Around the World in 365 Days: The South Pacific

Some enchanted evening….

Day 108, Feb. 2^nd: No “health report” from the bridge today concerning the intestinal infection going around– hopefully that means things are getting better. Fingers crossed they reopen the gym and casino soon – I’m going into withdrawals without the gym (and the coffee station, Viktoria our room attendant brought us packets of instant coffee since we have a kettle in the room, but it’s not the same) and John without the casino. John has picked up playing canasta with Liam, Allen and Stewart. Christopher is still unresponsive and unchanged, and will be transferred to the little hospital in Nuku Hiva. The entertainment staff did their best show yet – a condensed version of “Phantom of the Opera” with only three characters: Chloe – who was opera trained – playing Christine, Lee as the Phantom and Joe as Rolf. They deserved the standing ovation given.

Day 108, Feb. 3^rd: Land Ho! We anchored in the Bay of Nuku Hiva. It is a sparsely populated island, the second largest by land in the Marquesas chain in French Polynesia. The town of Taiohae is the quintessential place to get away from it all.

Several cafes line the waterfront. A kilometer walk brings you to the edge of the town and to the pizza bar. They serve drinks as soon as the first tourists land, but they don’t start serving pizza until noon. John and I sat down a little after 9 AM, getting a lot of tax information taken care of, and I finally got caught up on email. Temperatures started in the the mid to upper 80’s and humid, and I ordered an iced coffee with milk. The lady at the bar looked confused. Then I struggled through my schoolgirl French and asked for “café au lait frio” – still nothing. She handed me her phone set to Google – it turns out in French an iced coffee is a “Café glacee.” She still wasn’t sure, but pulled out the blender and the espresso machine – the final product was an excellent iced coffee with milk with a combination of crushed ice and ice cubes – better than any Starbucks I’ve ever been to. We returned to the boat for lunch (I wanted to stay for pizza, but John wanted to recharge the computer and come back out later). When we returned to town, we checked on Christopher. We’d brought snacks, which was good since Stuart (I’ve been spelling his name wrong all along) and Lynn had been keeping vigil off and on most of the day and Lynn hadn’t had any lunch. We gave her a protein bar, and Heidi – another patient from the ship who is vegetarian – some chocolate and the other protein bar. There had been a general cluster—- over the details. Christopher would be transferred to the airport and flown to Papeete (which has a first-rate hospital), but Wendy could not accompany him. She had brought several pieces of luggage, which needed to be carried back to the boat. The liason from CMV dropped the ball, the patients had been there since 6:30 AM, and she showed up about the same time John and I did at 2PM, mainly interested in getting the hospital paid instead of the welfare of the passengers. We left the hospital at 3:30, and Wendy was almost to the tender – and she was pulled back to the hospital for more paperwork. Lynn and I got her stuff back on board, Stuart took care of Wendy and helped her through another step and then got her back to the boat and re-registered since she had been listed as diembarked. Some day I would love to go back to Nuku Hiva, and when I do, I plan to see more of it than a café and the hospital. (The hospital grounds did have the biggest banyon tree I’d ever seen).

I had a great evening sitting at the Oasis bar in the back of the boat, watching the sun go down and the stars come out, chatting with friends.

Day 109, Feb. 4^th: It’s official – we are not going to mainland China due to the coronavirus outbreak. No great surprise. At the moment, Hong Kong is still in the plans (if they have to cancel Hong Kong it will cause a lot of scrambling since there are numerous people disembarking (and embarking). I will keep you posted. Instead, they have added two stops in Japan!!! John and I are thrilled. John happens to be wearing his “I climbed the great wall” t-shirt, so now we get to gloat a little in the “been there, done that” category. This morning we had our third lifeboat muster drill. They really like doing drills, almost as much as they like forming ques. They’ve done each one a little differently – the first, we gathered in the Taverners bar meeting place, given instructions, back to the room. In the second, we gathered at Taverner’s, walked outside, lined up and put on our life jackets. This time, we went straight outside to the deck, lined up, and put on our life vests – overall, it was more efficient today. People were still doing the Escape room, at this point, you know too many others have given away its secrets. By the way – zero internet connection today, the Columbus wifi did not even come up as an option to connect to.

Day 111, Feb. 6^th: Papeete. This is the main city in Tahiti. John remembered it as a very high end, cosmopolitan city with streets of shops such as Cartier and Tiffany’s. It still has high end prices, but the luxury chains have been supplanted by local pearl shops. The morning started with a beautiful blue sky. We settled into the café – La Retro – for a 2^nd breakfast and internet (they give you slips of paper with a wifi code that’s good for 30 minutes). Within ten minutes of sitting down, the wind tore through the streets, blowing down restaurant placards and flapping every awning, followed by torrential rain that lasted for over thirty minutes. It is monsoon season (Nov. through April). I continued to try to load pictures from my phone to the blog site, which don’t go through. I finally found the contact me section but it was not conveniently at the bottom of the page, and kept being redirected to the same FAQ section. I finally managed to send an email to the help folks (and by the way – over 24 hours later – still no response). With “work” done, we wandered the city. John is always in a hurry – to what, I can never figure out. We weaved in and out of stores, looking, looking. I saw several of the beautiful peacock pearls the South Pacific is famous for, but I it took forever to find the pearl I loved in the setting I liked – and the rare time I did – the necklace was well over $1000. The closest I found was also at the shop where I bought my pearl – the one I liked was over $100 over budget, but I was able to pick out my pearl and get a simple silver mount which they did while I waited – and was about $10 over budget. I can wear it with the earrings I bought in China. We walked a ways down the waterfront to the Pearl Museum, where we learned about how the layers of minerals cause light to refract differently – allowing for the different colors, and why the same pearl can look very different in varying light conditions. We walked a little further up and into the waterfront park, then saw the clouds gathering and advancing on the town. John and I sped up our steps as we headed back – making it back to the shelter of the Pearl Museum (which is free), then to the pizza place next door. We ate a not very good pizza but enjoyed drinks – and staying dry. We walked back, and after a quick drink at La Retro, we made it made it back in time to see a demonstration of local dances done by a local dance troupe in the Columbus’s Palladium Lounge. They did a beautiful job. With the laundry re-opened, we threw a load in (though the launderette door states open until 10PM, since re-opening it was only open until 8PM- and the evening show – a tribute to Elton John, got out at 8:05). John called downstairs and they let us in to grab the stuff from the dryer.

Day 110, Feb. 5^th: The day itself went through the normal routine – but we docked in Papeete just before 8PM (it was supposed to be 7, but there was fog, slowing the departure of a ship docked in our spot). We alighted with eight friends to celebrate Liam’s birthday. We headed left from the dock, and three or four blocks down we found a fairly empty restaurant (that filled up fast). We shared a giant beer (the cooled “keg” held 5 liters of beer), cheesy French fries, a cheese plate, the birthday boy had wine (a gewürztraminer) as did a few others and most shared a flatbread with bacon and cheese. It was fun, it was astronomically expensive (the giant beer thing alone was about $75). We followed this with a karaoke bar, where a couple of locals that worked at the bar did most of the singing in between the tourists. John and I sang “My Life” and would have done “Movin Out”– but they could not find it or Friends in Low Places. We stayed out until just past midnight – placing us onto Feb. 6^th – the official birthday for Liam.

Day 112, Feb. 7^th: Bora Bora. The island is surrounded by reefs, so ships can anchor in the deep harbor and smaller ships can dock. The harbor also held a Windjammer vessel and a large yacht. The island was a strategic one for the war in the Pacific during WWII, as well as providing an area of R&R (and the famous “Bloody Mary’s bar). The little town we tendered into is similar to that in Nuku Hiva with more pearl stores (and double the prices). We’d hoped to get a day pass at a local resort, but they did not have anyone at the dock as we had been told. Instead, we climbed aboard the $5 Matira Beach shuttle. The cove allows for easy snorkeling, though a better place to snorkel is a strip of sand just past Bloody Mary’s – but it’s not wide enough to lay out and is uncomfortably close to the road. We spent $10 each for one of the few beach loungers (with cushion) rented by the inhabitants of a simple private house – so get there early if you like to lounge on something besides a towel. During most of the morning we were serenaded by an older man playing the ukulele (when the couple in the house were not arguing). After laying around for 3 hours with occasional dips in the slightly choppy water (though it was still very clear) we left our chairs to go to the Bora Bora Beach Club. The club has a lovely selection of wines, a varied menu, heavy on the seafood – and some high prices. It was the same price for a hamburger with fries as for seared tuna with rice ($25), the addition of risotto made with cream and parmesan cheese was another $5 – which I am so glad I went for – it was the best risotto I have had since Venice in 2018.

We caught the shuttle back to the boat, with a short diversion for shopping. Next stop – Tonga!

Day 113-115, Feb. 8^th-11^th: Sea days! Back to the regular routine- aka – Carolyn’s day camp: Get up, exercise, guitar group at 11AM, lunch, choir at 1:30, sometimes go to a lecture (I learned a lot about albatrosses, hopefully I’ll get to see a few) or dancing at 2PM, walk on deck 7 from 3-3:20, trivia at 3:30 with friends. Now that the casino is open, I haven’t had any luck – my 20 pounds per day being sucked into the machines in 10 minutes or less. At 6:45 we go to the theater to get good seats for the evening show at 7:15, then dinner at 8:15, some evenings we go to the Dome to hang out with friends, if there is karaoke – I am there! The talent show, with the guitar group playing will be on Feb. 15^th and the choir concert on the 16^th. You will notice that I have written 3 days (113) but there are 4 dates (8^th-11^th) – because we went over the international date line. Monday at 7:30 PM became Tuesday at 7:30 PM – sorry to anyone who’s Birthday is Feb. 11^th. John’s is the 12^th, so we get to celebrate it in Tonga. On the health side – almost everything is back to normal, except the coffee and tea machines are still done by servers only, and laundry is still only open until 8PM instead of 10PM (though the door still says 10)- a piece of masking tape with the new hours would have prevented any confusion). Our friends Archie and Doreen have been sharing their “crud” back and forth to each other, both have gotten IV antibiotics.

Day 116, Feb. 12^th: Happy Birthday John. I gave him two t-shirts and a 90 minute “Asian Touch Experience” at the spa. Unfortunately, we will not be visiting the Kingdom of Tonga (which transitioned from an absolute monarchy in 2010 to a constitutional monarchy). They have developed a fear of visiting cruise ships bringing horrible disease to their shores, and have cancelled all cruise ships until further notice. Our second ‘coronavirus inspired schedule change’. Instead, we will be arriving in Suva, the capitol of Fiji a day early and staying overnight. Tony, the cruise director, is scrambling and filling in for quizzes and activities. The guitar group got together and played fun stuff, but no choir today. John and our friends met for his birthday for drinks before the show. Tony the cruise director did an amazing job for the evening show he put together in short notice. Several silly jokes, and performed over ten songs. At dinner, Doreen gave us a scare at the table when she passed out. Luckily nothing major.