Just for Joy: Day 19

We got to have a pretty slow morning. I started off with TBP BB 6 up in the gym, then breakfast (no walnuts or prunes). Two different people said “Hi dancer!” as I walked by, which was fun. Then Tai Chi, where we’ve gotten into a section that Jorge is less familiar with and it’s a little rough going. We don’t learn new moves on port days, so we have plenty of time to get proficient.

After that we went to 6-forward to watch the sail in to Huahine, which is easily the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life. None of the pictures nor my description will give you the breathtaking glory of this place. It’s much younger than Rangiroa so it still has the steep volcanic mountains, and it’s so green and lush it looks completely fake.

Once we were anchored I went up to the Lido to put together a snack plate for later. The views out the windows were spectacular! Our tour is in the early afternoon, so we set up dinner in the Canaletto specialty dining restaurant to not have to rush to our early seating dinner. I knew we’d be a little peckish and didn’t want either of us to get sensitive. It was still breakfast in the Lido. There were walnuts. Then we went on a quest for bottled water, because the islands are very fussy about what can come off the ship (with good reason). We found them in the World Stage.

Usually the dining room is closed on port days, but today they had it open with a stripped down menu – potato soup, fish’n’chips or chicken caeser salad, cherry cheesecake. We were in and out in 25 minutes which was excellent, and then went and put on the icky sunscreen (ick! ick!) and hung out in our room looking out at the beautiful mountains until it was time to go.

Another tender port; our excursion guide (a very nice French woman who has been in Polynesia for 15 years) said that it’s very rare for ships as big as ours to stop here. They only have 1 tender dock and no mass transit to the one town, so Dario kept recommending that if you didn’t have a shore excursion or shuttle ticket you stay on the ship. Because it is hot here, and it’s a considerable walk to town. Because we’re 4 star mariners we have priority tender privileges; basically that means that instead of having to wait with the riff-raff in the Ocean Bar we go to the Wajang Theatre where they verify our starredness and hand us two tender tickets for immediate boarding. We walked to the tender loading place and got on the tender at which point it left almost immediately even though it wasn’t full. I don’t think the immediate departure had anything to do with our extreme starriness but it’s fun to pretend.

Because of all this efficiency we were a half hour early for check in. They had an open-air bus that we could sit in to wait, but we walked around a bit. It’s kind of a residential area and everybody had mangoes and coconuts lying around under their trees, just like we have cherries and apples in our neighborhood. Eventually our bus came – they’re big truck boxes with long wooden benches inside – and everybody got out of the bus they’d been waiting in and onto the identical but apparently more correct vehicle. Our excursion was to the Marea, the ruins of temples of the pre-Christian population. They are interesting and our guide was very knowledgeable. We walked up a hill to see the ruins of the ruler’s land and it was a nice little hike up a hill. The most interesting thing we found out is that Huahine is the only Polynesian island that was matriarchal – they had Queens as rulers. We also went to see ancient fish traps and the blue-eyed eels.

We got back to the dock at 4:30 and jumped on a tender, so we were back on the ship at 4:45. We ate our snacks and got showered (the icky mineral sunscreen is hard to get off!) in time to go out and watch the sail away from 6 forward and then go aft for the sunset, which was clouded out. Because it was a port day, Coffee with Dario was Cocktails with Dario at 6:30, and today’s guest was the singer Anita Newby. She was very funny and interesting and we’re looking forward to her next show.