young man who grew up on the island, attended college in Japan, returned with a French wife to start a Raman food restaurant, and does guiding on the side—sort of like a typical Adirondacker who does whatever it takes to make a living.  Although I didn’t know it until I arrived at the restaurant, the four other members of our group included the Australian ambassador and Australian volunteers who I had met at a dinner several days earlier.  We drove about an hour to the site.  It is located on private property owned by three families; we paid $1 to enter a driveway leading to the ruins, $3 at the home of a family whose land you cross to get to the ruins, and $3 at the conclusion of the tour to pass out of the site. (Interesting side note:  I asked our guide why I had seen no real estate offices or land-for-sale signs on what I assume would be valuable shoreline property.  He noted that the land is owned by families and it is illegal to sell land on Pohnpei.  That said, land does pass from people to people and may be given or traded, but any money exchange is “under the table.”  He spoke of his brother who traded a couple of fishing boats and nets for a remote piece of inland property.)

You can google Nan Madol and find out much about the ruins.  Briefly, it is a large 1.5 x.5 kilometer site built on coral reefs with buildings connected by shallow canals.  We were there at low tide and could easily walk across one of these canals to get to the major site.  Construction supposedly started around 1200 AD and continued for another four centuries or so.  The site has been abandoned for centuries and many of the buildings have been over-run by jungle.  Given no written language and no art or carvings on the site, the history is as much mythology as fact.  What no one seems to have figured out is how they were able to build what they did.  The rocks used are not indigenous to this island so had to have been transported from another island.  Although they often weighed many tons, these rocks were somehow brought to the island and lifted into place to create high walls.  The Pohnpeian explanation is that the rocks were levitated into place by magic.  They speculate that the ruins were mainly for royalty and priests and used for ceremonial purposes.  The site is not well located in that food and water had to be brought in from the mainland, which is perhaps why it was abandoned.  Anyway, pictures provide a better explanation of what we saw.

Kepirohi Falls  Part of our tour was a stop at Kepirohi Falls, just a few miles from Nan Madol and perhaps a 10 minute walk from the main road.  Here again, we paid the family who owned the property $3 a piece to enter their land.  It was a pleasant walk to the falls.  Some of the pictures below show the plants and flowers encountered in route.  Pictures again tell a better story.  Some of our party who had swim suits jumped into the pool created at the base of the falls.  One of the pictures shows our intrepid tour guide jumping in from part way up the wall incline.  After people got out, he threw chunks of bread into the water, which brought the biggest, ugliest eels I have ever seen to the surface.  Not sure I will get Lin to swim here after seeing the picture of the eel.