Papeete - Tahiti

We pulled into the dock at a suitably early hour and I opened the curtains of the stateroom to reveal the island paradise of Tahiti (I wish). Sadly we were at the docks, in an uninteresting part of town that is the capital of this very religious nation that was essentially closed due to it being Sunday. We disembarked and wandered around the neighbourhood, which was just a selection of bolted shut security roller doors painted with funky murals.

We tried hiring a car, it was going to be $400 for the day and we would have to return it to the airport. There were some extremely overpriced day tours we could undertake so we tried to jag a maxi taxi for our group of five to go exploring. We were having no luck and had almost given up and were heading back to the ship and then we stumbled across a lovely guy called Robert O'Connor, a native islander with a very Irish name. He took us on a delightful drive around the island. He was tour guide, translator, and driver all rolled into one. There is no way we could have done better. 

First stop was the black sand beach where there both memorials to the infamous Bounty and Captain Cook. Cook was here to witness and track the path of the planet Venus across the sun. This only happens twice every 243 years with the two transits separated by eight years. The last transit was in 2012 and the next will be in 2117. The beach was clearly in full use on the day of our visit with the locals fishing, swimming, sun bathing, playing Bocce, and generally just having a good time. The shore was littered with outriggers and the black sand, while looking like dirt, was actually the remnants of the path of a volcano that had been ground into fine particles over many many years by the sea. 

From there we moved off to the largest waterfall on the island,  The Fautaua Falls. Apparently with a permit you can take a six hour hike to the top and soak in the pristine waters of The Fautaua River. I will have to take their word for it. 

Some gardens were the next port of call and while perfectly charming they were not something to write home about. Lots of native species along with accompanying interpretative signage. The rainfall being so plentiful here the grounds were positively bucolic. From here we went to a very interesting water filled grotto that was billed as a cave and about three feet deep. Water was raining from the roof along with odd small pebble. Robert told us that when he was a kid he would never swim to the back as all the children believed there were monsters there. It  was allegedly about 100 meters deep in to the mountain but the natural light faded at about the 15 - 20 meter mark. I thought it would make a great place for a midnight dip after a long day of sightseeing but I wasn't going to be doing that on my own with the ship leaving port at 3.00am and the the grotto being a 55 kilometer drive away. 

    

That concluded our jaunt around the island which we managed to completely circumnavigate. We headed back passing a very expensive marina and what looked to be the major shopping district to plan our dinner. 

Like the shopping precinct almost every restaurant was shut so we settled on the one within walking distance of the port. Named "Le Retro" I am not entirely sure what the retro elements were. We must have waited 15 minutes for someone to take our drink order. There were clear language barriers as my French is about as good as my Swahili. However when there are four people at the table and two dishes, defined as starters by their own menu  are delivered with the main meals I think there may have been a little passive hostility towards the non locals at their tables. 

Our waiter and the Maître D minced around the restaurant appearing to do nothing while the one waitress ran around and aggressively did everything else. The meals were pretty good but not good enough to make us stay for dessert so we headed back to the ship having contributed $300USD to the local economy and headed to our favourite bar, The Vines, where our favourite bartender "Gil", served us our regular night cap (or two) and headed to our stateroom to sleep the night away. Tomorrow we head to Moorea, which is twenty miles away. All these trips to shore are eating in to my drinking time. Thank goodness we have five sea days to follow!

Pitcairn Island

After two and a half days on the high seas we arrived at Pitcairn Island to undertake some "Scenic Cruising". There was never any intention to land here as the facilities for visiting make Easter Island look impossibly easy. With a population of 47 people, 35 of whom who were allegedly on the island when we sailed around it, there was not a lot going on. Pitcairn Island is famous, or maybe infamous, for being the place where the Bounty Mutineers ended up after the mutiny on the bounty, where Fletcher Christian rebelled against the harsh leadership of William Bligh and led nine sailors, six Tahitian men along with twelve Tahitian women eventually settling on Pitcairn Island. 

Apparently the choice of Pitcairn Island was quite deliberate. It was known to have existed at the time but appeared on the charts of the day in the incorrect location. The mutineers deliberately searched for it, having left behind some of their shipmates on Tahiti and putting Bligh and eighteen of his crew in an open boat with little food and a sextant and a watch by which to navigate with. Upon arriving at Pitcairn they burnt the Bounty so no passing ships could identify it and so the mutineers had no choice but to make their new home work. 

Despite their best intentions fights over alcohol and women led to most of the mutineers, including their leader, being murdered within in a couple of years of arriving. One mutineer survived for eleven years and the last mutineer lived for 40 years turning the entire community to God using the ship's bible. From this the children were educated and Pitcairn reached a population of 196 which it couldn't sustain. The entire population was then relocated to the former penal colony of Norfolk Island. Two groups of 17 then 27 people eventually returned to Pitcairn and so now both island's populations are seeded by the descendants of the mutiny on the bounty.   

The Crown Princess headed for Bounty Bay, no points for guessing where it gets it's name from. It then did a 360 degree pirouette and head off around the island. Pitcairn looks a lot like Norfolk Island and like Norfolk it is made up eruptions from three undersea volcanoes. There is no natural harbour, no source of fresh water, no real native food, no airport, no dock (of any great size) and it is about as an inhospitable a place as you could hope to find. The local place names pretty well sum up how hard life is on the island. Places have such plain yet evocative names as "Oh Dear", "Dan Fell", "Where Dan Fell", "Lin Fall", "Nellie Fall' "McCoy Drop" and my favourite the "Hill of Difficulty". 

There is one resupply ship per month and that is the only way adventure tourists can visit. There is nowhere for the ship to dock so all goods and passengers are bought ashore using longboats. There are four of these. They each require a crew of three to operate and there are only twelve adults capable of crewing them living on the island when they are put into service.  In the case of a medical emergency you are transported off the island by longboat to another island that has an airport called Mangareva. It's an open boat ride of 540 Kms. From there it is a further 1540 Kms air ambulance ride to Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. 

All in all it was interesting place to visit but I have no desire to move there. Next port of call is the aforementioned Papeete. No doubt populated by friendly natives and annoying Frenchmen. Bring it on.

 

Easter Island

The not insignificant effort that went into securing a Chilean visa so I could disembark at Easter Island all came to nought. The weather was the foulest it could be. When we reached the island's coast the seas were throwing up a four to six metre swell and we were besieged by constant squalls so it was just not safe to launch the tenders to go ashore. 

This place is in the middle of Bum Fuck Nowhere. People complain about how long it takes to get to Lightning Ridge. Well the Ridge is a doddle compared to Easter Island. The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island which is 2075 Kms away and it only has about 50 people living on it. The closest town with a population greater than 500 is Rikitea which is 2606 kms away, and the nearest continental land mass is Chile which is 3512 Kms away. If you drive from Perth to Sydney that is about 3,931 kms by comparison. 

We arrived at about 9.45am and headed for what passes for the harbour. As there are no docks that could handle a ship of this size the only way to make it to shore would be by tender. As the weather prevented that option the best that could be done was getting the ship to turn on its own axis using the side thrusters. That gave everyone a chance to see that part of the shoreline from all points of the ship. It was an impressive party trick to watch, as the thrusters slowly turned us around and the current took us gently to the south west. Once we had done our pirouette we headed out to the three mile mark and proceeded to circumnavigate the island. 

Fortunately I had some binoculars with me and the statues that Easter Island is famous for, known as Moai, were pretty easy to spot from the ship. There are almost 1,000 of them scattered across the island,  in various states of disrepair. The ones still standing are nearly all facing inwards, ostensibly to protect the villages and the people. The few facing out are set at the higher points of the island and are to protect Easter Island itself. 

Four hours after we arrived it was all over. The ship headed west and we were on our way towards Pitcairn Island, a two and a half day sail away. Upon arrival we will have no choice but to do the same style of circumnavigation again if we wish to see anything of Pitcairn. 

Now however I have more important things on my mind. I'm off to the bar. 

Pisco, Peru

Again we docked at some ungodly hour and I was in the land of nod when the ship tied up. I arose however about 7.30am as I had booked a tour of some Incan ruins. I showered and got ready for the day's big adventure and soon breakfast and a most welcome flat white coffee arrived to my stateroom. I caught up on the previous day's emails and then headed to the bus that would take me on the 90 minute trip to the ruins. 

The landscape was desolate. You could enact a fake mars landing on the ground around me and no one would be any the wiser. I assumed that view would improve. It did so marginally but there was not much I could wax lyrical about. 

After about 30 minutes of marscape the scenery started to change to include the agricultural sector. Even though there was next to no water they were successfully growing asparagus, blueberries, mandarins, grapes, corn and other crops that I have now forgotten. The towns we passed through, of which Pisco was the most notable, were dreary to the point of appearing slum like. Most of the homes were unfinished. It turns out there is a reason for this, if you finish your home it is assessable for tax, but while it remains incomplete it doesn't incur any.  

We started to weave our ways into the hills where there was little of consequence to see. Our guide droned on speaking quickly with his thick Peruvian accent. He knew his stuff and he was proud of his country but I am not really that  interested in Peru's gross tonnage of blueberry exports in any given year so it was a little difficult to remain attentive. We finally arrived at the ruins and they were nothing short of spectacular. 

This was a significant outpost of the Incan world. It was a little freaky to see a finished excavation that was littered with tourist where there was clearly much more left to find. In the short walk I took above the ruins I picked up fragments of broken pottery, pieces of fabric and small lengths of rope. None of it had any evidence of colour or quality so both the grave robbers who predated the archaeologists and the archaeologists themselves had deemed these finds unworthy and not proceeded any further. 

We saw old bathhouses, schools for girls who would become the polyamorous wives of the rulers, putting the Mormons to shame but certainly giving them something to aspire to. There were barracks, slave quarters and communication houses where if a message needed to be passed along the chain of command there would be a squad of runners ready to relay the message to out post as far away as the more famous Machu Pichu. 

We were told that these communication houses were to be found every 10 kilometres and that they could get a message to the aforementioned Machu Pichu in 15 hours, which compares more than favourably with the alleged 17 hour drive it now incurs. These hubs also had sleeping quarters along with food drink. 

After two hours of expertly guided tutelage it was time to complete the ho hum return journey through the depressing towns and the desolate landscape. 

The only interesting thing of note was the bus crashing through a boom gate as we entered the port. The boom gate was a bent and twisted mess, the bus however didn't even seem to be scratched. I did a little shopping on the dock to ensure every suitcase is packed to the brim with souvenirs then headed for the pizza joint for a late lunch, followed by the bar. All in all an enjoyable and instructive day. We have fours days are on the high seas before we reach Easter Island. Still no news if we can get off or not. Fingers crossed. 

Lima, Peru

We arrived into the Port of Callao at about 5.00am on 1st September. Being way too early for me to arise I tried to continue my slumber. Callao however being a working port had other ideas. I gave up trying to sleep after a cacophony of sound intruded into my cabin. I dragged my sorry backside out of bed so I could head into the city. 

Callao is a suburb of Lima and is about 12.5 kms from the main town. You'd think you could knock that over in 15 minutes but no............ I jumped on the bus and it took me and hour and 20 minutes to get there. This had nothing to do with the driving or the stops (there weren't any) but everything to do with the narrow streets and hectic traffic. Lima didn't make the greatest of impressions as I woke up early, the docks were noisy, the traffic almost immovable and the city in the morning had the characteristics of a slum. I was really hoping the main town would lift my spirits. It got better but I must admit I am still a little ambivalent about the city. 

The first thing I did was to head to a gold museum to check out the Incan Gold. I was promptly disabused about my knowledge of Peruvian history. Not only were the Aztecs pretty late on the scene, there were plenty of textiles and ceramics that predated the Incan stuff by over 1,000 years. The museum had some interesting things that were pretty macabre. Firstly they had real Peruvian mummies. Secondly, they had the ceremonial knives used for ritual sacrifice. Lastly they had real skeletons showing where the knives had been used. I hadn't even had lunch yet. 

I walked through a rejuvenated area of Lima with some "tasteful" displays of public art. he whole are reeked of urine, I mean I have been in nicer smelling piggeries. While enjoying the unusual choice of air freshener I was left to ponder the meaning of some of the public art. One piece in particular struck me. I couldn't find any interpretative signage so I was left to assume that this particular piece was tribute to Lima's greatness in the area of suppositories. 

Arriving into the old town and visited another museum with a bit of a more religious nature. Its proper name, The Museum of the Convent of Santo Domingo, Lima, Peru. It is littered with amazing architecture from the bell tower, the the carved ceilings, the courtyard, the frescos, the oil paintings and the 500 year old library. There is Roman Catholic iconography everywhere and if all this isn't enough they have saved a Holy Chair (their words not mine) and more a thrown really, that Saint John Paul 11 sat on in 1988. Apparently he was known for mild forms of self flagellation so this chair was very much in keeping. I mean it looked so uncomfortable it may have been left over from the Spanish Inquisition. 

From there I headed through the town square where I got to catch up with a woman from Lightning Ridge, caught the end of the changing of the guard outside of the parliament building and headed into the Lima Cathedral and its museum. Here they had the traditional display of over the top opulence one comes to expect from the Catholics. It was impressive in a grotesque kind of way and filled to the brim with tributes to Saints and conquering heroes of yesteryear. Sadly what looked like a once mighty pipe organ had fallen into decay. It was about the only thing in the entire building not dripping in gold leaf and ostentatious carvings. 

I needed some lunch and headed to a place I had seen that looked like a little hole in the wall family restaurant but turned out to produce this most amazing ceviche along with a traditional Peruvian cocktail called a Pisco Sour. Much like a whisky sour it instead uses Pisco a local spirit distilled from grape juice. I really quite fancied it however with two shots of this spirit in every cocktail I would quickly become nicely inebriated and enjoy being rolled for the money I was carrying along with missing the ship and being stuck here in Lima saying my rosary every day. 

To end my sojourn I wandered through a park with an allegedly famous statue depicting two embracing lovers. The guy who carved it had been married three times so it was warming to see for a guy like me who is only up to wife number two that love can triumph over all (excuse me while I throw up a little in my mouth). What this park had however was an amazing view and the best coffee I think I have ever had in my life. It was served by one of the more disagreeable staff members I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Having got my order wrong, then given away my replacement to another person and finally after about 25 minutes delivering what I had assured myself would be absolute rubbish, I had the best cup if coffee I can remember ever tasting. 

I had a quick look around the Indian Markets and jumped the bus back to the good old Crown Princess, went straight to the bar, found some ship mates who I have been drinking with, caught a show then went to bed knowing I could look forward to my 5.00am wake up call from the dock workers at Port.