Ha.
As is so often the story in my life, drama ensued without warning. I went into the bathroom to wash up and insert my contacts, stepped back into the dark cabin, picked up my clothes and sat on the bed to dress...and realized that my left contact (a rigid gas permeable hard lens) was not on my eye. Back to the bathroom I went, and began the too familiar exercise of rolling my eye and massaging and lifting my eye lid in an attempt to locate the missing lens. No luck. I dropped to my knees and began an inch by inch search of the bathroom floor, which took all of about 20 seconds. Still no luck. And at that point I had no choice but to turn on the cabin lights and solicit G's help. So much for not disturbing him!
And that is how we spent our time from before 5am to nearly 6am. My left eye was pulled and prodded and searched; my right eye, in the off chance that I had, in my early morning grogginess, put two lenses in the same eye, was equally abused. The cabin carpet, so patterned that one could lose small pets in its wild print was examined in great detail. Towels were shaken, sheets were stripped from the bed, the sofa was de-cushioned...this was a major search and rescue effort. Alas, the contact was never located, and I had to fall back on First Spare Left Contact (there are also a First Spare Right Contact and Second Spare Left and Right Contacts). I've learned...every winter results in at least one loss, and I come prepared with as many backups as there are officers on the ship's bridge.
I finally made it up on Deck 11 forward at 6am, just in time to watch as the Pacific Princess navigated beautiful Tiputa Pass against the 6 knot outgoing tide and entered the expansive Rangiroa lagoon. But, between you and I, if Douglas Pearson had told me that I would have seen whales and dolphins and flying fish and if I had been up there just 10 minutes earlier...I would have had to sit and cry.
Navigating Tiputa Pass
By 7am, the first tenders were making their way to shore. Our hours in Rangiroa today were a little different; the last tender was leaving shore at 3:30pm. Typically we can stay later than that in Rangiroa as we have a sea day following it, but, due to this cruise's stop in distant Nuku Hiva, we have to quickly get back to the Society Islands and Bora Bora by tomorrow morning.
G and I met up in the Club Restaurant for breakfast around 8am, and his minute steak breakfast special seemed to take a long time to prepare. It was nearly 9:30am when we returned to the cabin and gave just one more half-hearted attempt to locate the contact lens. When we didn't, we packed up two floats and my snorkel gear and boarded a tender for shore.
We had had a plan for Rangiroa last year that we were never able to implement. We had brought two Swimways floats with us that were carry overs from the winter season before, and one of them broke midway through our last French Polynesian season, scuttling our plans. We're wiser this year, and brought with us not just two new floats of our usual type but a Swimways float that is a longer lounger.
Today we launched our floats from the left side of the tender pier and floated along the shoreline as far as the public beach, not a short distance. I spent more time in the water snorkeling than in my float (so typical) and really enjoyed myself. Though the length of the coastline is largely rocky beach, there are coral heads all along the way. Once at the public beach, we walked along the only road on that narrow part of the island back to the tender pier. The walk was hot and sunny and, in combination with the swim/float/snorkel to the beach and the early morning contact brouhaha, left me exhausted.
We returned to the ship in time for a late lunch and then sat in the Promenade Deck watching the outriggers surf the tenders' wakes between the ship and shore. While the morning had been brilliantly sunny, clouds moved in by 2pm or so. Actually, rain showers had been forecasted for the day, so we felt very fortunate to have had the beautiful start to the day that we did.
We decided to just hang out on the Promenade Deck for sailaway back out of Tiputa Pass to the open ocean. We eventually got cleaned up for dinner, and went to the Elite Lounge, where I sneaked some large Parmesan cheese chunks to the dining room for Italian night. A spinach salad with pine nuts and pecorino, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, Parmesan cheese shards and a glass of Merlot...does it get any better?
Since we had left port so early, we could actually see the numerous, very small islets that make up the string of islets that is Rangiroa, with the small "hoa" channels, most barely wide enough for a canoe, some dry, separating them. There are only three navigable passes into the Rangiroa lagoon, and only one of them, Tiputa Pass, can accommodate a ship even as small as the Pacific Princess.
Eventually, we even saw the similar, but smaller atoll of Tikehau off the starboard side of the ship as the Pacific Princess cruised south between the two islands. That prompted me to open the Moon Travel Guide to French Polynesia on my Kindle app on my iPhone and read about the island to G over dinner. It reminded us a great deal of dinners at home, where we shared books about Rapa Nui over dinner.
Maybe it was that, maybe it was the fact that it was Sunday and we are functioning in a different universe than the one in which NFL and college football scores are big news (and I miss it) but mostly I suspect it was that very early wake up and extremely active day that left me a smidge homesick for the first time this season. We are in our cabin early, watching TV on our iDevice (G) and doing comfort reading (me). Our arrival in Bora Bora is not until 9am tomorrow...a good thing if ever there was one.
