Our weather this cruise is becoming quite the topic of conversation on the ship. We have had consistently perfect weather, and most passengers are looking brown and/or red (mostly red) as a result. Honestly, this has been almost too good to be true, and this morning was no different. The sun was streaming in our cabin early, before 6am today. It's true that we do have draperies- a sheer and a room darkening one- that can be pulled over our porthole, but when we rearranged the beds in our cabin, we pushed them against the porthole wall and specifically against the pulled back draperies. Instead, if we feel privacy will be an issue (as it was yesterday in Raiatea) we simply stack the two decorative pillows (that are supposed to be on our beds during the day but which we keep in the little porthole cubby area) up against the porthole. And a quick word about that...
We've been in Raiatea three times now, and we have been docked differently each time. The first time, the Windstar Wind Spirit was in the first berth, and we were docked with our starboard (right) side cabin against the pier. This places our porthole right at pier level, so if we're not careful, we could be putting on quite a show, particularly when it is dark out and we have a light on in the cabin. So we use the pillows to loosely cover the porthole. The second time, we were the only ship in port and docked in the first berth with the port side to the water and a view of the reef outside our porthole. Then, yesterday, the Pacific Princess was the only ship in port and we docked somewhere between berth one and berth two with the starboard side to the pier. It's common for people to ask which side of the ship they should book on, but on this itinerary it really doesn't matter. Most of the ports are tender ports, so the ship is at anchor and actually turns a bit throughout the day. In Raiatea it clearly changes from cruise to cruise. And in Papeete, I think the Pacific Princess is always docked aft first, so it's really just a matter of which view you want from your cabin: pier and mountains or water and the Moorea ferry.
Okay, back to today. No, wait...one more comment about yesterday. When I was writing the blog post last night, it seemed to me that I was leaving out what we did during the afternoon, but I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what it was (it's sad when the brain starts to go...I mean, we're talking about just a few hours later, but the half bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne I'd had to drink might have played a bit of a role, too). Anyway, we did get back off the ship in the afternoon because there were a few events and activities taking place right in the visitors information center on the pier: a pareo tying demonstration and a lei stringing demonstration, and we walked back off the ship to see those. And then we explored the stores right on the maritime wharf a bit more, and we went into one on the second level called a papeterie. I'm not sure what a papeterie is, but they did have a lot of stationery and pens and the such (Suzan, I thought of Greg immediately), but, for some reason, they also had NAIL POLISH and nail polish remover (which isn't called that, of course, it's called 'dissolvant' or something like that, but, again, four years of French here, so I didn't even need the telltale bottle shape nor the fact that it was located right next to the nail polish to tell me what's what). And I was so happy, thrilled, really, to see it because I have not, in all our searching, seen nail polish anywhere except in one pharmacie, which, as I've told you, seems to add an extra 0 to the end of every price, and then those were the mini bottles of nail polish that we'd pay $.99 or maybe $1.99 for at home, and they were over US$ 10 which was just ridiculous, and they had maybe five colors. So, to find nail polish was a huge deal, because I'd come here with two sets of Sally Hansen nail strips which aren't going to last until January 23rd. The papeterie also had mascara and blush and eyeliner pencils and other things I probably won't need, but, oh, to see all that variety in one place made my heart beat faster. Shopping in French Polynesia is very, very different.
I guess that explains why, on every flight from Los Angeles to Papeete, the locals bring back multiple coffin-sized containers of things they buy in the US, and gladly pay Air Tahiti Nui's baggage fees and French Polynesian duties to get items into the country, because these items are simply not available for purchase down here. I mean we've crossed Papeete and Uturoa looking for contact lens solutions for rigid gas permeable contact lenses and they simply do not exist. In fact, we've seen only one bottle of solution for soft contact lenses in one store one time. I simply don't know what people do. But, at this point, I think the only issue I'm going to have is with the denture tablets I use to clean my nightguard and retainer, and, ever since I've known we are extending our stay on the Pacific Princess, I've been breaking the (exactly) 60 tablets I brought from home in half to make them last. Do you see how I suffer to live the dream? ;-)
After we'd returned to the ship, G gave me a haircut because the ship was docked and steady and, I must say, he's gotten pretty good at that over our cruising winters. I did check with the Lotus Spa and it was $59 for a haircut and $79 for a hair color and, honestly, my hair is about two to three inches long and extremely curly so it's pretty forgiving when it comes to haircuts. And by that I mean it won't look good regardless of how much I pay for a haircut. :-( And I brought one package of hair color with me from home, so I'm good on that for awhile longer. I have been looking at hair color in Champion Supermarché, where they (surprisingly) have some, but most of the colors are predictably darker than my Dark Blonde (Golden) locks. There is one package of something lighter, but the photo on the box looks a little reddish and the color is in French so I need to translate that before I'm willing to buy it. But I'll cross that bridge later. One issue 'du jour, s'il vous plait', and yesterday it was needing a haircut.
Okay, back to sunlight streaming in our porthole this morning. We got up and dressed and got our coffees from Tyler in the Panorama Bar (inside the buffet) and went out to Deck 11 forward because...well, because it's what we do on these cruises. We joined the FODs (fans of Douglas), listening to him tell us about the US ships that arrived in Bora Bora exactly two months and 10 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor because the deep water port on Bora Bora is even larger than the deep water port in Papeete, and, over the next several years the Americans built the first airstrip in French Polynesia, and gun stations on the mountainsides for defense and the road around the island and participated in extracurricular activities that left nearly 200 Polynesian-American babies behind. But Bora Bora (and none of French Polynesia) saw any warfare in WWII (but did in WWI, but I'm saving that topic for another post). The Pacific Princess carefully made its way through Teavanui Pass and into the Bora Bora lagoon and at that point G and I made our way down to the Club Restaurant for breakfast.
After breakfast, we returned to the cabin for some hand washing and laundry gathering activities and to trade out some items from our minibar. We are being overrun with minibar things; we may skip getting soda stickers next cruise, simply to catch up. And, another aside, the 15 cabins on Deck 3 are nearly half empty this cruise, so, no, Princess does not always sail full. Mostly, yes, but not always. It's very quiet down here; we love it! I was smart enough to check the charge on my iPhone 4S and it was nearly 0% because I'd forgotten to shut it down after I'd last used it, so I got that charged and we packed some towels in ziploc bags to get ready for our afternoon activity.
A few weeks before we'd left home, we finally began talking about excursions in French Polynesia and there were two we knew we had to do: Bora Bora Patrick (done!) and jet ski around the island of Bora Bora. I did not have a contact for the latter, and so turned to Trip Advisor. Moana Adventure Tours was on the top of the list, and so I contacted them, as we'd done with Patrick, with a list of the dates we'd be in Bora Bora, and they replied back with the only one (!) date that they had availability for an afternoon tour (so book early!!). The price was crazy expensive...US$ 289 for the first jet ski, but I am way too independent for that, and it was US$250 for the second jet ski. $539 for a two hour excursion, and it didn't even involve a helicopter or a float plane. Like I said...crazy.
We thought about it for a few days. Coincidentally, at the exact same time we were thinking about it, a 28-year old sliding patio door in our basement went bad. That's a story, too, involving the two of us trying to lift one panel to adjust the rollers and G telling me to pull harder on the handle and I said if I did it would break the handle and he said to just do it and I did and it did and then we had a sliding glass door that wouldn't slide and no handle to pull it with anyway which sent us over to Home Depot. Actually, first it had us calling Renewal by Andersen (they had replaced our windows and we love them) to get a quote for French doors, and after we recovered from that (north of $6000!) we went to Home Depot and found a very nice sliding glass door that we would be happy with for far less. Installation was $600 and that's where we hit a predictable snag. G thought we could install it ourselves and I thought we couldn't, so, of course, one morning at 8am, Home Depot left a sliding glass door on our driveway and G told me that, if we just got it down to the back yard, he had a handyman lined up that would install it for $500. So before I'd even had my morning coffee, we were getting this sliding glass door down a hill to the backyard and it involved an eintsy-tinesy bit of moaning (on my part) and a clearly unacceptable lack of patience (on G's part) and all I remember is him saying "1-2-3-LIFT," and we'd move it six inches at a time but the problem was that by the time he got to "LIFT" I was still getting a handhold on the side of this door where there was none, so we reached a new agreement where he would say "Ready?" before he said "1-2-3", and that worked a bit better but to say that moving that door to where it needed to be was anything less than grueling would be an understatement.
So...there we were with this door sitting in the backyard and a broken sliding glass door a few feet away and G next said that he thought we could take out the old door, so, of course, we did, neatly and carefully enough to give it away on Craig's List for a guy to use in his greenhouse. And once the old door was out, we had this huge opening and no choice but to start to install the new one, and every step of the way it was just as it always is in these circumstances..."Well, I think we can do just this next bit" and we do but there's always a next bit and a next bit and before you know it, the door is installed and framed in and we're calling the handyman to tell him he doesn't need to fit us in his schedule. But here's where Bora Bora jet skis come in (you knew I'd get there eventually)...all the time we were doing these various steps, G kept saying, "With the money we're saving, we'll do the jet skis in Bora Bora!" to keep me pacified and motivated. And when we were finished, I texted a photo of the installed door to all my friends saying "This is what jet skis in Bora Bora look like!"
Today was payback time. :-) !!!!!! We were supposed to meet on the pier at 1pm, and so I had the morning to start this GPS-worthy post, and G went off to do...something (I'm not sure what he did, to be honest), but he returned to the ship with what is truly the most amazing video of outrigger canoes surfing in the wake of a tender. I wish so much that I could upload it to YouTube while we are still down here in French Polynesia but I just don't think we've seen Undernet anywhere with enough oomph to allow that to happen. But I'll keep searching...
At 1pm we were on the pier meeting Phil from Moana Adventure Tours for a shuttle ride to their office, very close to Bloody Mary's restaurant. We were joined by fellow passengers Heather and Bill and a honeymoon couple who are staying at the Bora Bora Pearl Resort. Our tour guide was Jo (short for Johan), and, after a brief safety briefing we were off and running.
Now, I am not a fearful person; in fact; I'm fairly adventurous. I ride a Harley (and by that I mean I drive a Harley), I have my advanced scuba diver certification and have done night dives and cave dives. I'm a bit of a tomboy. But I was Scared. To. Death. for the first 20 minutes on my jet ski, and was last in our line of five jet skis, which was a good thing, because my 37000 "Holy Sh$&'s!!!" were lost on the wind. I was holding on to that jet ski with everything I had. Jo had told me that if it started to get rocky to speed up, and that ran counter to every ounce of preservation in my body. I did fine if the water was flat which, luckily in that gorgeous blue lagoon it mostly was, but every so often I'd have to cross a wake or a slightly wavy place and I was shaking in my Teva sandals. Then, just when I hit some bumps and was bouncing up and down in the seat, my iPhone 4S, which was hanging around my wrist on its lanyard, flew off and landed in the lagoon. Who else has that kind of luck?? I had to circle around, get close to it (luckily it was bobbing on the water in that bright orange life jacket) and lean far, far over on the jet ski without falling off of it to reach the phone. And by then the rest of the group was a dot on the horizon, but, luckily, they chose that moment to pull over by a motu for a break, so I was able to catch up.
After that, I got more confident and it all got easier and much more fun. We jet skied close to the beautiful over water bungalows at the resorts on the motus, and over mile after mile of iridescent blue water (G claims we were reaching speeds of 35mph; I was too scared to look). Every so often we'd see a sting ray or eagle ray swim under us, and the water was so clear we could see the coral heads 25 feet below. We finally made a stop on a motu where we disembarked and were treated to Jo climbing up a coconut palm and collecting three coconuts. He showed us how to strip the outer husk from them and crack them open, and we enjoyed the fresh coconut water they held and the coconut meat.
Look really closely and you'll see the Pacific Princess in the distance
We left the motu and dropped off the honeymoon couple at the Bora Bora Pearl Resort and continued on to Teavanui Pass, where we went to within feet of the huge waves crashing on the reef. They are absolutely thunderous and very high when seen from water level. And, finally, we skied past the anchored Pacific Princess where we waved to the waiters we knew on the terrace behind the buffet. By then we'd been jet skiing for two hours, and I was hitting my stride, doing circles and racing so fast I was actually catching some air. If I did this again, I'd be so much more comfortable.
We were driven back to the Vaitape tender pier, and we returned to the Pacific Princess right away. Of course, our first task was to wash and rinse and hang up to dry everything we'd worn today. We were so lucky; between our Tilley hats and rash guards and frequent SPF 50 applications, we managed to get not a bit of sunburn, because two hours on the water in that sun could have been brutal.
A late day view with the sun on the mountain peaks as seen from the Pacific Princess
We were hungry for dinner, then almost immediately afterward very tired. We did spend a few minutes listening to duo Great Escape in the Pacific Lounge, but then returned to our cabin. The tropical deck party is tonight; and the weather will be perfect, but our active day has taken a toll, and we are tucked into bed. We have plans (not nearly as active) for tomorrow in Bora Bora and need our rest.
