World Cruise Part 5: Polynesia and New Zealand

So we see that Blogger has chosen to mess with the font again...heavy sigh.

Five days at sea, and the Captain had something up his sleeve besides scenic cruising at the Pitcairn Islands. Locals came on board with a lecture and a craft fair that set up on the boat deck. Pitcairn, named after a fifteen-year-old sailor who spotted it first, has a rich history. Most prominent was the mutiny on the ship Bounty, which burned in the bay now named after it. The surviving mutineers lived out their days on the island in the area now known as Bounty Bay.

As of February 28, we'd covered 14,200 miles.

A fast boat ride took us to a picnic on a nearby Motu in Raiatea. Great food, beautiful place, the best of local entertainment. 

 

Then it poured rain.

 A bunch of drowned rats returned to shore, happy. Storms gave us sunsets! And on March 6, we had covered 15,500 miles.

Onward to Bora Bora and a glass-bottomed boat experience. Black tipped sharks:

Gigantic Manta Rays:

More rain.

March 11 rolled around and alas there was no March 12 as we crossed the dateline. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, we got quite the welcome.

We set out to look for the large fox bats and some hats. All we found was heat. No bats, no hats. We did remember where the tree was that was loaded with the big bats last time. Here's what we found. New Park, No tree.

On to Fiji. We toured a local pineapple plantation where we learned how to skin a pineapple and a coconut. Incidentally, all island people call coconut trees "the three of life" because they use every part of it in their lives: it's hydration, food, shelter, fuel. This guy knows how to get on with life:

Gordon buys a "skirt", a sulu vakataga, in case he needs it in a temple later to cover his knees. Here he is, in Fiji Formal, along with our favorite ghost-busting housekeeper, I Gusti from Bali.

This guy was discovered in Papeete, Tahiti. Wait. If he has two head, shouldn't he have two...other things?

On to New Zealand...at Bay of Islands we went to see the glow worms again, sorry, no photography allowed. In Auckland they threw an event for the World Cruise people at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron where the champagne and snacks kept everyone happy until...you guessed it...it rained. Absolutely chucking it down. Gave us a nice sunset, though.

We did visit another few places including Tauranga and Napier, both looking very livable. NZ doesn't want us, though. It's very expensive to buy one's way in.

World Cruise 2025 Part 4, Easter Island

On day 42, we hit terrible weather enroute to Robinson Crusoe Island. Didn't hold out much hope of actually anchoring there...too windy for tenders, probably. We made it after all, but not much to do unless one wanted to take a very serious hike uphill.

Easter Island. This was the big one, but we couldn't get into the main town, Hanga Roa, to anchor and tender because the swells were too much. Even the "dedicated" customs guys couldn't approach, so we moved to Anakena Beach, a place that does not have a tender pier, but has these:

Getting ashore in Anakena was no mean feat. The story was that the floating platform that was to be used for disembarking the tenders was damaged. We waited for hours while Captain and crew figured an angle, finally using one of our tenders as a landing platform. We will just say that it was a harrowing experience because the swells were fairly heavy at the beach. Pati was actually shaking when we made land, but our tender crew kept us alive. 

 

That said, one goes to Easter Island, or in the native language, Rapa Nui, to see the amazing Moai. We did. This is Akivi:

This is Ahu Tahai, by the water:

This unknown soldier stood alone. Actually, these are thought to be images of ancestors who are protecting the island's ancient tribes. How did these huge carvings get to their final locations? One thought is that they were given "mana", the life force, and they walked there on their own. There are lots of other theories...it's like the pyramids...who knows?

Nearby:

Interesting island life. Dogs roam freely as do horses, the latter either grazing by the road or trotting down the middle of it. Only the cattle are fenced in, and loosely at that. One place had quite a collection of roosters, chickens, dogs, and cats. One kitty jumped right into our bus and made friends. This guy seemed to be the gang's leader.

Later, we saw the aftermath of our landing. Two tenders, the one used as the platform and the other the one that carried us ashore, were both torn to shit. It was mostly cosmetic, skins, scrapes, and bruises, but enough that they'll need repair that can't be done onboard and will have to wait for dry dock. I guess the company isn't going to can the captain, but this is gonna cost some bucks.

 

Big barbecue onboard that night, and you know you're with old people when everyone knows how to participate during "Sweet Caroline".

 

World Cruise 2025 Part 3

 First, let me say this: I don't understand why this font keeps changing, but frankly, my dear...OK, pressing on.

Our closest point to the South Pole came at 63 degrees, 20 minutes south on February 6th.

Goodbye to Antartica and on the way to Ushuaia. Captain Abhi Singh attracts medical emergencies like Captain Stan attracts troubled ships at sea. Another emergency saw us dashing across the Drake Passage in an effort to arrive in Ushuaia early. Like, 8 hours early!

 

Finally Penguins! Magellan type.

Don't let these guys fool you. They're not penguins, they're cormorants.

We cruised the Chilean Fjords on day 36. It was cloudy and rainy in the morning, which didn't help our photography much. Nevertheless, here are Amalia and O'Higgins.

Next stop, Puerto Chacabuco. They have condors there, and beautiful scenery.

On to Puerto Montt, where you can see the volcano in the distance, and there's entertainment in the park on Valentine's Day.

A wine tasting event set especially for the World Cruise folks took place in Valpariso, Chile, before we set off westbound across the Pacific. We have a guest lecturer/troubadour on board. Terry and Gordon were often mistaken for one another.

 Our standard line was that Gordon has more hair and less talent than Terry. The wine venue issued us wine glass holsters and world cruise glasses. Very handy.

!!!!!!!!!

World Cruise 2025 Part 2

Goodbye Rio:

Santos, Brazil (pronounced "Sanch"...leave it to the Portuguese influence). Nice little botanical garden with some native critters:

The Pele museum was well air conditioned. Overall, Brazil is a combination of the old, crumbling as flip-flopped locals stroll by, and the new and shiny, all tied together with clutter and graffitti.

On to Montevideo, Uruguay. The Southern Crested Caracara posed for us.

 

Montevideo and Punta del Este are very livable-looking places, although PdE is expensive. It should be, it looks like Monaco!

A very nice modern art museum:

Also, the Casapueblo compound, the realized dream of a (crazy) artist named Carlos Paez Vilaro.

 

The Expedition team joined us in Punta del Este, our experts on Antartica, on our way to Stanley. But will we make it to Stanley? Nope. How did the Argentinians find a good enough day to ever invade the place? We couldn't. There went seeing the penguins, again. We headed south and as the day went on, the weather went to shit. Okay, sun is out but we were doing some rocking and rolling!

 

Came the Captain on the blower to say that we were detouring to Elephant Island, and ice-covered place east of Antarctica.

 

The island was the desolate refuge of the British explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew in 1916 following the loss of their ship Endurance in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. The crew of 28 reached Cape Valentine on Elephant Island after months spent drifting on ice floes and a harrowing crossing of the open ocean in small lifeboats. After camping at Cape Valentine for two nights, Shackleton and his crew moved 7 miles west to a small, rocky spit at the terminus of a glacier, which offered better protection from rockfalls and from the sea, and which they called Point Wild.

Realizing that there was no chance of passive rescue, Shackleton decided to sail to South Georgia, where he knew there were several whaling stations. Shackleton sailed with Tom Crean, Frank Worsley, Harry "Chippy" McNish, Tim McCarthy, and John Vincent (all of whom were kown troublemakers) on an 800 mile voyage in the lifeboat James Caird beginning on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, and arriving at South Georgia 16 days later. His second-in-command, Frank Wild, was left in charge of the remaining party on Elephant Island, waiting for Shackleton's return with a rescue ship. There was much work for the stranded men. Because the island had no natural shelter, they constructed a shack and wind blocks from their remaining two lifeboats and pieces of canvas tents. Blubber lamps were used for lighting. They hunted for penguins and seals, neither of which were plentiful in autumn or winter. Shackleton had instructed Wild to depart with the remaining crew for Deception Island if he did not return to rescue them by the beginning of summer. After four and a half months, on August 30, 1916, a ship, the tug Yelcho, from Punta Arenas, Chile, with Shackleton on board and commanded by Luis Pardo, arrived and rescued the men.

Imagine.

The Elephant Island story is actually typical of the hardships presented to the earliest explorers in Antarctica. We never saw the island, by the way, because we passed by it at well past midnight.

We went on to visit Maxwell Bay, Half Moon Island with Camara Base, and Deception Island, then forward through Wilhelmina Bay, Paradise Harbour, and the Neumayer Channel, then Dallmann Bay, with lots of humpback and penguins around.

Some of these pictures will look like they were taken in monochrome. No. That's how it looked.

But the sun did finally come out and brave Captain Abhi took us through the narrow passage between Lambda and Omega Islands, home of the Melchoir Base.