Oct 12, 11:56 AM by Steve | We're back, really
Posted in Honeymoon & Pictures | Comments [1]We’ve been back for a while now. We were both tired from the trip and the time difference, and sick, unfortunately. Steve is back to work, Kim is playing Sim City, and our suitcases are in the living room.
We’ve posted pictures of our journey in the gallery. There were a lot more, we had to be somewhat selective as there were literally thousands of pictures taking up several gigabytes from both cameras. There are also some videos from snorkeling; I’ll add those soon.
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Oct 5, 10:10 AM by Steve | We're back, sort of
Posted in Honeymoon |Back in California, but not home yet. Flight was ok, but of course Kim’s meal was still wrong. Eight long hours on the plane, but slept most of it.
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Oct 3, 01:30 PM by Steve | Day 9: Moorea
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation |Today Kim woke up after much sleep feeling much better. We started Moorea off with a tour around the island in a bus. Like the other similar tours that we took, we were again the youngest by far. The driver was great though; he was native to Moorea, but his grandparents had come over from Switzerland, and one of his parents was native. His family has a lot of tourism businesses (e.g. Albert Tours) and many of the other vehicles were driven by his brothers or other relatives. He took us up to Belvedeer point, on narrow windy road. It was quite impressive that he was able to get that huge bus up that tiny little road. One biker was quite shoked when he came around the corner and almost ran into us…
After the tour, we had to get back to the ship to change and grab our gear for snorkeling. We were in quite a hurry because the first tour ran half and hour late and we had to wait some time for the tender. But we made it back to shore on time, and actually ended up waiting for someone on the tender following ours. This snorkeling trip was similar to the one in Bora Bora, first we went out to a spot to swim with stingrays. We anchored off the Beachcomber resort, and were in for a suprise: sharks! There were a bunch of sharks swimming around right off the shelf where we were watching the...
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Oct 2, 07:59 PM by Steve | Day 8: Bora Bora, redux
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation | Sign up for your 'postcards'... [1]This is brought to you late, due to the internet computers being closed for maintence the entire day. Our second day at Bora Bora did not get off to the best start when Kim woke up in the morning and realized she had a sore throat. We were hoping it would be ok for SCUBA diving later, but after snorkeling it was apparent that she had a cold, and would not be able to dive. We had to jump through some hoops but they refunded (in theory) the excursion.
The snorkeling was excellent; first we went to a shallow spot where we all got out and there were lots of rays all over. They fed the rays to get them to congregate around us, and brought them close enough so that we could touch them. The second spot was a coral garden. It was a little deeper, but still really only waist high. Swimming around the coral, there were lots of bright fish and interesting textures. We swam out to the coral barrier and found a hat, of all things, and came back and snorkeled around some more closer to the boat.
That afternoon, Kim rested, and Steve went back to shore and took the shuttle to Matira beach, one of our stops yesterday on the highlight tour. He walked up the coast for a while and back. Of this he said, “not much to see, except of course the beautiful sandy beaches and clear water.” He got back and joined Kim...
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Oct 1, 07:45 PM by Steve | Day 7: Bora Bora
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation | Tell us how silly we are [1]Today started with leaving Raiatea and Tahaa, bound for Bora Bora. The ship left pretty early in the morning and neither of were up to see us go around Tahaa and exit the lagoon for the open seas. From the GPS, Bora Bora appears to be pretty close, but the ship took a rather circuitous route and we got there around noon. In the meantime, we attended the final art auction and ended up buying two more pieces, and winning one more print. The ones we bought were ‘Summer Brunch 1’ by Nobu Haihara, and ‘Sea of Galileh’ by Sami Zilkha. The print that we won is by Dina Appel, and is from the same set as another that we got.
After the auction, we arrived at Bora Bora and ancored in the lagoon. We took a tender to the dock and caught our tour, ‘Highlights of Bora Bora’ There were a lot of people on this tour, it took several tenders of about 100 people each to get us all out to the dock. We all piled in to waiting ‘Le Trucks’ and were taken around the entire island, similar to Rarotonga. Also like that tour there weren’t any young people on our bus, but at least there were some on other buses of the same tour. We stopped several times for photo opportunities, and a few times to buy stuff. The final stop was ‘Bloody Mary’s’, which was packed and hot and stuffy and everyone was smoking and we...
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Sep 30, 06:45 PM by Steve | Day 6: Raiatea
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation |We started the day out with room service breakfast in bed, Except Steve had already been up and wandering around the ship for a while before it came. The ship docked at Raiatea (no tenders today) around 8, and after breakfast we got off and explored the town for a little while. We didn’t have anything planned for most of the day, just a sunset cruise in the late afternoon, we we wanted to go snorkeling on our own. There is an independent boat that takes people to a private motu, that leaves every our but we would not have had time to make the next one at 10:00, so we figured on shopping for a while and getting on at 11:00. We ended up being too late for that as well, so we bought tickets for noon, but it became apparent that we would not be able to make that either since we needed to eat.
At last we got on at 13:00 and went on our way. Along the way, we saw a whale and hopefully got a few pictures. After the whale we arrived on the motu and snorkeled for some time until we got tired, then relaxed, then snorkeled some more (hey, its a tough life), then got back on the boat and headed back to the ship. We didn’t have much time before the sunset cruise, so we got changed quickly and Steve got some burgers from the grill and we ran back down to...
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Sep 29, 02:20 PM by Steve | Day 5: At Sea
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation | Comments [1]At sea again, and had a good time. We went swimming, played Bingo, watched a “newleywed, not so newly wed” game, and attended another art auction. We bought another piece on by Michael Godard, titled “Don’t Go Overboard”. We also one another print by Michael Muffins. For those keeping score, we bought three and won three. There is a wine and cheese art event later that we are going to before dinner, and one more auction in two days. I think we’ve bought plenty but we will go anyway, because its fun, and there is a good chance of winning something. Tonight is the second formal night, so we will take some more pictures.
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Sep 28, 06:15 PM by Steve | Day 4: Rarotonga
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation | Comments [4]Today we arrived in Rarotonga, the capital island of the Cook Islands. In the morning we had breakfast from room service, then went on the circle island tour; as the name implies, we circled the island. The tour was good but we were the youngest there, probably by at least half. At a coconut demonstration, the guide asked if anyone was on their honeymoon and Kim, in a burst of excitement, shot her hand up and declared “we are!”. This voluteered Steve, somewhat reluctantly, to be the “sharp stick” holder, with which the guide proceeded to bang the coconut against to remove the husk.
After the took we went back to the ship and had a relaxing lunch in the dining room, then got our snorkel gear together and headed back to the harbor. We took the bus to Muri beach and walked along the beach looking for a good spot to start. We decided we couldn’t tell what a good spot was, so we got out our gear and went off. Well, the spot wasn’t great, and there wasn’t much to see there, so we figured we would go for the other island. It was a little further than it looked, but we almost made it before we thought we should turn back; we didn’t want to miss the last bus back to the ship.
Before dinner, us crazy kids decided to stop by the future cruises desk, and ended up booking the Sapphire Princeess round trip from LAX to...
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Sep 27, 11:15 AM by Steve | Day 3: At Sea
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation | Comments [1]We went to another art auction today and won another painting. We saw more by Michael Godard and will probably get those one or two more to round out the set.
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Sep 26, 03:00 PM by Steve | Day 2: Snorkeling in Huahine
Posted in Honeymoon & Vacation |We got an early start (for us) and had breakfast in the dining room. Around 9:30 we tendered to shore and went walking along the road from Maroe on Huahine Iti toward the bridge to Huahine Nui. We had decided not to take the bus to Fare because we didn’t think we had enough time, and its a good thing we didn’t because we heard later that, being Sunday, everything was closed and there was nothing to do. But we had a good time walking along the road and taking lots pictures. We made it to the bridge and crossed over to Huahine Nui, and then walked along the water for a little bit. It was getting late and it was hot so we headed back to Maroe. A tender whisked us back to the ship and we had a nice liesurely lunch in the dining room, as we had some time before we had to leave for snorkeling.
After lunch we got our snorkeling together and tendered back to Maroe, where another boat waited. This boat took us under the bridge and over to a little island that the guide called “Gilligan’s Island”. This was the two hour tour, the two hour tour… Snorkeling was great and we got lots of pictures with the S30 in an underwater housing, filling up a whole 256MB memory card.
Later, back on the ship, we went to an art auction, and bought two pieces by Michael Godard. Its hard to describe but they...
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