Northwards drifting: fascinating geological and revolting biological information

We had a fleeting visit to Samoa but didn’t go ashore as J still wasn’t feeling too great. (She’s better now.) Upping anchor, we continued to travel northwards. In principle. In fact, we spent several days travelling northwards through the cunning strategem of steaming eastwards for a while and then heading south. It didn’t make much sense to us, but the captain didn’t want to know when we tried to tell him about the shortest distance between two points.

Actually, the reason for these unusual manoeuvres was that, after Samoa, we visited Papeete and Bora Bora. These places are all part of French Polynesia, which occupies an area as big as Europe but comprises just a handful of small islands. Just think how much money they’d make in real estate deals if they filled in all that empty ocean between the islands.

Papeete was surprisingly busy and was supposedly French-speaking. My French, however, drew even more puzzled looks than it does in France, so it could be that they have a strange accent in Tahiti. (It’s equally possible that I have a strange accent, but still…) Otherwise, Tahiti was as advertised, lots of sandy beaches and steep volcanic-sided hills. All a bit commercial though. And expensive. Someone bought a can of Coke and got charged $US8.

The next day we were in Bora Bora, which, as Pacific islands go, was much more like it. It’s a classic atoll shape but the atoll is based on a volcanic crater so it’s quite like a southern-seas version of Santorini. BB was very pretty and you could walk the capital city from end to end in about four minutes.

Following BB, we headed properly northwards, crossed the equator and spent two days in a featureless ocean before arriving at Christmas Island, where we did a slow cruise-past. The island is sandy and flat, with lots of coconut trees. There are a few inhabitants who mainly go fishing and live in two micro-towns called London and Paris. A few of them paddled out in canoes and waved at us in what seemed to be a friendly fashion. The ship decided to have a Christmas party, Santa and all. We didn’t get any presents, though.

From Xmas Island it was lots of ocean and the sea’s been a bit choppy so we haven’t been using the swimming pool so much. There was a brief flurry of excitement yesterday when we were told that there was going to be a lunar eclipse but, although it was total elsewhere, all we could detect was a slight dent in the side of the sun. Maybe we should complain to the cruise line.

Anyway, today it’s Hawaii and as soon as we finish posting this blog entry we’re off to Waikiki beach.

More on the travel side of things later, but now for some fascinating (in a dull sort of way) information about the nature of time… We crossed the international date line a few days ago, with the result that we had two Fridays in a row, which was weird. We will gradually lose the day we’ve gained as we head eastwards.

Even more unusually, we have also managed to be in two days at the same time. Christmas Island is also known as Kiribati, which is (a) pronounced ‘Kiribass’ and (b) part of the kingdom of Tuvalu which comprises a bunch of islands spread over another vast tract of ocean. A few years ago, the clever people of Tuvalu decided to bend the international date line so that (a) all their islands would be on the same time and (b) (the real reason) they could claim that one of their islands would be the first to see in the new millennium. (This island is now called, with breathtaking originality, ‘Millennium Island’.)

So, this clear case of manipulating the space-time continuum resulted in us being present on the ship where it was legally Sunday, surrounded by ocean and bits of land where it was legally Monday.

We didn’t understand it, either.

Anyway, back to life on board. I am pleased to report that the fatigue that dogged me while I was undergoing treatment has now mostly gone, so I’ve stepped up the exercise regime, alternating days at the gym with hour-long scurries (sorta fast walking with occasional wheezy jogs) around the deck. (Three rounds of the deck = 1 mile and I’m building up to 5 miles, which is quite good as a couple of months ago I got out of breath just going for the morning paper.)

Meanwhile, we are doing our best to resist the mountains of food available 24x7 in the half-a-dozen shipboard restaurants. And, in my case, not succeeding. My body is now engaged in a sort of biological arms race, expanding muscles competing for space with rampant fat cells. The result is, I suspect, not a pretty sight. And we’re only a quarter of the way through the voyage.

Otherwise, we pass our days, when we’re not exercising or eating, with reading, talking to people, swimming, sunbathing and participating in the twice-daily quizzes. We have won a couple of the quizzes but competition is fierce. For several days, a group of spotty teenagers won with very high scores. We then realised the little buggers were using a handheld computer to get the answers. We have been urging the crew to reinstate the quaint custom of keel-hauling.

There’s lots of entertainment. The ship offers nightly live shows, which haven’t been much cop so far (as they’ve featured Australian ‘entertainers’!?). Much better are the movies under the stars, where we stretch out on loungers around the swimming pool and watch movies on a giant screen while uniformed flunkies, obviously concerned that a lengthy film could result in us going more than two hours without food, serve us with drinks and popcorn. It’s not a patch on working in an office on a cold, rainy Monday, of course, but we make the best of it.

Anyway, just in case you’re having trouble getting the horrifying imagery of my warring biological functions out of your minds, here’s some more interesting information about the world about us. Have you ever wondered why atolls are round with lots of water in the middle? No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. What happens is that a volcano erupts, bursts through the surface of the sea and then says to itself ‘gawd, all this erupting has really shagged me out’ and gradually subsides until it’s just a circle of land sticking out above the water. All’s well for a few million years but then the volcanic land starts to sink under its own weight (thus providing an eerie glimpse into what lies in my future if I keep eating all the shipboard fruit pie and custard).

However, as the land sinks, coral grows on it and forms new land. Bits of ground-up coral forms sand (over a few more million years) and you have beaches. Any fresh water streams on the land drain into the water and the fresh water kills the bits of coral around it so you then have channels into the atoll, which is very handy if you’re on a ship.

Once again, the Cartiblog broadens the minds (as well as turning the stomachs) of its readers. Farewell, faithful readers. Hawaii beckons.

Back by unpopular demand… The Cartilbog

Day one

So many people (well, two) have asked us to resurrect our blog that we’ve decided to comply, mainly because it means we won’t have to buy people postcards and try to send them from places in Mexico that we’ve never heard of and which will probably be populated by gap-toothed men in massive sombreros who sneer at us, fondle their six-shooters (this is no longer an offence under Mexican law) and address us as ‘feelthy gringos’.

So… Here we are, one day out of Auckland and sailing through something that can best be described as ‘an awful lot of ocean’. The skies are amethyst blue and the sun wraps you in a toasty-warm embrace as soon as you step outside. Yes, it really is like that somewhere in the world. Just here, though, it’s overcast, breezy and not remotely warm.

Still, over the next seven or so weeks we will be in lotsa hot spots and we’ll visit a bunch of places we’ve heard of and, as intimated earlier, a bunch more that could be on Mars for all we know. These include the South Pacific islands of Samoa, Papeete and Bora Bora (so good they made a typographical error when they typed the name). Then we sail past Christmas Island (we can’t go ashore as we’ve been naughty, not nice), land in two ports in Hawaii and slog across the rest of the Pacific to San Francisco, where we hope the army of demented panhandlers we told to **** off in 2005 don’t remember us.

If, by chance, we haven’t all got swine flu by then, we’ll put that right by visiting the Mexican ports of Acapulco (which we’re heard of thanks to Elvis Presley – see, all those terrible movies had some value after all), Huatalco (which we’d never heard of) and Cabo San Lucas (oh, come on, we’re not that gullible).

Still with us? After hopefully dodging modern day versions of Pancho Villa (a legendary sharp-shooter who used to play centre forward for Birmingham City, boom, boom), we sail through the Pamana Canal and visit Cartagena (we’d heard of this place and we even guessed correctly what continent it was on) (after three goes), Aruba, which is an island somewhere in the Caribbean, and Bermuda.

We then meander up the Eastern Seaboard, take a bite of the Big Apple, visit Boston and Newport and retrace the course of the Titanic. A quick stop in Ireland, then Le Havre, then Southampton and on to the real geographical highlight of the trip, Stoke-on-Trent, the Venice of The Midlands. (Well, it’s got canals.)

So much for the future. Back to the present. The trip to date actually started on Tuesday, when we flew to Auckland and spent the afternoon and early evening with our old friends Nina and Pat, plus family. Wednesday morning we met more old friends, ex-neighbours Kath and Frank, who delivered us to Princes’ Wharf in time for our 1pm boarding. We then discovered that the 1pm boarding time had become a 3pm boarding time, which was great news as the Auckland drizzle had just set in and we didn’t want to miss a minute of it. We took ourselves off to a bar, drank beer and told ourselves we’d be warm in a couple of days.

At last we were ready to embark. Although boarding ships is much easier then getting on planes, we found ourselves near the end of a lengthy queue. We were soon distracted by a sweet old lady from England who, with her husband, was standing behind us, clutching the handlebars of her wheeled zimmer frame. She prattled happily on about her life and times and then said, ‘look over there!’. When we looked back, she’d somehow managed to get the wheely thing, plus her confused-looking husband, past us. We watched in admiration as she continued in like manner until she was at the front of the queue. Never underestimate a little old lady with a cute smile.

(Later on, she materialised at the first-night cocktail party just as Jasu had managed to score us a couple of glasses of complimentary champagne at the bar. ‘Where did you get those from, dear?’ she simpered. As Jasu nodded towards the counter, the old girl tried to relieve her of the glasses. This time, though, J was ready for her and managed to hold them out of grasping distance. We’re really looking forward to seeing how this one gets on at the lifeboat drills.)

Anyway, we finally got on board and were able to unpack our bags in cabin 318, our home for the next 50 days. The ship, eerily, is identical to the one in which we circumnavigated Australia last year, so we know our way about and don’t have the usual period of new-ship disorientation, which is mostly good but also a little disappointing.

Day Four

We didn’t get Day One posted as there was a problem with the blog site. If you’re reading this now, we have found a way to overcome it.

We are now an hour away from Samoa. The weather is brighter and today’s temperature should hit 30 degrees. I had my first dip in the pool yesterday.

We have been meeting more of our fellow passengers. They are very pleasant on the whole. We’ve also run into a few people who we’d seen or met on previous voyages. But… Those who can recall our 2007 blog might remember we had a problem with a grumpy old man who was on our table for dinner: we got so fed up with him we demanded to be moved to another table and the other couple at the original table said ‘if they’re going, we’re going too’. Well, we went to the Captain’s cocktail party the other night and guess who we ran into?

**********************************************************************************

So that’s it for 2009 blog entry number one. This entry is dedicated to our beautiful, smart, funny Auckland-based friend Nina, who has recently joined me in The Club That No-one Wants To Join and is facing a spell of chemotherapy with cheerful courage. This dedication is made with whatever passes for prayers amongst heathens like ourselves and Everest-sized quantities of love and good wishes.