Next Stop Fiji

Like with the last post, I’d hoped to include pictures with this post but I just wanted to get something up and didn’t get them included. Perhaps I’ll add some in the next couple of days or wait until we get home. Hope you’re enjoying our occasional updates.

Saturday, the 23rd, Papeete, Tahiti.

As the morning light awakened us, we looked out to the east to see a beautiful South Pacific sunrise welcoming us to French Polynesia.

From a distance, and when we traveled inland, we found Tahiti to be a beautiful island. Papeete itself is big busy town with lots of people and lots of traffic.

Here we were docked rather than anchored. I wandered the market for a while, came back to the ship for lunch with Tom before departing on our selected shore excursion “Tahiti Natural Treasures”. It was very hot there so we were quite pleased to have an air-conditioned bus! Should our travels bring us back to this part of the world, we will schedule it for the cooler dryer months of July – August.

The tour took us on a half day exploration of the island’s east coast. There was a lot of driving but we made a couple of stops that were spectacular, the guide was great and the coach was very comfortable. One stop was at the three waterfalls, we only went to the lower one (seeing the others would have required a looong strenuous hike) and, even in the rain is was beautiful and marvelously refreshing to look at and feel the mist coming from it. We stopped at the Paul Gauguin restaurant for either a local beer (Hinano) or fresh juice. Tom and I chose to share a beer. Quite tasty! We agreed it tasted similar to Heineken.

The restaurant was set on the water, had a thatched roof, natural wood bar, tables and chairs.

The third stop was at a local botanical garden, the Spring Garden of Vaipahi. There, we found that most of the plants we knew well from our years of living in Miami. When we return home, we’ll have to compare the latitudes of the two places, one north of the equator, one south of the equator.

The evening brought a special Polynesian dinner on the pool deck. The crew really outdid themselves! The window walls around the deck were covered with palm fronds they’d picked up in Nuku Hiva. All of the food tables had ice sculptures, each different. Watermelons were carved into animals, salads were shaped into fish, just incredibly beautiful! And, the food was truly good. Yes, it did include the traditional roast pig. The pigs may have been cooked in ground ovens and brought aboard as the meat was that tasty!

After dinner, the show “O Tahiti E” was presented by local Polynesian dancers, singers and musicians. WOW, what a show!

We over-nighted in Papeete.

Sunday, the 24 – Moorea

Leaving Papeete around 5am we arrived in Moorea (about 15 miles away), arriving around 8am. Here, the tour we had selected was an “Off-Road Safari”. WOW, what a trip that was! The vehicle was a small four-wheel drive pickup with a canopy over the truck bed and two bench seats facing each other. It would hold 8 people, fortunately there were only 5 in our vehicle as it was another hot and humid day!

The highlight of the trip was a very steep and winding climb up to the top of Magic Mountain. It looked like some of the inclines were 45º and may have been if physics will allow a truck to climb that steeply. At the top of the “road”, we all got out and walked up another hundred or so yards to the peak. The path with deep dropoffs was about 100 to 115 yards of concrete with ridges for grip. It had steep inclines at least 45º and hairpin turns. Our only support was a rope and that ended about 10-15 yards before we reached the top. Bottom line, it got scarier and scarier the higher we went!

By now, the rain had stopped and we had a GLORIOUS view of the bays below! “Truly awesome” is the only description that fits!

Back to the dock and back to the ship, we headed straight to the pool bar for a bloody Mary. We needed it after all the “not for the faint of heart” roads we traveled today!

A “Sundowner Sail Away” on the top deck was planned but rain caused it to be cancelled. The ship served the fresh coconuts with a very special colada type drink in them to guests in the Observation and Horizon lounges! Yep, the drink was delicious!

This evening’s show was performed by the Regent singers (4 of them) and the Regent Signature Orchestra and was “A Tribute to the Beatles”! These guys and gals are great!

Monday, the 25th – Bora Bora

We were anchoring at 8am and we needed to be in the theater for our first tour at 8am so we had an early breakfast at La Veranda. It had opened earlier than the usual 7:30am to accommodate the guests with early tours.

Our first tour was a glass-bottomed boat tour out to the coral reefs about 20-25 minutes away. This was our first sunny day thus the mountains and surrounding islands were clearly in view and beautiful to look at. Tom mentioned he’d thought Moorea to be the most South Pacific like, I felt the same about Bora Bora.

Because of all the recent rains, the water over the reefs wasn’t as clear as we’ve seen in pictures however; we could still see the colors of the fish as they came up to retrieve the fish provided by our captain. There was a snorkeling option, however, since we’re not experienced at it we chose not to do that. We saw some of the other Regent guests on boats close to where ours was tied up. To prevent damage to the coral reefs, they have installed anchor bouys.
Back at the pier, we boarded a tender back to the ship for a brief encounter with air conditioning and a bite of lunch.

We tendered back to the pier and joined our afternoon excursion of a “Le Truck” circumnavigation of Bora Bora. It resembled a school bus with open air windows, was made of wood and plastic chairs with a cushion on the seat, a plastic chair bolted down to make the seats. It would hold 37 people, fortunately, we only had about 18 people. Did I mention the weather is HOT and HUMID? It reminds us of the hottest most humid summers we ever had in Miami; of course, we were MUCH younger then and could tolerate them better!

We made several stops for photos. One stop was a rest stop at Mama Edna’s. In addition to the rest rooms, they had fruit for sampling. I was glad to see the fresh coconut meat, a favorite of mine! And, of course, it was a business! The primary items were beautiful pareos for sale at $10 each. That was about half the price I’d seen before. Yep! I bought 2 of them! They did a demo on how to tie them. I’ll have to refresh my memory when we get home and have don’t have to pay extra for internet service!

The last stop was at the apparently famous “Bloody Marys” restaurant and bar. We’d not heard of it before however, many of our shipmates were familiar with it. Yet, you bet, we did have a Bloody Mary! The building had a sand floor and rather than a coat check, it had a shoes and sandals check! It was open air and had a traditional high ceiling thatched roof, natural wood bar, bar stools, tables, etc.

We sailed out of Bora Bora around 4pm and after a “sail around” salute to also anchored there, Holland America’s Rotterdam, the two ships exchanged appropriate horn blasts and we headed west northwest to Apia, Samoa.

Tuesday, the 26th – At Sea

We may be getting “old”! After 3 shore days, we were truly glad to be having 2 days at sea where we could be lazy and do our own thing! Tom went for a spa appointment at 9:15. After the bumpy roads, a good deep massage was in order! I attended two lectures, one on South Pacific culture, one on Tahitian cooking presented by our Executive Chef and his Tahitian wife. Their toddler son was also there. The chef’s wife and son had boarded in Papeete.

Tom had come down with a terrible cold and spent most of the day sleeping. He did have a hot dog and some potato salad for lunch but didn’t even feel like getting up for dinner.

After having eaten so much for the past few days, I chose to skip dinner, however did dress up a little and headed to the theater to see “The Platters”! One of my favorites! Tom and I had attended my 50th class reunion back in October (’09) and one of our classmates had put together a CD that included a medley of their songs of our high school years. Although not the original singers, they maintained the sound! They opened with “Only You” and closed with “The Great Pretender”!

Wednesday, the 27th – At Sea

Last night was another “set the clocks back” night! I’ve forgotten what the time differences are now. Once again, we awakened to a beautiful sunrise around 5:30am, took a few photos and headed back to bed. We were up around 7:30 or so and Tom sounded SO much better so we cleaned up and went for breakfast around 8am.

When we got back to our cabin, Tom headed out to do some more reading on his book. I worked on typing up log notes and then attended another Apollo space program delivered by General Charlie Duke. He is such a wonderful man!

During Charlie’s lecture, the seas turned rough! I mean really rough! Staggering was not an uncommon scene as folks departed the theater! Fortunately, along almost all of the walls there are “grab” rails!

We have some great pics and video (I think) of the ocean as seen from a “rocking and rolling” ship! It got worse as the day went on. According to bridge information shown on our TV, the winds were sustained at perhaps 25-30mph with gusts up in the 55-60 range! The lowest deck above water is deck 3 so water line is midway deck 2. Water was crashing over the bow on deck 4 and splashing up as high as the bridge on deck 10!

The Captain spoke over the PA system and advised speed is drastically reduced and we would not make Samoa. He changed course and were now headed to Lautoka, Fiji. He referred to the winds as a gale. To those of us who have experienced Florida, it would be a tropical storm!

Around 6pm or so, our cruise director advised that the evening shows had been cancelled or postponed.

We’ve somewhat enjoyed the “rocking and rolling”. It’s been humorous to have drawers and doors opening and closing on their own! Tom figured out that putting socks between the drawers would stop that so as of now (10pm wherever we are) we have no more banging of drawers and doors!

Looking at the display on the information channel, we were sailing quite straight between ports until we changed direction to bypass Samoa. The current line from that point, albeit in a pointed direction, has a lot of “waves” in it.

Tom had turned in and I was working on this so we stayed in all evening. Hopefully, by morning he will be “all better”! I think it is fortunate that we’re not going to Samoa tomorrow as he probably wouldn’t have felt like making the shore excursion. Unfortunately, we won’t get to see Samoa, however fortunately we’ll be reimbursed for the “up charge” for the shore excursion we’d chosen (most are included but we particularly wanted to do one that had an up charge). I’ve made another spa appointment to use part of the refunded dollars… that’s another fortunate part!