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!