World cruise 10

January 22

Nuku Hiva is one of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. They are some of the most remote islands on earth. In fact, the "Survivor Marquesas" series was filmed here. Only about 2,000 to 3,000 people live on this island, and only about 20,000 on all of the Marquesas.

This island is mostly vertical, and the majority of it is inaccessible by road. Our ship anchored in Taiohae Bay, and the tenders took passengers ashore to the town of Taiohae which is the capital. This first photo shows the majority of the town. The following photo shows one of the several volcanic plugs that form the island's mountains.

This photo of Taiohea from the top of the mountain was taken by our friend Mike who went on the morning version of the tour that Margaret took in the afternooon. That white dot in the blue circle is our ship.

I did not go ashore on advice from Penny who has been here before and uses a walker similar to mine. According to her, and attested to by Margaret, the steps from the tender location are steep with no handrails at all. Instead, I spent much of the day being taught and playing Kings in the Corner with Ginger and Penny who are part of the crocheting group.

The small ships small world struck again today. I met Lynn and Charles who are the couple who were on the Prinsendam Grand South America trip with me in 2007, and it turned out they were also on the Amsterdam's Grand Asia and Pacific in 2008 that I was on.

Margaret did go ashore and on a tour in a 4x4 truck caravan. She described the ride up and over some of the mountains quite graphically. There were flocks of chickens and herds of small horses running loose in and alongside the road. The drivers spoke very little English which rather frustrated her desire to know all about the plants, flowers and ecology of the place. She'll give you more details in the next post.

January 23

Back at sea en route to Tahiti under gray skies that are leftovers from a tropical storm far to the south of us several days ago. Some wave motion, but the stabilizers took care of it.

The day's activities were about the same as other sea days. Margaret is feeling a lot better today although the cough from her cold is hanging on. She did get out and about to lectures as usual. I hung out with the knitting/crocheting group and actually finally finished crocheting the last square for the afghan I was working on, except for sewing the squares together.