11 October
Tahiti!!
We woke just
as we cruised in and enjoyed the amazing spectacle of seeing the point where
the rainbow touched down in the water near a lighthouse barely 200m away from
us. The same thing happened yesterday – I didn’t think it was possible to see
the end of a rainbow. We were almost first ashore and set off towards the
waterfall which the information sheet said was 2.2 miles away. We left a trail
of hysterical Frenchmen behind after enquiring how to get there a pied. It seems it is more like 22 km.
We later met
an American couple who had been told to get a $10 permit from the Council
office to visit the location and had walked about 3 miles through parts of the
town where they felt quite uncomfortable and were hiding their jewellery until
they reached a ravine where there was no sign of any recent human passage. At
that stage they turned back.
Greeted by music
Nice architecture
Cathedral
Our balcony
Dancing....shake them hips
Pape ete foreshore
City view
We had a bit
of an amble around the town and went into the cathedral, getting back in time
to join the morning trivia. We pretty much cleaned up everything during the day
with little opposition. A major highlight was the discovery that they put out
scones with jam and cream every afternoon!!
Another
(totally unexpected) highlight was receiving a mystery delivery in our cabin.
Barbara went off and fetched us a plate of fresh strawberries coated in dark
chocolate and a bottle of Chilean red wine. The card was from David and Dana at
Guest Relations. What a wonderful kind gesture!
The evening
show was Sean O’Shea who turned out to be a very good singer and comic
impersonator with some hysterical visual gags. He sang a heap of my favourite
songs (including Suspicious Minds, Delilah and Sweet Caroline). He arranged for
a selection of grotesque undies to be thrown onstage during Delilah and after
his transformation into Elvis he went round kissing hands, followed by an
attendant in bacterial protection uniform and one of the portable hand
sanitisers from the restaurants. We did
battle of the genders and dashed back to watch as much of the second show as we
could before the 11pm trivia, which finally finished us off.
12th
October Bora Bora
We woke to
sunlight coming in as we cruised slowly through the small gap in the reef
surrounding the tiny island of Bora Bora. Just about the first thing we saw was
one of those luxury hotels with the rooms on stilts in the lagoon, which
consisted of the clearest and bluest water imaginable. Whatever mental picture
you have conjured up could not possibly go a quarter of the way to doing
justice to this magical place.
The island
has a spiny backbone with 3 peaks, parts of which plunge vertically and
dramatically, even to the extent of overhanging cliffs. The island was pretty
much crushed coral/sandy but it was lushly vegetated with palms and ordinary
trees. An exquisite place. We considered ourselves blessed to have been there
to see it and privileged to have had a balcony to relish it from.
We were fed
and down on the tender by 8am, having been given Priority tickets. The ride to
shore was very quick and we had an interesting wander through the town, as well
as fixing Warren’s Hotmail account, which seems to have been clogged and
closed. It was too early to expect anybody in Perth to be awake.
Isn't it lovely
For the girls
For the boys
Water was sooooo blue
Isn't it lovely
For the girls
For the boys
Water was sooooo blue
We had a
lazy gym-free day, despite having taken advantage of the steady hull to step on
the scales in the gym. Oooops. Oooh well it will come off again. We had lunch
out on the terrace as usual and were continuously delighted by the spectacle
surrounding us. It is amazing that a 300m ship could get into such a tight
lagoon. Fabulous place. Eating, trivia, sunbathing and napping all day. We were
a tad late into dinner because we went out on the balcony above the bridge to
watch the sail away.
We took the
wine into dinner and shared it. Turned out to be what we would call a cab sav and
very nice it was too. We went down and thanked David and met Dana, who turned
out to be his girlfriend and colleague. A lovely SA Indian couple.
The evening
show was Dan Bennett, a weird juggler with an ultra fast bizarre patter. His
juggling was very good but we were not sure whether his fracas with the Mormon
in the front row was scripted.
13 October
Moorea
Same again –
ashore at 8, had a wander along the seafront. Lots of shabby houses fronting
onto gently sloping “beaches” consisting of coral rubble. Everything throughout
Tahiti has been very expensive, which is understandable in terms of
manufactured or processed items which have to be imported, but less so in terms
of locally handcrafted items. Some of their curios were simply fanciful -
deluded in price. We decided not to buy a fridge magnet and opted instead to
collect some bottle caps and make our own souvenir magnets. Should have thought
of that 2 years ago.
Don't know who he is but the girls are beautiful
Lotus man
I like this photo
Watched the tail end of this Sunday church service. The music/singing was so happy and uplifting. Lovely
Our sailor friend from Papeete. No idea who the family is.
Now this guy looks like a warrior don't you think?
The MOST dramatically beautiful island.
Don't know who he is but the girls are beautiful
Lotus man
I like this photo
Watched the tail end of this Sunday church service. The music/singing was so happy and uplifting. Lovely
Our sailor friend from Papeete. No idea who the family is. 
Now this guy looks like a warrior don't you think?
The MOST dramatically beautiful island.
We continued
our pillaging of the trivia points and I scooped the Sudoku medal. We had a late
session in the gym, which felt long overdue. I had another chat with the Tiny
Dancer, who is finishing his final contract at sea. We let Barbara in today and
she left us with a folded-towel elephant J
We opted not
to go for dinner, despite the lamb shanks. The buffet had lava cake, which was
just as good. We stayed up until 11 watching family feud but couldn’t last for
the 60s dance extravaganza. We get another hour tonight and the progressive
trivia will resume tomorrow.
14 October
Big gym
session today. Won morning trivia with a whole new team. Happened to be at the art
auction and watched for a while. They pull out all the tricks to get people to
bid for things they didn’t really want. Denise has bought a few things – wonder
if she has any idea of how much it will eventually cost by the time she has it
at home and framed? Sat/slept through Milos’ talk on sharks then had a nap with
the alarm set for Progressive Trivia. It was HARD. We had to guess a lot and
scored fewer than usual, finishing with 9, which was only 1 behind the winners
and still 1 ahead of our only serious rivals, now 5 ahead with 4 days to go. We
would have been stuffed without the boys today.
Not going to
formal dinner tonight. Got slightly dressed to go to the show – Pulse with lots
of explosive dancing. Watching the Tiny Dancer and the different styles of
doing the same thing. Found time to veg out with jazz in one of the lounges
before the 11pm Pub Trivia, which was different. That took us up to the countdown
to watch 15 October flash past in a moment (the other side of crossing the Date
Line). A bit sad for people who had their birthdays on 15th!
16 October
Yes there
was no 15th. Usual day around the Captain’s lunch for back to back
cruisers, which we probably wouldn’t bother going to again. Scored a free glass
of very good chardonnay and met the senior doctor (from Equador) and the Chief
Housekeeper from Turkey, who joined as an assistant waiter 17 years ago and
progressed through butler to his present position.
Trivia was
challenging again and we dropped 2 points to a lower team and 1 to the
pretenders. I hosed down suggestions that the secretary bird was famous for
eating snakes because lots of birds do that, but it turned out to be the
required answer. I did recognise Houdini’s real name and scored 2 points for
lake Baikal and Russia for the deepest lake. 4 days to go.
J assembled
a collection of Luke photos to amuse and arouse our dinner companions, who were
also very impressed with Courtney’s modelling pics.
We missed
the first session of Captain’s Club drinks but went to dinner and the second
session, where we were smart enough to stick to Cosmopolitans and skip the
Apple Martinis. This was good preparation for the evening show, featuring a
spontaneous comedian who was largely driven by audience contributions. The
evening ended with an earlier and more enjoyable pub trivia session.
17th
October
We did gym
both sides of morning trivia. It was blowing a gale of very chilly NZ weather
so zumba was indoors. We shared a lunch table with what turned out to be a very
interesting Englishman and his wife. He had won a scholarship to a private
school and studied 5 languages. He was then recruited by MI6 after learning
basic Arabic in a week. This led to a decade or two of assignments from Russia,
Cuba and several locations in the Middle East, after which he became an
insurance assessor and continued travelling to exotic 3rd world
countries. We had a rambling and entertaining chat about this and that and
generally had an interesting time. Michael
staged a limp and rather controversial word game.
The
afternoon offered a tight schedule of haircut, gender wars, trivia and croquet.
We won the medals for croquet (as you do when everyone else is too smart to
come out).
Trivia keeps
getting harder – we shot through to 6 out of 7 and then hit a wall. During the
counting we scrambled to 10 and felt a bit better and it turned out that 8 was
the next best score. We were within sniff of 2 or 3 others but guessed wrong.
So 6 ahead with 2 days to go.
We took the
medals to dinner, arrived late for the excursion trivia, which was a pity
because it handed out the best prizes yet, snoozed through the classical
pianist, joined up with the young couple again for music and finished one off
the pace, which pleased them no end. The open microphone comedy show was
tempting but just too late L The ship was spared my diarrhoea song . . for the
time being.
Five more
days L
