Day 26 - A taste of what's to come

 

My elephant dress, in case you wondered

A sea day, a sea day! After tomorrow it’s all sea days to the end of the cruise, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting. We have a fresh breeze (force 5 on the Beaufort scale), 2 meter swells, and about 82 degrees as we head to Nuka Hiva. And there are easily available prunes and walnuts!

I started my day with Tai Chi, then on to Coffee with Dario and our Environmental Officer Neil, a 33 year veteran of Her Majesty’s submarine service and a man of few but very funny words. For example, when Dario asked what took him from Her Majesty’s service to cruise ships, he said, “Mortgage.” He’s responsible for knowing what can be disposed of overboard and what needs to recycled and what needs to be treated as trash and making sure it happens correctly, or, as he put it, keeping himself and the Captain and First officer out of jail. 

Next up for me was line dancing. Esmerelda was there – I met her and her husband Tim at music trivia some very early in the trip, and her name stuck with me. She’s a first child and really wanted to do the line dancing but couldn’t bring herself to be bad in front of people – imagine that! I talked her into doing it and I don’t think she enjoyed it, but I sure did. It was assistant cruise director Claire instead of Jorge – she’s a better teacher but he’s more enthusiastic. Then I headed for Ceptembre’s next show, in which she played Paul Gaugin’s wife and did a nice job of talking about him and his paintings in a way that was both interesting and educational. Dave went to the Sabrage demo with Jacques, where he sabered open a bottle of Champagne and told no stories (and shared no Champagne) – they were done in 15 minutes, something of a record.

Then it was time for lunch. Dave went to the Lido so he could go to the port talk on Nuku Hiva, and I ate in the dining room. I sat with Marcia Snidow for the second time and enjoyed her a lot, and four other people who I don’t much remember. Then I went back to the cabin to practice my ‘uke because several people had encouraged me to go to the ‘uke gathering. So I went, and it was fun, and Suzanne, a passenger who’s volunteered to lead the group, had lots of good tips and tricks and really did a good job until we started playing. She does this kind of rhythmic syncopated strumming that makes it super hard to follow the beat, so that was a little frustrating. I will try again next Sea day.

When I got back to the cabin they had the disembarkation paperwork in our mail slot. It is way too early for the disembarkation paperwork! We set up our transfer from the ship to the airport, but nobody wants to think about it. Then I was free all afternoon until 6, so I went in the pool for about 1.5 hours for some of the best wave pool action I’ve ever had on a ship.

I might still be in there if we hadn’t had the Cellar Master’s dinner in the Pinnacle at 6. I got out and got ready, and we ended up sitting with Mary and Brian from the Chicago suburbs, whom we’d sat next to at lunch and chatted with earlier in the cruise. They were good tablemates and the food and wine were both very good, although the pairings weren’t necessarily as spot on as they could have been. Many of the dishes had a sweet component that wasn’t enhanced by the wine. However the pumpkin-sage “cappuccino” (soup) was an epic home run. Once again Jacques was surprisingly succinct.

It was way too much eating and drinking but a very good event. Afterwards I stayed in the cabin to blog while Dave went to the show to hear the violinist, which he enjoyed. I was just too stuffed and sleepy to get the pictures into the blog!

Here you can see us making progress towards Nuku Hiva on the TV display in our cabin.

 

Day 25 - Fakarava Part II

Prunes and walnuts at the yogurt bar!

I started my day of with TBP BB 7 and Tai Chi, while Dave did his walking and gym time. Then we got ready to go ashore, which just takes forever if you’re planning on swimming and also is completely icky. I wore my yellow dress over my swim bra and shorts for the tender trip, which was nice except that the dress stuck to the sunscreen on my legs when I walked, so I tucked it up into my swim shorts. TMI, I know, but I want to remember this.

Anyway, we picked up our priority tender tickets at the Wajang theatre (I love that it’s almost an anagram of gangway) and they told us to go sit down, so we did, and pretty much as soon as our butts hit the seat they told us to go board the tender. We had an easy trip over, and then headed left down the road. We found an excellent swimming beach with a sandy entry and enough space between the coral heads to get deep enough, and not at all crowded, unlike the right hand beaches that we walked by yesterday. We did see Mikey and Linda at the beach briefly but they were headed to the Topaka lighthouse. We don’t have our own masks, but it was actually lovely to just loll around in the water. The water has a higher salt content so it’s way easy to float here, and if you don’t keep your feet firmly pointing down they float right up and take you for a ride.

We floated for quite some time, then walked further down to road to see if there were other beaches- there weren’t, at least not as far as we went. Then we crossed over to the ocean side and walked a while, but there weren’t any good places to get in the water. So we walked back to the road and back to our beach for a little more floating for me and some floating and reading his Kindle for Dave. Then a shark came and swam by – we think it was a grey reef shark, about 6 feet long, very cool. Eventually I was ready to come out, so we walked back towards the tender pier but took another expedition just before we got there to the ocean side, and this time we hit the jackpot and there was a sandy beach entry onto the shallow top of the reef, just inside the breakers. This picture was taken later from the ship, but you can see the shallow place. On the walk over to the ocean side it was exactly the right time of day at the exactly right latitude and time of year for the sun to be directly overhead, which meant that our shadows were directly below us – we could see the shadows of our hats between our feet. This is something that only happens in the tropics and it’s surprisingly cool.

By the tender pier there was a little market which I went into and they had the LU Paille d’Or aux fromboises, the actual raspberry straws of my childhood. I suspect they taste almost indistinguishable from the ones aux fraises, so I didn’t get them, but I loved seeing them. There were also several places selling pearls and shells, and Dave got an amazing shell lei. Then we tendered back to the ship and did the long cleanup process, by which time it was almost 1 and I was starving. They had lamb at the carving station and Yorkshire puddings, so lunch was delicious.

Apparently passengers need to refresh their safety essentials once a month, so between 2 and 3 we all had to go check in at our muster station. I had an iced decaf mocha to celebrate my refreshment. Captain Thomas came on and did the announcing of the ships emergency signal, which we’ve heard at least once a week during crew drills, and also told us how put on our life jackets. So now we’re feeling very safe. Then it was just about time for the sail away party, which had line dancing and was fun. The thing about line dancing is that you turn around and face in all the directions as a group, so if you get in the back row all by yourself at some point you are leading the dancing including the world stage dancers, which is a lot. I am unphased.

Fakarava was our southernmost port, so it’s all North from here.

We went out to the front decks to watch us go through the reef, which was a lot of sun and also kind of odd because it didn’t have any buoys marking the channel. Then there was relaxing until dinner. Dennis and Louise were at the Pinnacle so it was just the 5 of us. Ilene and I couldn’t decide between the duck and the porchetta, so she ordered the duck for the table and we passed it around. Both the duck and the porchetta were delicious. We all rushed off after dinner – Mikey and Linda to trivia; Ilene and Dave and I to the cocktail chat, which was with the World Stage cast. Some of them have been doing this for a while, others are newer. The adorable Paul is the youngest and is the most starry-eyed – definitely a crowd favorite. They got on the ship with us and are installing 10 shows and don’t sleep. At one point Louise asked a question and Dario said “Dennis and Louise live on this ship” which made us laugh. They are the Kig & Queen of Barcelona.

Because we were listening to Paul and his castmates we didn’t get to the World Stage early enough to be up in the balcony, so we found pretty good seats downstairs for Jesse Kazemak’s Beatles tribute show. It was very fun and again looking forward to his next show.

The Dam band is off tonight so early bedtime and a sea day tomorrow! We will set the clocks ahead 30 minutes tonight to be on Nuka Hiva time (!!!); no smartwatch will accept this so I may be late to everything. I might need to buy a used Rolex.

Cruise note: I brought all 3 of my short-sleeved elephant dresses with me and they have been a surprising hit – so many people have come up and complimented me on them, and asked if I got them or Thailand or Africa or India (or Egypt, which I thought was a little odd). It makes me laugh that I got mine in that most exotic of destinations, Cannon Beach.

Here are some pictures from yesterday that didn't make it into the blog, but it's still Fakarava so why not.

The beautiful Zaandam

Coral Sand

Me, standing on the ocean side beach. 
You can see the beach and then the shallow water inside the edge of the reef.

Day 24 At Sea... or not

Moorea is in the yellow group closest to the bottom; 
Fakarava, Tuamoto is in the middle of the bottom row of blue
Nuku Hiva, our final island stop, is at the upper right corner.  

We were so excited for a sea day that we slept in until almost 7! We did our morning things (no, and the chef I asked didn’t know if there ever would be, and only at the oatmeal station). We had several new people in Tai Chi and Jorge did a nice job of integrating them. Our new move involves a one leg balance, which is interesting on the open ocean.

Next stop is the coffee chat with Dario and Jacques, the Cellarmaster. Before it started Dave was looking at google maps on his phone and we were both really confused, because we appeared to be just about at Fakarova already, but we weren’t scheduled to be there until tomorrow. Also we’d noticed last night that the ship was really booking, going as fast as 20 knots, which is the fastest we’ve gone on the whole voyage and actually faster than we thought the ship could go with the damaged engine.

Normally at about 8:45 on sea days Dario comes on and gives a little sampler of what’s going on around the ship, but this morning it didn’t happen until just before 9 and Dario was already in the Explorer’s lounge for the chat. When the triple tone sounded for the announcement he started dancing around and saying “this is very good news! You’re going to like this!” and it was Captain saying that we had gone really fast and would be arriving at Fakarova at 11 and would have an extra half day there. So that was interesting and we have all kinds of questions but there is Jacques waiting to do the coffee chat.

The chat starts off with Jacques noticing that his name is spelled wrong on the screen (Jaques) which leads to a long story about when he first went off to school and wouldn’t answer to his real name, Jacobus, because he wasn’t used to it. Usually Dario asks his guests to tell a little bit about how they came to have their jobs, and he asked Jacques that question but it started with a long story about visiting a winery when he was 16, and a hot car trip and smelly rugby shoes and a girl he liked and Nelson Mandela was in there somewhere… Jacques is from South Africa and is known for his long and rambling stories, and today was no exception. Meanwhile Dario was exhausted from last night’s Orange party and it got a little goofy, including the usual call of “Equator!” which didn’t derail Jacques at all. He spoke for the entire 30 minutes and then it was time to go.

Next up was Fred Galvin’s talk on Fakarave & the Tuamotus, Inside one of Earth’s last pristine biospheres. He spent a lot of time talking about his credentials (special ops, tesla) and how the atolls were formed and how the islands were settled and how the colonizers and missionaries came, with a lot of very densely packed slides. He pretty much ran out of time to talk about the biosphere at all. The lecturers have been disappointing.

We stayed in place for Ceptembre Anthony’s one woman show called Around the world in 72 days, where she played Nellie Bly and told us about her adventures. It was a fun way to spend a part of the morning and I look forward to her next show about Gaugin.

Meanwhile, since we booked this cruise on board a previous cruise we have the “Have it all package”, which is one price for internet; drinks including soda, alcohol, and fancy teas; and several dinners at the Pinnacle and Canaletto specialty restaurants. So today we’d booked lunch at the Pinnacle. It was fun to do something different and because my account is flagged it was also very fast.But before lunch we had a moment to play with shadows. Because we're so close to the equator, the sun is directly overhead at local noon, so you should'nt cast a shadow at all. This is difficult to photograph but we tried.

After lunch we sun creamed up and tendered ashore. Fakorava has a population of about 400 people and pretty much nothing for tourists to do except swim, so we walked about for an hour or so, including walking all the way across the width of the island (about as long as our ship) to the ocean side, which is much like the lagoon side but with waves. Also on the ocean side there were a lot of dead corals in the process of turning into sand, which was cool, and some shells but not many. We walked about a half mile up the road (the only road) to the Catholic Church, which had a beautiful blue arched ceiling with ropes of shell decorations and what looked to be glass painted to look like stained glass. By this time we were pretty hot, and we had the wrong shoes and sunscreen type to go in the water, so we headed back to the ship. We were sweating!

Once back on the ship Dave went for a beer and I went to the gym for some aerobics, then got cleaned up for dinner. We had a particularly fine time at dinner with the conversational ball bouncing nicely around the table and a shorter than usual wait between the appetizers and mains. Then it was back to the room for some catching up and off to the World Stage for the cast member’s show called “Feel the Beat”. I enjoyed it very much. I’m sure it’s all acting, but they seemed to be having a good time performing and the audience certainly was enjoying audiencing.

If you are towards the back of the balcony you can get seats in the Ocean bar for the Dam band right after the show; we were not quite quick enough to get the really good seats around the dance floor but we got pretty good seats in the upper section. There were quite a few songs to dance to, and Boogie Shoes got a big crowd out onto the floor. We finished off the set and then headed back to our room. Aside from Tai Chi there’s nothing on our schedule tomorrow!

 

Day 23 - Bahia d'Opunoha, Moorea

All aboard was at 1:00 am this morning so the security guys could get their mandatory rest, but we didn’t actually leave Papeete until after 5 – and we were docked and cleared in Moorea by 8. They’re that close together. We had an early tour, so we had a quick breakfast (still no, and only by the oatmeal) and then finished getting ready. There was a possible swim stop on this tour, so I dressed & screened for it while Dave wore the standard short sleeve collared shirt and the incredibly lightweight normal spray on sunscreen. We gathered in the World Stage and after not too much time were in our flat bottomed, canopied boat with hard wooden benches around the sides, ready to go find some dolphins.

Our tourguide was Dr Michael Poole, who knows more than you do, but turned out to be pretty good. The dolphins were hiding and we ended up going a long way around the island before finding them. Since the island is stunning (maybe even better than Hauhine – it has cliffs and jagged mountaintops) it was actually a really nice tour. There was a moment of excitement on the way out where the driver clipped a coral with one of the outboard motors, but no harm done. We did eventually find a group of maybe 20-25 spinners who put on a good show. Humpbacks have already headed south for the summer, sadly. On the way back to the ship the clouds rolled in and it rained, but cleared up by the time we got back so the tender dock.

As always there were some local people selling jewelry. I found a necklace to bring home. Dave almost found a shell lei – maybe in one of our last two stops. We came back to the ship and had lunch, and sitting on the back deck with hills on three sides both of us had the same idea. So we went down to the cabin and reapplied sunscreen and went up to the pool on the back deck to soak in the scenery. The weather changed back to clouds, which make pretty patterns on the hills. Dave went back to the cabin after a bit; I stayed in for an hour or so. Then it was cleanup and blog and nap time and then it was already time for dinner!

It was Orange party night, and as always our table was all in, with everyone having at least a little orange. Orange night also means the dutch menu, which means Bami Goreng (with Sambal from the crew mess) for Dave and the Lindt chocolate tulip dessert for me. The dessert looks almost nothing like a tulip but is somewhat x-rated in appearance and is of the oddest consistency ever – I always have to have it. One of these days I’ll remember to take a picture of it. Since we hadn’t seen each other last night we had a lot of catching up to do, and Mikey shared the details of her cancer story, which was icky but also kind of wonderful, because Linda told us it’s pretty unusual for Mikey to open up like that. Apparently after 3 weeks of dinners we’ve become family, cousins as they’d say in the Polynesian triangle.

Although I’m generally feeling better I sound worse, so I decided to skip tonight big show, also because she is a violinist and hmm, I’m often not a fan. Stop the violins! is my motto. To be honest just hanging out in the cabin reading is such a treat – I am working my way through one of the Bruno, Chief of Police series that the Bubster got us hooked on for Dave’s birthday. 

Dave came back with a report that the violinist was fine, but that the overall spectacle was a bit much. And also that he had been overtaken by the Bar Crawl crowd, who were having a very good time.

We went to the lido midships pool for the Orange party, which was rocking as every party had been. I remember the orange outfits at our last party as being more costume-y, but tonight was mostly people wearing orange clothes. We stayed for a little while & danced the YMCA, but it seemed wise to call it a night.

Tomorrow is a sea day! Hooray!

Cruise note: Bihia d'Opunoha is also know as Opunoha Bay, and there are some beautiful houses on the hillside that Linda says are AirBnBs. If it weren't so far away, I'd come stay here for sure.

 

Day 22 - Papeete, Tahiti with the sniffles

 

The channel is barely wider than the ship

We're going to park at the pier in the lower left

I forgot to mention that last night Dennis, Ilene and I all had the lamb chops for dinner; they were thoroughly crusted with whole sesame seeds and we all agreed that while the lamb was delicious, the sesame seed coating was just weird.

We had a slow morning this morning, starting with our arrival at the dock in Papeete, Tahiti. Unlike many places we’ve cruised, the dock is right in the thick of things, which is nice. Dave went and did his morning walk & breakfast while I did Tai Chi & breakfast in that order, which always means running into Jorge at the yogurt bar also (still walnuts, still no prunes).  Dave went out for a walk on the waterfront, but I am still having a cold and just wasn’t up for it. So I stayed on the couch and read, which is not a bad way to spend the morning. Dave got back and took a quick shower to remove the easy to apply but not reef safe sunscreen, and then we both started the process of applying the harder to apply but reef-safe sunscreen and getting ready for our tour. The timing felt a little tight between when the Lido opened (11:30) and when we needed to meet on the Pier (12:15) but it turned out to be fine.

The catamaran was actually docked on the other side of our pier, so we walked down to the bow end of the pier, waited with our group, and then walked back up. The catamaran was rated for 27 people but only had 20 guests and 3 crew, so it didn’t feel cramped. And they had fresh fruit and fruit juice on board, always nice. And the weather was partly sunny and noticeably warmer, also nice. We zipped out past the reef through the same passage the ship came through, and had a super fun time surfing the waves. Because of the double hull, catamarans still get the front to back roll, but are more stable side to side. I was out on the netting in the sun the whole time, of course, and only missed getting sun cream on one small spot on the back of my right leg. We saw a pod of spinner dolphins (they really do spin when they jump) and 2 distant whales, which I think might have pilot whales or fin whales as they didn’t seem to have any of the behaviors we associate with humpbacks. Of course these are upside down all the time, so maybe they behave differently.

We cruised along for quite a while on the ocean side of the reef. The side of the island we were cruising along (heading in the direction of Moorea, pronounced Mo’orea, our next destination) is entirely developed, and I wondered what lagoon we were going to snorkel in. Eventually we went back through another break in the reef (clearly marked with buoys) and headed back in the direction we’d come from, but this time close to shore.

Digression: At home, the red buoy should be on your right as you enter the harbor – Red Right Return, as Lynn always says. Here in French Polynesia (and quite a few other places, not all on this side of the equator) they are backwards, so just like you need to know which side of the road to drive on you need to know which side your buoy colors are on.

We followed the buoy marked channel about halfway back to the ship, then dropped anchor in amongst quite a few boats that were moored out by the channel. They put down the ladder, gave us masks, snorkels, and fins, and told us if we wanted to see fish we should swim towards the reef, which was easy to see in the crystal clear water. There was a strong onshore current, so the fins came in handy to get out to the reef. There were probably no more than 12-15 of us in the water in this big open space, and it was pretty terrific. New things: I saw a pufferfish and some giant sea cucumbers, and Dave saw several angel fish. No sharks or rays, which was just as well as far as I was concerned.

We swam around for about an hour, then got back on the boat and headed toward the ship. It was warm and sunny enough when we got out that it was comfortable toweling off and going back out to the netting. The whole time we were snorkeling ships were coming and going overhead from Papeete airport, and on the way in we had to wait for some airport traffic to clear before we could continue – our ship’s tall masts would have been in the flight path.

We got back in time to do our cleanup and have a little balcony time before dinner, including seeing Dennis and Louise as they boarded the sunset sail. That’s the one we swapped for this afternoon’s, and I’m curious how they liked it. 

Dinner was very quiet and very fast with just the two of us at the table. We were tired from all that swimming against the current and happy just to sit and watch the dining room. Afterwards we went out to sit on our balcony, where we could hear live music from the restaurant across the way, and watch the sunset sail come back from their cruise. We’d forgotten to get a picture of our catamaran, but fortunately it was parked across the water.

Then it was time to head over to the world stage to get our seats for the local Tahitian show. Tahitian dance, as I think I mentioned when we started learning our song in hula/ori class, is much more rhythm based, as well as having more side to side hips (for the women) and in-and-out knees (for the men) and also an anterior pelvic tilt. The show was a lot of very energetic young people doing things my hips and knees can only dream of, in a variety of costumes. There wasn’t much explanation of what was going on, and so it got a bit repetitive. Unlike the hula we’ve seen, there wasn’t a lot of variation in the speed and type of moves, which may be a real distinction or just might be what this troupe likes to do. At one point they had a dance initiation, where they went out into the audience and brought people on stage with them to dance (this is why we sit in the balcony). Horrified HAL staffers immediately shooed them off the stage – apparently there’s a no guests on stage policy. After the show you could go have your picture taken with the dancers. We decided we’d rather go back to our room and finish our evening on our balcony overlooking the town and listening to the music from across the way.

Cruise note: it’s in the upper 70s and very, very humid on our balcony. Two weeks of cruising in the tropics has made it completely bearable.

Can you see me waving?

Day 21 Bora Bora

Another morning, another beautiful island. Bora Bora is another tender port, famous for its grass bungalows suspended out over the water. You’ll have to google them as we forgot to take pictures. While you’re there google their beautiful mountain, the top of which played peek-a-boo with the clouds all day. Here’s something I don’t think you can google – apparently there are companies that will print you out a map of exactly the route your cruise ship took, and what I wonder (and Kondratiuk might have wondered as well) is if our map would show the detour we took around the atoll of Tūpai

We had an early shore excursion, so we had a quick breakfast in the Lido (STILL no prunes; walnuts at the oatmeal station only) and then went back to our cabin for the still icky process of goobie-ing up. It’s very water resistant and although we scrub with washcloths I’m pretty sure I’m building up layers, like the bark on a perfectly cooked Texas brisket. There was a little time left over in which I read the NY Times daily newsletter for the first time since we left Oregon. As we used to say in Michigan, Go Blue.

After the usual wait in the World Stage our shore excursion was called, so we trooped down to A deck and boarded our tender. At the pier we were directed onto a larger flat bottom boat, and we headed out towards our first stop to swim with Sharks and Rays.  I wasn’t thrilled with the location – there was very little to look at in the water and there were 5 or 6 boats there so it was crowded – but you can’t say we didn’t get to swim with both sharks (nurse) and rays (sting). A large ray swam right under me right off the boat, and at one point I’d stood up to adjust my mask and when I pushed off I practically ran into a pack of four sharks. I’m not sure why the animals stick around where there are so many humans, given how often humans are there and how often one assumes they get fed. It’s cool, anyway.

It’s still the rainy season here – that hasn’t changed since yesterday – so it’s only in the upper 70s, which is chilly when you’re wet on a boat with a stiff breeze. Dave wrapped his towel around me which helped a little. Our next stop had much better corals, more colorful but not as diverse as the aquarium garden at Rangiroa. There were stronger currents at this stop – at one point I looked up and had drifted further from the boat than I’d intended, and had to work a little to get back. Unlike at sharks and rays, I was not ready to be done when they called us in.

The boat ride back was long and chilly even though we changed into dry shirts, but they were singing and playing ukes and drums on the way back which made it very fun. In town we stopped at the an ATM and got 9000 PFR (Polynesian francs), worth about $90, for tipping and also to buy some souvenirs for some nieces. Hopefully they won’t mind them being a little pre-worn as I plan on wearing them to dinner often.

We tendered back to the ship on our lifeboat, lucky 13, to change into dry shorts and head up to the lido for lunch. Then we went down to lower promenade to go for Dave’s daily walk of about 2 miles. We had to detour a couple of times because they were rehousing the tenders on the port side. Then it was time to go back to the cabin for the cleanup process, which as always took much more time than we think it will. I blogged during Dave’s afternoon beer and then it was nap time and then it was dinner. Tonight is Casino Royale night, whatever that means, but what it apparently doesn’t mean is dressing up, even though we did anyway. We had a good time at dinner checking on on each other’s days.

We got to the World Stage early so we could get good seats for Anita Newby’s second show. It was about movie songs, which we don’t know much about, but it was still very enjoyable. All of the entertainers we picked up in Hawai’i are going home tomorrow and we’ll pick up a new batch for the long trip home. Not that anyone wants to think about that. After Anita’s show we checked out the Casino Royale night in the mix bar; it was very crowded and noisy and not our thing, so we gleefully headed back to our cabin for some reading with a stop for me at the lido for our nighttime tea.