Jan 17 2012

On the Ocean on Oceania

Today will be a busy day as we depart Moorea and head back to Tahiti to board the Regatta for the next phase of our adventure.

I was up at 5:45 am this morning and took my computer down to the restaurant to get some work done. After breakfast, Margaret did her normal excellent job of packing while I played around with the GoPro camera clamped to the end of a snorkel. I put the rest of the fish food out so I could practice filming in the shallow water (just in case the clamp didn’t work!). I also took a walk over to the dive shop that is on-property to film the owners. Below is a video showing Leno (who took me on my dive yesterday) explaining his dive operation. Actually, I am not sure what he is saying…does anyone speak French out there!?!

When I got back Margaret had us packed and ready to go. We checked out and took a cab to the ferry terminal. A half hour later we were on the fast catamaran headed back to the “mainland”. We had a nice conversation with Linda and Darryl, who we’d met at the Moorea Pearl resort, about some highlights of their visit to Tahiti and Moorea. They have cruised on Oceania before so they gave us some insights into what we could expect.

Once the ferry docked at Papeete, we walked about 500 feet to the Oceania Regatta (talk about convenient!), went through the check-in process, had a quick lunch while waiting for our room to be ready, dropped off my carry on bags and I was off again! I had to go back to the airport to pick up three large bags we had stored when we flew in from LAX.

I was back on the ship a few hours later and discovered that Margaret had already unpacked all the bags and was in the process of misting them with water from a spray bottle. It’s a pretty interesting trick…she sprays each piece of clothing with a light mist, shakes them out and hangs them up. Any wrinkles they had “fall out” in a few hours. It saves me a lot of time as I tend to do the laundry and ironing when we are on the ship – not sure how I got that job assignment!

Since we still had a couple hours before we departed I decided to go back out and explore the town and, if I was lucky, find a good wine store to stock up on wine and vodka. Unlike Regent, where all the liquor is free on Oceania you have to buy all your drinks. No free bottles of wine and big bottle of vodka sitting in your room when you arrive. It was hot outside but the walk was quite interesting and I got some interesting pictures. There are a number of large street art pictures on the metal security doors, walls, bridges, etc. around town and they are quite colorful. Street photography is also fun although, since I wasn’t familiar with the people, I tried to be discrete and selective. I even went into a large indoor farmer’s market and bought Margaret some flowers! Eventually, after asking a few people, I found a very nice wine store and stocked up on as much wine and vodka as I thought I could carry back the 6 blocks to the ship. I underestimated the difficulty of that project but still managed, with a couple rests, to lug a full case back to the ship.

Bojan, our very tall butler, stopped by to introduce himself and make sure we knew our way around our suite, opened a bottle of champagne, and toasted our safe journey. After the mandatory life boat & safety drill and quick showers, we were off to explore the ship.

There is a fun bar called “Martinis” were we stopped to have, you guessed it, a martini! We got some inside information from Leo, the bartender on duty and afterward went to dinner at Toscana, which is one of the ship’s reservation-required restaurants. We had a great dinner and a fantastic wine, thanks to the recommendation of our Sommelier, Ivan and we were back in our suite by 10:30 pm. A very nice and fun first day on the Regatta!

Here is the Top Photo Gallery for today: