Day 28 - A slow sea day, hooray!

Texas and Mrs. Bix Bender. If you click on it you can make it bigger to see his fabulous outfit.

We’re four weeks in – it’s incredible. It feels like we just got on a couple days ago. And today is a special day, a sea day with almost no activities that I want to go to. It’s not something I want them to make a habit of (in fact I already know that tomorrow there are more things and often at the same time), but it felt really good today.

Breakfast with all accompaniments and Tai Chi as usual. We had a new student and Jorge started off by joking “why did you wait so long to come?” which would have worked with most passengers but she took it as a personal attack, and it only got worse when he kept trying to get her to move closer so she could see and he could help her. She left in the middle when he went to stand at the back as he always does – she said she felt like he was trying to call her out. It was interesting to watch from a teacher perspective, but we hope she doesn’t submit a complaint about him.

Coffee chat was with the actual front line guest services people, who were upbeat about their often difficult jobs. It was interesting to hear about the upsides – the travel, the connections with each other & with guests and that they have the same issues with HAL’s Navigator app (which is so much better than it was, but still a little finicky). After the chat I moved over to one of the window seats and had a very nice time finishing up the blog and making a list of things I want to remember, like finding museums to visit and what kind of clothing to bring.

The Navigator app is the #1 question (and #2 is the  Have-it-all package) , but right up there is also how to connect to the internet and the vagaries thereof. One of the vagaries is whether or not google will automatically back up the pictures we’ve taken to google photos. If it does, our accounts are set up so that we automatically see and have access to the pictures each other have taken. This is helpful for the blog. Yesterday was a day that Dave’s photos did not back up, so when I went to put pictures in the blog none of his were there. I tried to message him but no response, so I grabbed the cable I’d need and made a guess about where he was.

I guessed correctly, he was sitting on a lounge chair on the port side of the lower promenade, but he was asleep. So I sat down next to him and started writing about today. It’s cloudy, so it’s not as hot as it’s been (still v. humid of course) and it was wonderful to sit and listen to the sound of the waves as the ship motors on. It was also very weird to be on the port side. Our cabin is on the starboard side, and so are most of the windows in the public spaces on deck 5, so that’s what I’m used to – on the port  side, the ship appears to be going backwards.

Eventually Dave woke up and I was able to download his pictures and post yesterday’s blog, and then we went up to the room and got ready for lunch. At lunch we sat at a 6 top and it was a little hard. The woman sitting next to me, Costanza, was from Columbia (one of 4 Columbians on board, Jorge often tells us) and is in the early stages of dementia, meaning she’s easily confused and is losing a lot of her English. Her boyfriend doesn’t speak much Spanish so she’s lonely and sad. Dave and I were able to speak some Spanish with her which helped, but it was an awkward lunch. Dave left before dessert to go to the talk by Fred, and I stuck around a while then went to the cabin to try to sew on a button. Eventually I had to take the needle and thread to guest services where Daria was able to help me thread it. I gave her a woo-hoo! which she seemed to enjoy.

‘Uke group was fun. We did Leavin’ on a Jet Plane again, then went back and played Vacation on the Zaandam and E Huli, which was really fun because they are actually getting easier and also because of such great memories. After ‘uke group I went to the gym for TBP BB 8. Dennis from Hula and Tai Chi was there working out too so we waved.

Then it was time to get ready for dinner – the days just fly by. Dennis and Louise were at the Pinnacle so it was just the 5 of us. Ilene started off by pointing out that there are lots of week long cruises, so we still have a whole cruise left. Everybody is feeling it. Mikey was telling us that music trivia was 80’s hair bands, and Linda confessed that when Mikey had said that for the first time tonight she thought it was about hairbands, like headbands. We wondered if there were legwarmer bands too? After dinner we walked through food truck night at the Lido, where they’d set up tables with street food instead of the usual buffet, or maybe along with it, I’m not sure. There was a lot of fun and yummy looking food but we were stuffed already.

Next up was the World Stage program. We were sitting in the very back row with Dennis and Bev, and he started to tell her in his well-projecting voice that I was a badass in the gym, and then all the people near us had to turn around and look at me while I told Bev about my workout. It was pretty funny. The show was the World Stage Cast in a retrospective of 60s, 70s, and 80s music. It was high energy and lots of fun. I am so glad we’re not having to wear those 1970s clothes anymore.

After the show we hung out in the Ocean Bar with the Dam band. The first set was good music, not very danceable for solos. Lots of fun couples to watch, though. One of these days we’re going to learn to do it ourselves. We stayed for the second set and as usual about 15 minutes in they started playing what I like to dance to, so I did. There’s a good crew who get up and dance during the second set, so it’s fun. The only problem is then you get back to your cabin all sweaty and wide awake. It was worse last night, because we also changed into GMT -9, a half hour forward from Nuku Hiva time. The good news is that because Alaska doesn’t do daylight savings time (there’s no daylight to save) they are on that time now, so phone and watch are back in sync. Only 1 more hour to get back…

Cruise note: We're on the ship. It's us. There's just not that much to take pictures of. 

 

Day 27 - A Farewell to Land

 

 

Since we’ve started heading North, we’re on the sunrise side of the ship. So when Dave opened the curtains this morning on our way into Nuku Hiva it was briiiiight. And beautiful. And different, because Nuka Hiva has brown sand, which makes the water look dark green instead of the beautiful South Pacific blues we’ve gotten used to. And it’s a volcano, not an atoll, and I’m definitely a younger island kind of girl. The island is gorgeous – it’s about the same age as Kaua’i, the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, so it doesn’t yet have a barrier reef. It does have several places where you can see what look like collapsed calderas or broken off chunks of island that rolled partway down the mountain. And from our balcony we could see a giant tiki on a hillside. We could also see the Aranui 5, the combination cruise/cargo ship that has been with us at every port. What are the chances that we would do exactly the same islands in the same order for the same amount of time? 

Breakfast and Tai Chi, and then we sunscreened up with the not mineral sunscreen (so nice! I can’t believe I used to complain about it) and headed to the Wajang to start our journey. It wasn’t long before we were walking up to and around the (big, recent) statue, encountering many chickens and a beautiful black butterfly. Then down and through town, finding an ATM along the way so we could finish up our souvenir shopping. Nuku Hiva was primarily settled from Samoa and they have a lot of big stone carvings(tiki) of the local gods. We walked for about an hour and a half and it was hot. And full of tourists. So we headed back to the ship and had some lunch.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that when we get off the tenders there are often drummers drumming and singing and sometimes dancers. Because in most of the ports we hopped right onto our tour vehicles, we didn’t notice what we noticed both here and in our last port, which is the music only goes on when there’s actually a tender at the dock. Particularly when we were swimming in Fakarava we would hear the drums start up. We’d look at each other and say, “the drums are beginning again” as if we were in some sort of Polynesian horror movie. Fortunately we made it safely back on to the ship.

Did I mention that because our cabin is considered a suite it comes with a pair of binoculars? I think I must have, because I remember writing about the officer coming to swap them out. I mention them again because it is so hot and humid outside that if you want to step out on the balcony to use them you need to put them outside a half hour or so beforehand so that they can come up to temperature, otherwise they fog up immediately and are not useful.

I had been thinking about doing a spa thing but couldn’t decide which one and last night we got a flyer about a special on the facial, so I decided that would be a fun thing to do. And it was, although the poor esthetician (Irma) was so horrified that I use the same moisturizer on my face and eyes and don’t exfoliate that I felt bad for her. They always have to try to sell product but I have to say her attempt was pretty half-hearted. She could tell going in that it was a lost cause.

I came back from my facial (my skin was glowing, according to Irma. I’m not sure I could see the difference) and got cleaned up and ready for dressy night. Then I went down to deck 3 to watch them put the tenders away, which is what Dave was doing, of course. He went up to get changed and it started raining again, which it’d been doing on and off all afternoon and which is a lot of water coming down. Dressy nights mean escargot, so Dave had picked out a Pouilly- Fuisse from the wine list to share with the table. We were the first ones there so we could offer wine to the table. My duck was delicious and Dave’s lobster tail was too. It’s not just a dressy night, it’s Great Gatsby night, so some people are dressed appropriately (at our table: Louise, Linda, Dennis) and others are just dressed up.

As part of Gatsby night we got the Gatsby Gazette yesterday which is all about a theft of Tanzanite necklace from the Effy shop on board and lists several crew as suspects with bios. The previous two party nights have been really good, but this one missed. It was a lot of music from the American Songbook, which is great music but only a small proportion of the guests enjoy dancing to it. So even though we sat downstairs there just wasn’t a lot of energy, and since nobody was dancing nobody was standing so the mingling of the suspects and guests didn’t happen, and overall the suspects didn’t get that into it either. I was hoping when the Dam band finally got up to play they’d raise the energy level but when they started off with “Sway” we were done.

We’re at sea, though, which means the ship has its gentle motion and all is well. Next time the ship stops we’ll be in San Diego! We’re not ready to get off – we may never be – but I’m ready for it not to be so hot and humid outside!

All our French Polynesian Islands

 

These are pictures that Dave took that I added later. 

Front of Statue

Back of Statue

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.