11th - 17th October (Minus the 15th that never happened!)

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.  

12^th 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

 

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.

 

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 15^th!

16 October

Yes there was no 15^th. 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.

17^th 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 3^rd 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