cindy's world

May 2, we awoke to find the ship approaching its first island destination of Raiatea.

In case you’re wondering, those are the leis we were greeted with that we hung on our porthole windows. Mine’s this one:

Since we were still out at sea and there was not much to do, we went to the onboard gym for our first and only workout there for the trip. =P Walking around after the workout, we saw pretty landscape as we coasted through French Polynesia.

This is the Deck 8 swimming pool, which we didn’t waste time in. If we wanted to get wet, we got in the warm bathwater ocean.

Wanna join us in these poolside lounge chairs?

We had breakfast here about half the time…

…and breakfast here at the deck on the back of the ship the other half of the time.

I’m on Deck 8, Mr. W’s on Deck 7. Hellooooo down there!

Around this time, I had lost Mr. W, so I explored more of the ship alone. I discovered a Tahia Collins boutique. She’s a Tahitian pearl designer.

Given the price of the above, I was scared to find out the price of the below.

Um, my birthday’s coming up. Anyone? …Yeah, that’s the same silence I got on the ship. I went back to the room to find that we had docked at our first port, Raiatea, the largest of the Leeward islands, and the second largest of the Society Islands in French Polynesia (the largest being Tahiti, where we’d just left). Raiatea has a “sister island” called Taha’a, which is our next port. The two share a coral reef, so the theory is that these two may have once been one island.

Porthole windows = neat stuff.

Off to explore the tiny dock town, we found that the activities directors were right in that the whole island would look rather sleepy, as it was Sunday and just about everything was closed.

Normally, this town would be bustling with vendors and shops, we hear.

We did find a couple of street vendors selling their home-grown watermelon.

Oh, look, something we don’t see anymore at home…

Oh, look, something we see too much at home…

We walked to the edge of the docks so I could take some pretty pictures, while doing my best to ignore catcalls and wild waving from Polynesian dock workers who walked around with their shorts down as they prepared to pee against a wall (which, as it turned out, they wanted me to watch).

A monsoon had struck the islands a few months back, and the damage is evident on some docks and also underwater with dead branch coral seen everywhere when we later went snorkeling.

Oh, look, our ship!

Howdy. Let’s walk back now, and I’ll show you our room.

See those 2 portholes I’m pointing at? That’s it.

We can see our leis from the outside of the ship.
Back onboard, we ran across a Polynesian shell bracelet making class. Since I missed this class, I guess I’ll have to buy my shell jewelry from vendors. =P

Now why can’t all classrooms look like this? Cuz this is what you see on the other side of the students:

Here’s a zoomed in shot of that sailboat out there.

We went back to our cabin to change and get ready for our first excursion, a speedboat ride out to another island for a tour of a Tahitian pearl farm, followed by a snorkeling swim. Here you see our tourguide, some fellow excursionists, and Mr. W looking like an urban cowboy.

Arrival at the pearl farm!

Why can’t my work office have this setting? Yes. I think my work building should have a dock. Who do I talk to about that?

Here our tourguide explains how the pearl-producing oysters are kept on ropes dangled into the water so they can be kept track of.

A demonstration of pearl nucleus implantation (the nucleus is made of Mississippi River mussel shell!) and extraction.

I would love to show you snorkeling photos, but Mr. W hadn’t figured out how to work his underwater camera at his point yet, and all the underwater photos from this trip were overexposed. We’ll soon have better ones from future snorkeling trips. Stay tuned!
(As always, rest mouse pointers on photos for captions.)

Our vacation started early Saturday morning, May 1. The shuttle picked us up at 8:30 a.m.. Here we are at home excited to start our 8.5-hour flight.

Air Tahiti Nui — on top of being cute, it also started our vacation early. They fed us two full hot meals going to Tahiti, AND alcohol was FREE.

Each seat had a monitor on which we could watch TV, movies, or play games. Since the flight wasn’t anywhere near booked, I had the 2 window seats to myself. I had one playing movies and the other on our flight stats. (Mr. W took the center aisle of 4 seats and laid across them, where he slept through the flight after indulging in a hot lunch and two Courvoisiers.)

I was a bit miffed that this was supposed to be our delayed honeymoon trip and he refused to sit near me the entire flight, but I soon became glad as I lounged sideways and took both pillows and both blankets.
We arrived in Papeete, Tahiti at approximately 6:30 p.m., where it was already dark. The humidity hit us hard when we got off the plane, but the temperature was a nice mid-80s all week. I was once again glad that my hair does not react to humidity. I saw some people’s ‘dos shorten and curl up practically before my eyes. I twisted my hair into a bun and stuck a pen through the knot to keep it off my neck, where things were starting to feel a bit damp. We were greeted with flower leis by our transportation at the airport, and they drove us to port where we efficiently checked into our rooms on the M/s Paul Gauguin. I had booked the cheapest cabin (figuring we weren’t gonna spend much time in there anyway, altho Mr. W lamented not having a balcony), and this spacious room is what greeted us.

Mr. W relaxed on the large bed.

Even the restroom was huge (for a ship cabin). It had a shower AND a tub.

At the sitting room end of the cabin, a bottle of champagne was icing in a bucket with a plate of fruit and a card.

Mr. W opened the card.

Awww, how sweet!

We soon changed for dinner. Dress code after 6pm every night on the ship is “smart country club.” It required that women be in dresses or skirts or slacks, and no one could be in shorts. Here’s our glorious meal, the first of many many to come.

“Can I eat yet?”

At a gallery of Paul Gauguin paintings, old Tahitian navigation maps and information from Captain Cook’s days, traditional Tahitian bone tools, etc.

I’m BAAAAAAaaaaack! And all tan from multi-island romps in French Polynesia, despite the waterproof, sweatproof SPF 100 (yes, they make those) sport sunblock I was using. It was a great 5-star luxury weeklong cruise. I would highly recommend Paul Gauguin Cruises for anyone interested in a tour of The Society Islands (Tahiti, Taha’a, Raiatea, Bora Bora, Moorea). You get a very cool sampling of all the islands, free food/drink/board/transportation, which is a great big deal cuz our ONE free day in Tahiti was EXPENSIVE. Photos and stuff forthcoming!

On Motu Mahana, the cruiseline’s private island off Taha’a.