The link for those not seeing the video above:
With nothing but flights and layovers to talk about today, I decided to instead turn teach-y and offer a couple of lessons. Our first class is Geography, so your attention please!
On both of our prior visits to French Polynesia, we arrived by cruise ship. We realized how isolated these islands are, as evidenced by the number of sea days immediately preceding our arrival. We knew there were four days at sea between Hawaii and Tahiti, and two days at sea between Tahiti and American Samoa. We knew they were south of the equator and east of the International Date Line, but would not have been able to pinpoint them on a map. We had to do a search in Google Maps to fully appreciate that the closest major land mass to Tahiti is Australia, and the two are not exactly neighbors.
At this point I'll offer a visual aid:
Source: http://www.french-polynesia-vacations.com
French Polynesia lies 3700 miles from Sydney, Australia, 4000 miles from Los Angeles, 4900 miles from Santiago, Chili and 5900 miles from Toyko. In other words, this is clearly the middle of nowhere.
As further proof of the remoteness of these islands...French Polynesia gets fewer visitors in a year than Hawaii gets in one day!
The other geographical fact we didn't realize until after we examined the map...these islands aren't west of Hawaii as we might have thought. They're south of Hawaii and even a bit east of it. And, except for a couple of them, they're small. Really small. You've heard the phrase "dots on a map"? I think it was first used to describe the islands of Tahiti.
Source: http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_map_of_French_Polynesia.png
I've used the term "Tahiti" to refer to this entire grouping of islands, and I'm not alone, but clearly that is inaccurate. There are 118 islands in French Polynesia, with a total land mass just slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island but spread over an area the size of Western Europe. French Polynesia is categorized into five island groupings (no, not the URIs!): the Society Islands, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, the Australs and the Gambiers. Tahiti is one island in the windward Society Islands; the Society Islands are one island grouping in French Polynesia. Tahiti IS the largest island in French Polynesia, and its major city, Papeete, is certainly the hub of the entire area, with its only international airport. But I'll try to be more accurate going forward.
Source: http://www.divetahitiblue.com/tahiti_map.htm
To further clarify, Tahiti is not synonymous with French Polynesia, but neither is French Polynesia synonymous with Polynesia (which also includes Easter Island, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Niue, Wallis and Fortuna, and some smaller islands and settlements on other islands) nor Polynesia synonymous with Oceania (which also includes Micronesia and Melanesia). In other words, there's a whole lotta islands down here, some independent and some overseas territories of other countries.
Source: http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Americas/Australians_and_Polyn.htm
For two people who love islands and beaches, this part of the world is nirvana. :-)
What was much more readily apparent to us than just where these islands are is that they're pretty close together. This is a good thing for two reasons: few sea days (yay!) and longer stays in port (and, in fact, we have a few overnight stays, a rarity on a mass market cruise).
We'll be cruising two different itineraries in French Polynesia with the only difference between them that one features fewer overnights but goes to Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas. Here are the itineraries for the cruises beginning on October 19th and 29th:
These are not your typical Caribbean itineraries. In addition to overnight stays, we'll have early morning departures, and, what is not shown here is that every port, with the exception of Tahiti and Raiatea are tender ports, lacking docks large enough to accommodate even the small Pacific Princess. This would cause us to immediately dismiss this itinerary on a larger ship, but on a ship with only 672 passengers, we're willing to give it a go.
What's also different (to us) is that we aren't leaving home until today, the same day the cruise begins. Normally this would be unacceptable -any flight delays could result in us missing the ship entirely- but the Pacific Princess doesn't sail until 5pm tomorrow. This fact, along with booking our air through Princess EZ Air, with its next port guarantee (miss the ship and they'll get us to the next reasonable port for no extra charge) has us living dangerously. Though we overnight in Fort Lauderdale before a Caribbean cruise, this time we'll wake up in our own bed one morning and sleep that night in our cabin on the Pacific Princess in French Polynesia (knocking on wood here)...with a long, long day in between.
That we're traveling west definitely works in our favor; French Polynesia is six hours behind EDT, and five hours behind EST. We'll be arriving in Papeete late, at 9pm, but have to go only as far as the Pacific Princess a few miles from the airport. I think we'll be asleep before our heads hit the pillow...the issue might be staying asleep past 3am the next morning when our bodies tell us it's time to get up.
We're looking forward to so many things. Certainly the watersports rank high, but so does the culture. And the history. (See lesson #2 in my next post). And the scenery. The only thing we're not looking forward to is the long (over 22 hour) travel day from home to ship. But we've done worse, several times before, and the payoff for those hours of discomfort: HUGE!
By the way, that's this year's photo of us. ;-)
