Travel with Dale & Margaret

How weird is this…we go to bed tonight (Tuesday) and will wake up on Thursday!!  Tonight around midnight we will cross the International Date Line and we’ll “skip” a day forward.  And, because we don’t cross back over on our way home – we keep going west eventually ending in Athens, Greece, we never get this day back.  It’s just lost.  Missing in action.  Gone.

What if something really important happens on the 25^th?  We just miss it?  Does it happen for us?  It’s such a strange concept.  I get that we have time zones and at some point if you keep going back that eventually you have to go forward, but it’s still really strange.  We have crossed the International Date Line on airplanes before…but when you do it that way it happens fast, and you just calculate it into the time you are flying, etc.  But this way, slowly creeping towards it and then losing a whole day, is just so abrupt.

We’ve been moving our clocks back an hour every other night or so since we left Tahiti, and that was 2 hours back from the West Coast.  Today is another Sea Day and as we float toward Thursday we think about the loss of our dear Wednesday.  We’ll just keep our fingers crossed that something really good doesn’t happen and we miss out on it!

I hope everyone out there has a great “Wednesday” and think of us…we won’t exist tomorrow!  Weird.

I didn’t realize that the U.S. had a territory in the South Pacific, but they do, American Samoa. And, it turns out there is a 2^nd U.S. territory here called Jarvis Island.  These were important in the 19^th and 20^th centuries due to their locations as re-fueling posts for both military and commercial ships.

Interestingly, in 1889, a German naval force invaded a village in Samoa, and by doing so destroyed some American property. Three American warships then entered the Apia harbor and prepared to engage three German warships.  Before guns were fired, a typhoon wrecked both the American and German ships.  As they couldn’t “fight it out”, they ended up just dividing the area in two, so now there is an American Samoa and a German Samoa!

The island is lush, like all of the islands we’ve seen; it was formed a long time ago by volcanoes.  The American Samoans, while having no official voting capabilities in U.S. elections, can travel freely to and from the U.S.  They are self-governed and primarily follow their historic tribal laws.

We walked around the downtown area a bit and found an Internet Café where Dale, once again, tried to upload his South America blog book.  And, once again, failed.  It seems this is not meant to be until we reach New Zealand or worst case, Australia.

We spoke to some folks who rented a car and drove around the island.  It’s a pretty island with lots of natural beauty.  There was a nice park area and they said the water is warm, but there was a very rocky beach. They saw people trying to swim but it was too shallow and they ended up getting cut on the rocks!  I think we’ll wait to do our next snorkeling trip in Fiji!

Back on the ship we had a bit of an incident…in an attempt to plug our power strip in an outlet close to our veranda; I ended up shorting out the electricity in the entire room!  Guess you can’t put a plug converter (to plug a U.S. power strip into an international plug) on a power strip with a surge protector!  The power strip “popped” and started smoking (I was holding it at the time).  Oops.  It took about 3 hours to get the fuse changed in our room…can’t really complain though as it was our own fault!

Tomorrow is another Sea day and then we cross the International Date Line…where we lose a whole day!  More on this later…

Dinner last night at the Polo Grill was good – we split a Maine Lobster and a Porterhouse steak!  Needless to say we couldn’t finish it all…but taking leftovers home doesn’t really work on a cruise ship so we ate more than we would probably should have!

Today is another sea day and we found out that the NFL playoff games are on in our staterooms as well as on the big screen in the Regatta lounge.  We opted to have a lazy day and stay in our room relaxing, watching the games and ordering room service!

Both football games were exciting and while we were sad that the 49ers lost, we were happy that New England will play the Giants in the Superbowl!  Unfortunately Superbowl Sunday is Feb 5^th, which is the day we get off of the Oceania ship and move to our hotel in New Zealand for 2 days.  Given that we will be busy with the transfers and are half-way around the world (not sure what the time zone issue will be — but I’m sure there will be one!).  So I have a feeling we will miss the game.   Too bad as should be a really good one!

In American Samoa tomorrow — stay tuned for details!

Not everybody likes a sea day – which are days were we simply “sail” from point A to point B, but we really enjoy them.  It gives us a chance to take a deep breath and relax a little.

It is now 1 week since we arrived in Tahiti.  To recap our trip so far, we survived our “go-around” landing, enjoyed good weather (with the exception of one rainy day in Moorea), Dale did some scuba diving, we both did some snorkeling in beautiful water (and my snorkel related “panic attack” seemed to be a 1 time thing), our house didn’t burn down, Dale successfully swam with sharks (and didn’t get eaten) and we’ve met some very nice people aboard the Oceania Regatta!

Tonight we dine at the 2^nd reservation-only restaurant on the ship, named “Polo Grill”.  We just realized this sounds like a place where you’d go to eat horse meat!  But we verified that they serve beef (and lobster and vegetarian dishes).

The seas are calm and the weather is warm.  All is good in the south pacific!

Today is our last day in French Polynesia…so we decided to make the most of it.  First thing this morning Dale was up working on getting connected to the local high speed internet.  Unfortunately he has to go to the Horizon lounge (top deck, front of ship) to get the connection, but we’d heard from some fellow cruisers, Bill and Karen, that the performance is much better than the ships’ internet.  Dale, still trying to get his South American blog books uploaded, was optimistic.  Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, the transfer still didn’t work…we think there may be a file size limit or something, so we’ll have to try again when we get to the next port 3 days from now.  The Top 9 photos follow:

Click here for detailed Bora Bora Photo Gallery.

After a quick lunch we made our way to shore to try and find a jet ski operator who could take us on a tour of the lagoon.  We had heard from some locals in Moorea that the best thing to do in Bora Bora is the lagoon…the island itself is beautiful, but there isn’t a lot to see or do on land.  So with high hopes we get on the tender.  As luck would have it, I overheard a fellow passenger in line say that he was independent.  I noticed that he had on a dive shirt and was carrying his snorkel gear, so we decided to sit down next to him on the tender ride.

It turns out he (Gary) was planning to go on a boat ride that included snorkeling with sting rays and sharks!  We ended up on a pretty large power boat with Gary and 2 other Oceania passengers, Anita & Keith as well as 3 local guys who were our guides.

First stop, sting rays.  The water was about 4 feet deep and a very clear, light blue color.  You could see the rays, which ranged in size from 2-3 feet across.  Dale and Gary jumped right in, while I more cautiously entered the water.  The rays were all around us – mostly because the guides had fish in their pockets – and in my opinion, a little to friendly!  I petted one on the back and, after another one glided past my leg, decided to get back in the boat!  The main guide, Joe, was a very fun young guy who grew up on the island and was VERY comfortable in the water.  He was grabbing the rays by either side on “riding” them.  It was fun and I’m happy to say that I touched one as well…just not quite as thoroughly as Joe!  Dale and Gary were snorkeling around the rays and Dale got some underwater videos as well.

For the next stop we headed out of the protective reef that encircles most of Bora Bora to the deeper, darker blue waters.  Here, is where the sharks are!  In Moorea, I had a slight panic attack just thinking about sharks in the water, and now, I could see them swimming around the boat!  And worst yet, Dale, Gary and the guides were all jumping in!!  Needless to say, I did not “swim with the sharks”, but I did put my fingertips in the water so I can honestly say I have been “in the water with sharks”!

Dale, Gary and the guides had a great time, while I safely took pictures from the boat.  The guides were chumming the sharks (throwing pieces of fish for them to eat) and this attracted a whole school of some sort of dark colored fish, some iridescent blue fish and 3 or 4 sea gulls!  It was quite a scene.  Dale told me that Joe, the young guide, swam down 30 feet or so and grabbed onto the dorsal fin of a 12 foot lemon shark and got a ride for a good 10 seconds all the while rubbing the sharks back!  Crazy.  Dale got some underwater video of this as well.

With everyone safely back on the boat, we made our way to our next stop at a beautiful coral garden.  Here the snorkeling was safe (I told Joe that if even saw a shark his tip money was gone!).  The water was perfectly clear, with lots of colorful fish, pretty coral and a lot of sea urchins.  Dale even saw an octopus hiding in the reef!

Last but not least our guides took us to a small island (motu) beach where they served us refreshments including some coconut bread that the owners wife made and fresh fruit.  It was an idyllic scene.  We noticed an area just of the beach that was fenced in and went over to check it out.  It turns out it was an enclosure and inside were some fish and a sea turtle!  It was hard to see the turtle as he would just poke his head up for a few seconds, but when our guide find out we were interested in seeing it, he jumped in the water and went and got it!  He swam it up to the beach and held it up for us to take pictures.  Pretty cool.

On our ride back to the pier the guides, who had been talking, laughing and having a great time all day, played a ukulele type of guitar and sang songs for us.  It was great to see them enjoying themselves so much…it made a fun excursion even better to have these very friendly guys laughing and singing.

Back on the ship we showered and went up to meet Gary and his wife Dawn at the Horizon bar for a cocktail.  We had a great time reliving our day and later we all went to the main dining room and had a very fun dinner.  We capped off the night back at the Horizon lounge where they had karaoke going on and under very little pressure from Dale, I got up and sang “Hotel California”.  The best day of the trip so far!  Check out the video clips!

We got a phone call today that we needed to evacuate our home back in Reno due to a fast moving brush fire.  This fire has now taken off and is VERY serious.  Our neighbors had to evacuate their homes and stay in hotels until the fire passes.  We started making plans to fly home in case our home was involved in the fire…go home and clean up the mess and then fly back to meet the ship.  What else could we do?  The video on Fox about this fire didn’t help calm or fears!  Watch it here:

Photography Comments:

Lighting is really important in photography.  The best time to take pictures on trips like this are in the morning and in the late afternoon.  Unfortunately, during our boat trip today it was mid-day.  The lighting was very harsh so you don’t get the beautiful blue colors or, if you do, the sky is very white.  Lots of backlighting situations where you need to use fill flash but that only works if you are close enough.  When you are in a boat it isn’t easy to get up and walk around.  Bora Bora is the kind of place where to get great shots you need to scout out the places you want to shoot and be there at the right time of day.  There’s always next time!  We hope.

The underwater shots weren’t easy given that there were sharks and sting rays around and I wasn’t that used to swimming with them.  Not only that, I wanted to enjoy the experience while I was doing it rather than missing it while trying to get stills and videos.  So, I got what I did while having a great time with the experience other than having to assure Margaret that I wasn’t going to get eaten by sharks!  She was really quite concerned about that and maybe I would have if I had thought about it for a minute.