Just for Joy: 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!