Land Ho! – Nuku Hiva

Two days ago we had our first sight of land in a week! Ahhh! Twas wonderful to see land again, and beautiful land it was! As we’d expected, we weren’t on land long enough to regain our land legs!

(Yes, the food on board is good!  Fortunately, a friend cautioned to be sure all waistbands are elastic.)

Nuku Hiva is the largest island in the Marquesas Islands. The Marquesas are in turn, the northernmost string of islands in French Polynesia. This was an anchor port and although the waters were quite a bit calmer than prior days, it was quite a challenge to board the lifeboat turned tender!

On arrival at the dock, in true Polynesian tradition, we got “lei-d”!  Rather than take the provided transportation (a couple of buses and many private 4-wheel drive vehicles), we chose to walk along the edge of the bay where our shore excursion “feast” was set up.  Other tenders followed behind ours.

This was not the professionally produced type of festival that tourists typically see at Disney but rather local folks putting for their best for their guests. Yes, yes, they were well compensated by the cruise line!

Drums were hand carved and dancers and drummers were wearing locally hand made dresses or grass skirts. Tom has some great video of the dancing! The event was held on the grounds of the palace of a former Chief of the island. Many of the old stone statues and some of the foundation stones of the palace are present still.

Late morning, the pigs that had been cooking for the past 24 hours, were taken out of the ground oven. Many folks found it disgusting, I could only think of the delicious meat that was about to be served… remembering the ones my brother-in-law in Hana, HI had prepared some 20 years ago when we were there.

We had learned earlier that the restrooms at the festival site were out of order and it would be necessary to go back to “town” about a mile away, for facilities. We made sure we’d seen all there was to see and then headed back to “town”, i.e., the dock area, to use the restrooms and explore the town a little, very little! This time we took a shuttle “taxi”.

Tom particularly liked sitting in the front seat as the driver was a very pretty and shapely young native with colorful flowers in her hair and wearing a sarong.  The cruise line had hired virtually all the locals with cars to serve as our taxi drivers. I noted that this young lady had several real leis hanging over her rearview mirror and that they almost covered her pair of large fuzzy dice! Americanized, huh?

We noted an old outrigger leaning against a tree and then observed a sleek new version in the surf beyond.  After a quick round of the open air market where locals had their handiwork displayed, we headed back to the cool air of the ship! We are so spoiled!

From the Observation Lounge, with Bloody Marys in hand, we watched the locals on their sleek modern outrigger “canoes” (kayaks), enjoying the wakes from the tenders!

That’s today’s report! More pictures will be posted when we return. Today, Papeete, Tahiti is in site!

R

At the End of the 6th Day at Sea - Update 1/20/10

YEAH! Connectivity! Perhaps updates will be more frequent!

Because of the extra provisioning requirements for a 23 day journey in a port that is not a regular port of call for the line, we were about 7 hours late departing San Diego. However, at this point, we have more than made up the time.

We’re now in our 6th full day at Sea and are becoming very spoiled! We’ve been up early every morning and hit the jogging path for a mile walk minimum. So far that has kept us from over stretching the elastic waistbands! We’ve pretty much restricted ourselves to fresh fruit, fresh vegetable juice and cereal for breakfast. Our vegan friend would be in “vegan heaven” to have the kind of variety all pre-prepared!

This “all inclusive” way of traveling is definitely the way to go! And after being “over-served” (ha!) the first day, we’ve learned that we don’t have to consume all the Dewar’s’ on board. We even found that The Macallan, my favorite single malt, is included in the all “inclusive”.

And the food! There’s lots of it, creative and beautifully presented. And, it is great! It’s been a hard lesson to learn that we don’t have to totally clean our plates! We have been totally amazed that we’re going on 7 days away from the last provisioning and the fruits, vegetables and flowers are still fresh!

The entertainment has truly been fantastic! The ship has a Singers & Dancers group of 6 gals and 4 guys as well as a nine piece orchestra. They have done some incredible shows. It’s hard to believe they manage to learn and present such a variety. The talent here is far greater than what we have seen on other ships.

The orchestra is unbelievable. One minute they’re backing up the singers and dancers, the next they’re backing up guest artists “The Unexpected Boys” (overwhelming talent in this group) and when they’re not on the main stage, select members are in one or more of the lounges playing for listening and dancing, doing so in a “jammin’” fashion!

We have each taken advantage of the spa (Canyon Ranch at Sea) and will probably schedule another session. Albeit part of the “not included” service, it has been worth it.

Last night, we crossed the Equator and today was the “Crossing the Line” ceremony, a watered down and hilarious version of the Navy / Coast Guard initiation ritual commemorating a sailor’s first crossing of the Equator. During that celebration, we lost our (Slimy) Pollywog titles and became (Trusty) Shellbacks!

Well, tomorrow, we’ll see land for the first time in a week. The way the boat has been rocking and our legs have adapted to the rocking, we’ll probably loose our balance walking on terra firma! Another guest commented “we’ll all walk like toddlers with dirty diapers!”

R

PS to my girlfriends: The Captain is “drop dead” gorgeous! And he’s a nice friendly man to boot!

In San Diego

We're sitting on our balcony, 7 floor up, looking straight out at our ship.  It's a beautiful sunshiny day!  So far, everything has gone perfectly!  Only one item, I forgot to give the limo driver the voucher for our ride to the airport!  But that was taken care of by putting it in the mail.

Also in port is Carnival's Spirit!  Sizewise, it makes our ship look like a little boat!

Holiday Inn here is a great place to stay.  The restaurant, Elephant & Castle Pub is a great place to drink and have dinner in the evening and, not the worst place for breakfast.  It has the atmosphere of a bustling pub and was a fun place to have a drink, or two!, last night!

This will be the last post for a while.  We're about to head across the stree and board our ship sooo, stay warm and we'll update when we can.

R (10am San Diego time)

At the Tampa Airport

The first "leg" of our journey is behind us!  The ride came on time, and the driver was quite pleasant and efficient.  Execucar does do a great job!  We were totally surprised when we checked the time after we got thru security.  In less than one hour, we had come the some 30-35 miles from home, checked our bags, taken the "train" out to airside and passed thru security!  WOW!  What a pleasant surprise!

The only "downside" if there is one, we had 3 hours to wait before our flight departs (at 12:35pm).  We're still quite glad we came up early!  We had a bite of breakfast and settle in near our gate. 

The airport now has free internet access, thus a chance to add another post.  Multiple posts in one day will definitely be a rarity as we will increasingly not have reasonable internet access.

Just checked and the plane for our flight is arriving within 10 minutes of schedule!  YEAH!  We should be on our way to Dallas in about an hour and 20 minutes.

R

On Our Way

YIPPEE!  Today's the day we are on our way!

We had everything packed last night and were up at 6am this morning to finish our checklists.  We're now all done and just waiting for departure time.  The "coach" for the airport will be here at 8:30am and we'll be on our way.  So far the flights (here to Dallas and Dallas to San Diego) are on time and weather looks clear all along the way.

We'll spend tonight in San Diego and board our ship tomorrow.  We depart San Diego at 2pm (5pm EST) heading southwest, way south!

Hope everyone is thawing out after the freezing weather of the past week.
R

Australia Here We Come

This is the first entry in our upcoming "trip of a lifetime" blog! Updates along the way will be dependent on "free" or reasonably priced internet access! And, where possible, links for further information on places we're visiting are included (if it's underlined there is a link!).

As this is being posted, it is less than 2 weeks now before we're off on another adventure! YEAH! We leave home on January 13 headed to San Diego. On the 14th, we'll board Regent Seven Seas' Voyager for a 23-night cruise to Sydney. Stops will be in the South Pacific (Marquesas, French Polynesia, Samoa, Vanuatu, New Caledonia). This cruise does not make calls in New Zealand as many others do.

Once in Sydney (on Saturday Feb 6th), we'll fly to Melbourne for 3 nights (two full days). On our first day there, we have planned a hot air balloon ride over the Yarra Valley (wine country!) early in the AM and then that evening dinner on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant. Dinner while "cruising" the streets of Melbourne sounds like such fun, and, a great way to see the city at night while seated and with a drink in hand!

The 2nd day in Melbourne, we have no specific plans other than a visit to the tallest building in Melbourne at the top of which is "The Eureka Skydeck", the highest viewing deck in the southern hemisphere. And, once there, we plan to take advantage of "The Edge", the world's only edge experience! It is a glass cube which projects 3 metres (~10 ft) out from the building, with you in it - suspended almost 300 metres (~1000ft) above the ground!

The next day, we'll be up early (for us!) to head to the train station for an 11+ hour trip to Sydney. We chose to take the train as an opportunity to see some of the smaller villages between Melbourne & Sydney. This will be our first train trip together. Yes we've taken little train tourist excursions but never used one as a true means of transporting ourselves from one place to another. Our personal website (under Flinn Fotos --> S.Pacific) has a map of the trip with the names of the towns.

Once in Sydney, we'll head to hotel and "crash"! It will have been an extremely long day!

The next day (a Wednesday), we'll once again be up early and head out on an all day tour to the Blue Mountains. The second full day in Sydney, we have nothing in particular planned. We've talked about taking the ferry over to the zoo but there are so many other options.

On on the third full day, our last day in Australia, we'll start off early morning with a backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House. Following that, we're off on a 30 minute seaplane tour of Sydney harbor.

And, our treat to ourselves on our final evening in Australia, will be dinner at 360 Bar & Dining some 80 stories up above the streets of Sydney! We love rotating restaurants so this will definitely be a special treat!

And then on Saturday, we'll head back across the wide Pacific on a 13-14 hour flight on a Quantas 747 (our first 747 flight) to Los Angeles and then another 5-6 hours of flying to get back to Tampa.

After being away for 32 nights, home and our own bed will look MIGHTY good!!

R