World cruise 11

January 24

We are at Papeete, Tahiti which is one of the Society Islands and also part of French Polynesia. We didn't arrive until noon, and the morning was rainy with just enough roll to the ship to make you want to hold onto something once in a while. After we docked, there were a couple of rain showers, then increasing sunshine until the clouds sat back down on the tops of the mountains in late afternoon.. Otherwise, it was just hot and humid.

Through the mid- to late morning still en route, we sat with the usual group in the Explorers' Lounge on Deck 5. That gave us excellent seats to watch our passage through the reef to the harbor at Papeete. There's this wide band of breaking waves and white water, then it suddenly stops for a wide enough hole (obviously man-made) for ships to get through.

There are 2 other cruise ships in port: the Paul Gaugin which mostly runs one week trips in the vicinity, and Oceana's Marina. The other interesting thing about this harbor is that ship traffic must coordinate with air traffic because the runway location makes planes take off and land right through the air space over that gap in the reef.
We are here overnight until late tomorrow afternoon. I want to see if the city looks anything like the nightscape I remember from 1988 when Connie and I and 2 other friends came here to board a ship to Sydney. We were standing on the back deck of the old Sitmar/Princess Fairsea watching the lights come on as the sun went down. I said, "I can't believe we're really here!" A man's voice right behind me said, "I can't believe it either!" That's how I met my cruising friend Mark and his friend Bob. We met a bunch of other great folks on that cruise, some of whom we're still in touch with today. (Yes, there are still lights coming on at sunset, but lots more of them now than in 1988.)

Margaret (and Mike also, I believe) has gone off on a rugged 4x4 trip billed as "Not suitable for pregnant women or those with back problems, motion sickness or vertigo." I'm sure they will see interesting things, but I saw the vehicles they left in, and I'm perfectly happy to not be on that tour.

Actually, they had a good time as you will eventually read in Margaret's post about it. Margaret then went out to dinner with a group headed to various food trucks in a nearby parking lot while Mike and I bypassed the Polynesian barbecue up on deck and chose to go to our regular table in a mostly empty dining room.

After dinner, I headed toward the Queen's Lounge to watch the evening's entertainment. En route I met Margaret just back from her dinner expedition. The entertainment was a troupe of Polynesian dancers who were very good, but very loud. Just about everything in the Queen's Lounge is painfully loud, and even ear plugs only bring it down to a tolerable level. I think they set it loud for all the deaf, elderly people in the audience. That's no help to those of us who have not yet lost our hearing.

January 25

Rain off and on all day. M and I were on a long tour that went all the way around the big part of the island, aka Tahiti Nui. The smaller part joined by a narrow isthmus on the southern side is called Tahiti Iti. "Nui" means big, and "iti" means little.

First stop was the John Norman Hall House. He was originally a farm boy from Iowa who was with the Lafayette Escadrille and other aviation pursuits, moved to Tahiti, got interested in the event and wrote "Mutiny on the Bounty" and lots of other novels.

The second stop was supposed to be at Matavai Bay where the Europeans first landed along with a lighthouse and handcrafts shop, but it was flooded out from the storm a couple days ago. Third would have been a walk to see a waterfall...rained out. So onward around the island.

Our lunch stop was at the Paul Gaugin Restaurant. It was a delightful spot with lots of big glass doors along the outside wall that folded back when the rain stopped for a bit. There was a nice buffet, however the only unusual-to-me item I tasted was some sort of plantain dish which was mostly just sweet.

There was a group of men sitting on a low wall playing and singing Polynesian music near our table. They were quite good. One of the passengers from another bus accompanied them very nicely on the spoons (he's sitting on the wall across from them).


By this time M's cold was back full force. So we stayed on the bus instead of visiting the Vaipahi Gardens, although they looked nice from where we sat.The last stop was at the Museum of Tahiti and Her Islands. The Museum was lovely, even though neither one of us saw all the displays of Polynesian history and archeology. It is laid out in separate one-story buildings connected by covered walkways surrounded by lush gardens. I spent part of our visit sitting outside listening to bird calls and the roar of the ocean waves. Very peaceful.

When we got back to the ship, I made M go immediately to the Medical Center. She was running a low fever, and of course, still had the cough. She got some cough killer stuff and orders to push fluids and stay in bed for a day or two. So I'll just hope the water is calm enough in Bora Bora tomorrow for me to tender ashore and back for my tour so I can report on this island for both of us.