tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48298683746046321462024-02-28T18:44:21.330-05:00Marie's World Tour 2011Marie Javins takes a tenth-anniversary lap around the world by local transport. In reverse of her 2001 journey.Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.comBlogger319125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-13240120140012843932012-01-02T22:04:00.006-05:002012-10-23T08:03:40.198-04:00Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Home.<br />
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See you for MariesWorldTour.com 2021.<br />
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Until then, I <a href="http://mariejavins.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">blog here.</a></div>
Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-78763758517758442632012-01-02T19:48:00.022-05:002012-05-05T12:10:26.320-04:00Waning Days<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After a few days of late-Christmas at my mother's house in Virginia, I headed up to DC to meet my college friends Anne and Leah, as well as Vern from last week on the <i>Aranui</i>.<br />
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We had a grand time getting manicures and pedicures (well, not Vern—who met us later—but Anne and Leah's daughters went to the spa along with us), grabbing dinner, and then on Monday morning, I headed back north on one of the $25 DC-NYC buses.<br />
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I texted Michael Kraiger as the bus passed <a href="http://mariejavins.blogspot.com/2010/11/saturday-on-snake-hill.html" target="_blank">Snake Hill</a> in Secaucus, and then again as soon as the bus pulled into Manhattan, out of the Lincoln Tunnel.<br />
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"Be there in three minutes." I watched the familiar-but-alien landmarks whiz by the window. And the crowds! So many people in Manhattan—they were all traveling at the end of the holiday.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TEdu6mD7rgw/TwUDfgZp-KI/AAAAAAAAQpY/WtAbO3b3ZuE/s1600/nyc1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TEdu6mD7rgw/TwUDfgZp-KI/AAAAAAAAQpY/WtAbO3b3ZuE/s320/nyc1.jpg" width="320" /></a>Michael Kraiger was at his office—once mine, as recently as February—which is a block from all the discount buses. I'd mailed him my keys, garage door opener, and watch <a href="http://www.mariesworldtour.com/2011/03/shedding.html" target="_blank">back in March,</a> remember? He brought me my keys and garage door opener.<br />
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The watch can wait, along with the dozens of boxes I'd sent him from around the world. I'll have to come in with my car one day and pick them up.<br />
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The day was warm as I waited, hugged against the wall of a shoe store with my backpack behind me.<br />
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A familiar face, dressed in black and with a stylish hat over gray hair, turned the corner.<br />
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"Hello, Marie Javins."<br />
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"Hello, Michael Kraiger."<br />
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We've been doing that for years (decades?). In a pinch, he'll call me Marie, but I never call him Michael except in business correspondence that other people might read.<br />
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He handed me my keys and held my backpack while I wound my arms through the straps. I left him—I'll go to the office next week, since I'm still on a 25-hour-a-month contract—and headed into the Manhattan Mall, down the escalator through JC Penney, and onto the PATH.<br />
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Today was a holiday, so the train was on a reduced schedule and went to JC via Hoboken, but I was surprised at how fast the ride was. <i>Zoom.</i> I was across the river.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JY4FEVuCJBc/TwUDnqjgvcI/AAAAAAAAQp8/vRD6sIuwUuA/s1600/nyc3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JY4FEVuCJBc/TwUDnqjgvcI/AAAAAAAAQp8/vRD6sIuwUuA/s320/nyc3.jpg" width="320" /></a>I texted 27Ray from Grove Street. "I'm waiting in front of Grove Cafe." My plan was to wait next to this because he could pull up in his truck, which was full of his stuff. He'd been housesitting for me since November 1, and was moving to a sublet in Fort Greene tonight.<br />
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"Be there in 8 minutes."<br />
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And he was, and I watched as he zipped past me and drove on down the street. Penance was he got to carry my bag to where he'd parked.<br />
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We checked my garage. Door opened, car wouldn't start. What a mess in there! Some things had toppled over, presumably during the earthquake, though maybe something had just settled. I grabbed a random bag, which I later learned fortunately contained some of my winter clothes.<br />
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Ray27 took me to Liberty State Park before going home. This seemed fitting, and I thought back to the end of MariesWorldTour.com 2001. I'd come in alone to Port Authority on New Year's Eve, then taken the subway to Babcock's apartment. I'd sat alone at midnight, listening to the cheers outside. In the morning, I'd taken the Staten Island Ferry to get a sad and realistic look at the ailing Manhattan skyline, which had lost two icons just a month-and-a-half earlier.<br />
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Today, the evening light over lower Manhattan was beautiful—all gentle pinks and blues—and ten years later, a new building had sprung up where there'd been nothing at the end of my last trip.<br />
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I heard the whirr-whirr next to me of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/27ray/" target="_blank">Yukon Ray ii shooting photos.</a> He really can't stop himself. But I didn't blame him. I self-consciously aimed my point-and-shoot, to try to capture the light on the city. To freeze the moment, the brief wisp of optimism and wonder at the end of a long journey around the world—<i>quick,</i> grab it before it evaporates into the mundane reality of daily life, before the sweetest promises in the world morph into abandonment and loss, before heartbreak erases hope, your mentions, and leaves you with having never existed, aside from within your own struggle and tears.<br />
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</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com2Jersey City, NJ 07302, USA40.7218318 -74.04470029999998840.7109873 -74.066394799999983 40.732676299999994 -74.023005799999993tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-25437672106875660472011-12-31T09:52:00.006-05:002021-04-13T11:17:18.761-04:00Aranui Trip Overview<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I put together a little overview of the Aranui trip. Enjoy!</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div align="center"><br />
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I stumbled off the plane into Newark Airport, two-and-a-half movies and a few hours of sleep after Tokyo, a night and 11 hours on the plane after Auckland, which was five hours on a plane and one hotel night from Tahiti. </div>
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This is definitely a silly route to take home. </div>
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I felt vaguely triumphant as I stood dazed on Terminal C's moving sidewalks, locked inside the enclosed space on the wrong side of passport control, the evening's dramatic sky outside the glass showing off across the departure gates lobby.</div>
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That's it then. I went around the world. </div>
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Again. </div>
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For ten months. </div>
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And now I was home. Which is the scariest part of all. What do the days ahead hold? But I didn't have time to think about that yet. I had to get to the Amtrak station—it's at the airport and I only had to take the Airtrain—and then get to Washington DC tonight. There I'd allow myself collapse before visiting with the Other Marie and heading to my mother's in the morning. </div>
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I didn't get any good photos of Newark's lovely sky tonight, but Ray, who is housesitting my apartment, said I could use a couple of his. He took photos too, right out the front window of my place in JC. </div>
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</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com2Newark Liberty International Airport, 10 Toler Pl, Newark, NJ 07114, USA40.68987 -74.17820999999997940.670878 -74.197756499999983 40.708861999999996 -74.158663499999975tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-24012317990087637582011-12-28T13:00:00.013-05:002011-12-29T18:20:30.682-05:00A Morning in Japan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"What should I do," I thought as I hurried to get my bag packed and down to Reception by the 10 a.m. cut-off.<br />
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Last time I did this, in 2003, I'd gone to a temple. Today I decided to go to a temple of a different type—I'd go to a place informally called Fabric Town or Fabric Street.<br />
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I knew I couldn't buy anything—I was on a fabric diet, having tons of it at home that I hadn't used yet in my bag-making hobby. Maybe because I'd been so busy making a wooden table and building a robot or baking pie. But that didn't stop me from wanting to look, to see what a fabric district in Tokyo might look like.<br />
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And here's how it looked...like a place I wanted to spend days exploring.<br />
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But I only had an hour.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-41171390797980112132011-12-27T22:14:00.003-05:002011-12-29T09:17:03.668-05:00Photos of the Marquesas Trip<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've uploaded my Marquesas photos into one giant photo album.<br />
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Take a look <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/102113106059156105480/AranuiInTheMarquesas" target="_blank">here.</a></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-2285325904263052772011-12-27T19:22:00.001-05:002011-12-29T09:12:51.264-05:00Overnight in Tokyo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'd booked my overnights in Auckland (both of them) and in Tokyo by strategically using points off my credit card and banking accounts, along with reviews on TripAdvisor.<br />
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Here in Japan, I'd nearly gone to a small Asakusa hotel that I'd been to twice before, once in the nineties and last in 2003. But then I found this one, <a href="http://www.hotel-yanagibasi.jp/en/" target="_blank">Hotel Yanagibasi,</a> which is right by the train and has free ethernet Internet, and was in the right points range.<br />
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My room is teensy here but it's all mine, and the bathroom is bigger than the dorm one on the Aranui (not saying much). I've got a fridge and a single-cup electric kettle, which means I had coffee in my room this morning without having to venture out in the cold.<br />
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But it's time now—to put on every long-sleeved item I have and my socks and Pumas (I threw away my worn-out sandals from Bangkok when I left the Auckland airport hotel)—and venture out into the morning chill.<br />
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I'll try to use my last Continental lounge pass at Narita later this afternoon, and will head to the fabric store before going to the airport. See you on the other side of the Pacific.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0Japan, Tokyo, Taito, Yanagibashi, 1丁目3−1235.6960312 139.78636251.2542941999999968 80.0207375 70.137768200000011 -160.4480125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-10933806775320419312011-12-26T18:55:00.000-05:002011-12-27T06:05:45.298-05:00One Leg Down<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I thought I'd have a hard time getting out of bed at 5:30 this morning in Auckland. I'd flown from Papeete and gotten in just before midnight.<br />
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A day later. Which is funny, because Christmas just vanished—POOF—destroyed by the International Date Line.<br />
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I wasn't doing anything anyway, since I had to sit on a plane half the day.<br />
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I had to be back at the Auckland airport by 7:15 a.m. this morning, so that an Air New Zealand check-in agent named Maria could berate me endlessly for 1) being in the wrong line, though I told her the agent had instructed me to go to this line and that the flight was oddly missing from the signs and 2) for not having a print-out of my itinerary for my onward legs. What, she can't just see it on her computer? It's all one ticket.<br />
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Apparently not.<br />
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Air New Zealand is crap. Every time I've flown with them on this trip, I've had to waiting in a horrible line because apparently they can't work out web check-in, and twice now, someone behind the desk has spent a bit of time aggressive pointing out to me that *I* obviously was mistaken about something. And if I have to watch that Richard Simmons safety video one more time...okay, I'm ranting. Back to the topic at hand.<br />
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Which is the sun rising over the Jetpark Hotel in Auckland this morning.<br />
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Almost enough to make it worth the detour from Tahiti. </div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-13211958654155937272011-12-25T12:27:00.001-05:002011-12-25T12:28:29.872-05:00Circling Back<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The sun is shining and the birds are chirping here on Christmas morning in Tahiti.<br />
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And Santa didn't find me. Was I naughty or does he not read this blog?<br />
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Today I travel to Auckland, sleep in a hotel, then proceed on to Tokyo the next morning.<br />
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Here is how I'm getting home. I realize it's a ridiculous itinerary, but it's all I could get. Star Alliance doesn't have a partner for the Tahiti-LAX or Tahiti-Honolulu route, so I have to back myself out. And I'm not allowed to backtrack on this ticket, so can't stay more than 24 hours in Auckland or Tokyo.<br />
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LAX is so close. But out of reach. I have to shower and pack, and then at 2:30, Beni will take me to the Papeete Airport, so that I can start this long, hideous process of sitting on airplanes and dragging luggage through immigration points.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0Papeete, French Polynesia-17.535022 -149.569594-17.5728335 -149.5986475 -17.4972105 -149.5405405tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-62490760222062739842011-12-24T02:47:00.086-05:002011-12-25T14:53:23.764-05:00Journey's End<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Come to the bar tonight." Earlier I'd promised our hakka-dancing, part-Vanuatuan waiter that I'd dance with him tonight, but I'd thought he meant at dinner, when the dance class and ukelele classes performed their final routine.<br />
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"Uh, bar?" I didn't want to go to a bar. I wanted to pack.<br />
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"Sure, come to the bar."<br />
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"mumblestall no?"<br />
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"Well, if you come to the bar then, I will see you there."<br />
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Carol, Walter, and Vern had actually saved me a seat tonight. Our good fortune to accidentally sit down together on the first night had become an occasional pattern, and I was so not complaining. We ate our last meal—and my final vegetarian one. I'd given up trying to explain what I can and can't eat early on the trip (I can't eat any seafood or fish) and just said "vegetarian." I had all kinds of veggies, and sometimes the cook would have made me something special, like a stuffed pepper or an omelette. Other times, I'd get what the others got, but without the main dish. The food was decent on the Aranui. The desserts were outstanding. Breakfast was pretty mundane, and we ran out of yogurt early.<br />
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Packing in a tiny room filled with ten people was pretty silly, but we'd all cooperated well in the dorm, and I think this group, dense living actually enhanced my Aranui experience. How else would I have all these French relatives for a short time? And there was nowhere to retreat from the masses, so I'd been forced to socialize.<br />
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In the morning, we all left our luggage in the center of the big dorm room (oddly, this big room has only 8 berths while the small room crams in 10), and headed to breakfast. I was looking forward to seeing my <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6947/1372/1600/coffeemug.0.jpg" target="_blank">little travel coffee press</a> again in Tahiti—I'd stumbled over a store in Tasmania that still had the old kind I'd used a decade ago, the kind that aren't even made anymore, and I'd bought five of the remaining seven in stock. Two for me, two for my mother, and one for <a href="http://www.amandacastleman.com/" target="_blank">Amanda,</a> who is as hooked on decent coffee as I am.<br />
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The ship slipped into Papeete under a mostly clear sky. A rainbow showed itself for just a moment, and then we docked. I dropped off my key and followed the others down the stairs off the ship. Beni would be along in a minute to pick up the Fare Suisse guests. I waited for the second run with Judy and Neil, who I'd ridden with on the way in. They were hilarious and adventurous people, a retired couple who sailed across the Atlantic and once had a farm. Judy and I both had early on confessed our New Yorker addictions to each other.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9fJuN-XJ6hA/TvYkFsKlc4I/AAAAAAAAQhA/qnsOwfd9ThY/s1600/Dship10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9fJuN-XJ6hA/TvYkFsKlc4I/AAAAAAAAQhA/qnsOwfd9ThY/s320/Dship10.jpg" width="320" /></a>My room back at Fare Suisse was heaven-sent after the tiny space allocated to me in the dorms. I spent the day wrestling my awkward wooden handicraft into wrapping and posting—bubble wrap isn't easy to find here, but Tourist Information* helped me track some down. And at night, I went down to the food trucks where a dozen other Aranui passengers were milling about. I found Vern and we walked out to the water's edge just in time for the sunset.<br />
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That was it, then. Flights out started tonight. I hadn't gotten one—mine was on Christmas day.<br />
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Tony came running up, breathlessly.<br />
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"Tony, you missed the sunset!"<br />
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"No, I was right over there. I ran four blocks to get here in time."<br />
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We hadn't had a decent sunset the whole time we'd been at sea. But today's was lovely, as the sun set towards Moorea, lighting up the container terminal.<br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">*If you ever need bubble wrap in Papeete, it's at a store called Hyper Brico on Av. Prince Hinoi near Hotel Tahiti Nui, and also at Carrefour.</span></i><br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-5929636544592598332011-12-23T02:13:00.004-05:002021-04-14T12:52:49.875-04:00Code Oscar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After our long day of activities on Rangiroa, we all were on the ship, heading back to Tahiti. I'm not sure of the time, but I think I started doing my laundry around 4 or 4:30 p.m. and events unfolded shortly thereafter.<br />
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Dance class was happening in the video room, which puts what happened next between 5 and 6. Probably closer to 6 as the French meeting about the next day's agenda began happening in the middle.<br />
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Let's start with facts, what I saw firsthand, then move on to what witnesses told me.<br />
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FACT: I was in the laundry room, which is several flights down from where the dormitory is located on the restaurant deck. I was using the dryer—which takes forever—when something odd happened outside. Water sloshed all over the porthole. Here's a quick video of what the window looked like moments before the water sloshed all over--odd, I thought. The sea was still. Rogue wave? I wasn't sure. I shortly learned that the ship had made a tight, sudden turn to loop back to where we'd just been.<br />
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WITNESSES: The people in the dance class heard (not saw) arguing among the crew, then some calming down, then flaring back up, and what they were certain was a scuffle. Some reported seeing the off-duty non-passenger-related crew drinking, first at the BBQ then outside Reception. The dance class report was corroborated by others who also heard, but the drinking at the BBQ wasn't seen by many, though lots of people said they'd seen them drinking on deck near Reception. But it's not a hundred percent, while the dancers telling me they heard arguing IS reliable info.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rCuooEpF8BY/TvYj8Upf8lI/AAAAAAAAQfo/phU3nKZdMj0/s1600/Cship3.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rCuooEpF8BY/TvYj8Upf8lI/AAAAAAAAQfo/phU3nKZdMj0/s320/Cship3.jpg" width="213" /></a>SPECULATION: I can confirm that one of the crew appeared to be quite intoxicated at the arts festival, as he rode the barge back with me, and at one point whispered "beer," presumably meaning he and others had smuggled beer into the festival, which isn't allowed. This is not confirmation of anything except that maybe the guys who work on the ship like beer and sometimes drink surreptitiously. All I'm saying is some guys like to drink beer, which isn't really speculation.<br />
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FACT: I folded my laundry and walked up the stairs to the restaurant deck. I pushed open the heavy door to the deck—dorm residents must go outside and walk along the starboard side of the Aranui to get to the dorm. But lots of crew members were standing at the railing. That's unusual, so I stopped. "Dolphins?" I thought there must be something pretty good out there for the crew to be watching. No, it wasn't dolphins, nor was it good. "What is it?" I addressed the first crew member I saw. He said something to me in French, then said in English "Very bad." He shook his head and went back to staring at sea. That's when I realized one of the orange lifeboats was on the crane and being lowered.<br />
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Holy smokes. I've never seen an orange lifeboat being lowered, not in all the freighters I took in 2001, not ever. Now I realized something serious had happened.<br />
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The crane operator released the two hooks on the lifeboat simultaneously, and the boat landed in the ocean with a huge splash. The pilot had it going almost upon impact, and the lifeboat roared off into the distance.<br />
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WITNESS: "I didn't see the man go in, but I saw people throw in three buoys." These are the orange rings you see on boats. They have little lights that turn on upon contact with water. The point is not as much to save the person as to mark where they might be. A buoy travels at the same speed and in the same direction as a person.<br />
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WITNESSES: Many of the French people reported hearing this over the loudspeaker. "Code Oscar. Homme a la mer." I would have ignored this and don't know if I heard it or not. Yet another announcement in French wouldn't be something that would have registered with me.<br />
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FACT: I watched as several crew members pointed to the sea. They were pointing to the buoys and the man, whose head could just be seen bobbing up and down some ways off. I started shooting video as soon as I saw the lifeboat being released, and the two searchers in the back of the lifeboat picked up the man at 3:42 of the real-time video. I don't know how long he'd been in the sea before the lifeboat was launched. If you watch the video (edited down to cut out long stretches of jumpy video of the boat), you can see that he didn't have a lifejacket or buoy to support him, and that waves occasionally went over his head.<br />
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The lifeboat searchers picked up the man, then proceeded to pick up two buoys. They headed back to the ship, and by then we could see that the man was alive, though stretched out with his head on the lap of one of the searchers. The pilot of the lifeboat then stopped short of the ship and headed back out to pick up the third buoy.<br />
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I couldn't see then if some people disembarked or not, but at this point, the boat was lowered one more deck to the restaurant deck, where a hinged steel gate was opened. Now the crew all urged us to get out of the way and clear the area. I couldn't see past the crew, so took my laundry and went into the dorm.<br />
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WITNESSES: Those on the decks right above said they saw the man walk out of the lifeboat shakily, sit down, and then start crying. I heard this from two eyewitnesses. So he was stunned but okay.<br />
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So that's what happened on the night of December 23rd on the ship. Now we're back into speculating—I imagine it's both the worst day of the man overboard's life, and his luckiest day. I did hear the next announcement, in which the names of several crew were read off and instructed to report in. In the dorm, we all wondered if they'd lose their jobs or if it was an attempt to sort out what had happened.<br />
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And yes, one of the names was the fellow who'd been so keen on the beer at the festival.<br />
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<br />Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-45021744077443097522011-12-22T20:49:00.000-05:002011-12-25T10:55:06.947-05:00Dare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I saw awkwardly on the little desk in the corner of the Aranui 3 dormitory. I couldn't have done this a week ago when my power strip had still been working and the desk had been covered in phones and cameras, but now with the power strip busted, there was plenty of space. I was waiting on someone to show up to repair my locker door, which had fallen off in my hands this morning. My French dorm-mates and I all had a good laugh over it, and now I hoped someone would show up to fix it before the day started.<br />
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Today we were all "swarming out" (as German guide Jorg likes to say) to various activities on the Tuamotu atoll of Rangiroa. We were now out of the Marquesas, having spent all yesterday at sea covering the distance from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus. I'd slept for a bit of it (I'd been up late the previous nice doing karaoke, which is not my thing but everyone had been so astonishingly bad at it that I hadn't been uncomfortable, plus I made 15-year-old Martin sing a duet of Summer Lovin' with me—at least I didn't make him do the Olivia Newton-John parts). I'd also sat around bullshitting with others for more hours than I should admit, given that I still have deadlines.<br />
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But today was scuba day for me. I hadn't been diving in ten years, and that dive, in Vietnam, had been a dud. My ears had hurt, I'd had a cold, and I'd ended up not getting underwater. Before that, I don't remember the last time. I was with Yancey in Belize, but I can't remember the year. </div>
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"Heck," I thought. "If I can karaoke, surely I can scuba dive." </div>
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I'm not sure that logic makes sense, but because I hadn't been diving in so long, the idea of doing it scared me. And when something scares me, unless it's REALLY scary, I like to try to do it to get past the fear.<br />
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I signed up for a refresher/beginner dive, and this worked out well because the guide took only me and Tony, the ship's photographer and videographer. Tony, it turned out, had taken the theoretical part of a PADI or NAUI course many years ago, so he wasn't a total novice either. Our guide was a skinny woman in her thirties or forties, and she took us out into the clear blue-green water on a Zodiac, along with another guide and two French beginners.<br />
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She threw Tony's gear into the water, then had him jump in and put it on there. I asked if I could do the standard backward roll off the boat, with all the gear on already, and she said sure.<br />
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I sat there for a minute, remembering a disastrous dive years ago in San Diego. I'd gotten seasick bobbing up and down waiting for Yancey and Babcock to jump into the Pacific. My inflater valve had gotten unclipped on that backward roll, and I needed a buddy to find it and snap it back in so I could reach it to inflate and not sink. But Babs had lost a fin in the sea and had swum off chasing it, while Yancey had gotten seasick before even leaving the boat, and hadn't jumped in yet. And I sat there in the rough surf, bobbing up and down while clinging to the anchor line, getting sicker and sicker while waiting for a dive buddy, until I'd reached a sickly green state of panic. In the end, Yancey had come in after me and clipped in my buoyancy control and inflated it, but I was unable to do anything by then aside from vomit and cling to the rope. In the end, I'd let go, floated to the front of the boat, and Babcock had dragged me out of the water, taken off all my gear, and tugged me over to the side of the boat to hold my head over the water so I could throw up.<br />
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So maybe you can see why I'm a bit apprehensive about my diving skills, and why I sat alone in the Zodiac for a second, psyching myself up.<br />
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I knew it was absolutely safe. The most we could go down here was between 20 and 30 feet. Nothing. It would be hard to hurt myself in this calm, idyllic dive spot.<br />
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I held on my mask and regulator, and leaned back.<br />
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And rolled and bobbed right up.<br />
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I gave the okay sign.<br />
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The guide took me down a few feet, signaling me to release the air from my vest. I felt panic rising, but she looked me in the eye, daring me to be illogical.<br />
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<i>I could do this.</i><br />
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We slowly descended. I held my regulator in with one hand, though my teeth were already gripping it enough to bite right through it.<br />
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<i>Breathe.</i><br />
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I kept my cool.<br />
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She left me on the bottom of the ocean for a minute while she went to get Tony. Then we were all three kneeling on the sand of the Pacific.<br />
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Our guide took both of us by the hands and led us around, releasing our hands to point out eels and colorful schools of fish. We were diving in something called the "Aquarium," which is an apt description.<br />
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As Tony and I got more confident, we just followed our guide around. At one point, Tony went chasing a stingray and got lost. The guide found him just by seeing his fin from the surface. That's how shallow the dive was.<br />
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We were out for what felt like a long time, and it did turn out to be a long time. Once the two dive-masters had hauled us all back into the Zodiac and we motored into shore, we learned that we'd missed lunch, an Aranui barbecue. We showered quickly, changed, and headed over.<br />
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I saw some gross-looking fish heads and thought "Oh, no food for me." Then one of the restaurant staff handed me a covered paper plate of vegetarian food and I laughed. They'd kept my lunch ready for me. <i>(Because I can't eat fish, I'm a vegetarian on board, as it seemed easier than trying to explain what I could or couldn't eat.)</i><br />
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I rested on a shaded bench, eating my lettuce and potato salad with a plastic fork, and waiting for my lungs to feel normal again. I'd been sucking up nitrox, which I don't think I've ever had before.<br />
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And finally, on the last barge going back to the ship, with the crew and the remnants of the food, I headed back to the ship.<br />
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</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-15477838331107721762011-12-21T14:10:00.004-05:002011-12-24T20:19:49.106-05:00Maybe You Had to Be There<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here's the video proof of our silliness on Polynesian Night.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-11996909359405818492011-12-20T22:11:00.023-05:002011-12-24T20:20:07.314-05:00On the Way Back<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On our last day in the Marquesas, the ship woke up late.<br />
<br />
We'd been docked back at Taiohae, Nuku Hiva since last night, and after Polynesian Night's festivities, I'd sat on the starboard side of the ship in the still night, grabbing the pay-ManaSpot hotspot signal that is strong on this quay, singing along quietly with the karaoke I could hear going on late upstairs on the pool deck.<br />
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By late, I mean we dragged ourselves out of bed between 7 and 8. My idea of late had changed—the sun is up early here and the day begins between 5 and 6.<br />
<br />
Some people walked into town and some caught the bus. I got some work done in the lounge, but lots of others had the same idea and I ended up joking and chatting and did very little in the way of work.<br />
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"I'll go to the post office in Ua Pou this afternoon and use their signal," I told someone who asked if they were distracting me. The ship was sailing from Nuku Hiva to Ua Pou over lunch. That's the town where we had seen the bocce game. Kids play on the anchor rope in Ua Pou. It's a friendly place.<br />
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At Ua Pou, I headed off the ship, but in Reception, found the carver from the festival waiting for me. He had brought me a herminette, as well as brought his deliveries for the other two passengers who had bought things from him on the afternoon of the first day of the Festival of the Marquesas. <br />
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He was a master carver, with truly unique pieces. Unfortunately, the one he'd chosen for me, while nice, wasn't quite the same level of uniqueness of the one I'd coveted at the festival.<br />
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I turned the herminette around in my hand. It was interesting, all points and squares, but I loved the curved rosewood one with the horse top and the horn bottom. A man from Iowa was taking that one home.<br />
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"Is the paddle already sold?" I pointed to another intricately carved piece he'd brought on board.<br />
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"Oui." A French woman was receiving that delivery.<br />
<br />
The man from Iowa was eyeballing the herminette earmarked for me. I had the other herminette back in the dorm, the one I'd purchased yesterday for $60. It didn't have the same meaning—I didn't know who'd carved it and it wasn't as nice as the horse one. But it was more detailed than the pointy one.<br />
<br />
"Is this one also $250?"<br />
<br />
"Oui."<br />
<br />
"I'm going to pass."<br />
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"You definitely don't want it?" The man from Iowa's wife was interested now.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OU-JbWGgS5I/TvT-UF9l0rI/AAAAAAAAQVE/WK02f6ufxbo/s1600/Ekidsswim05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OU-JbWGgS5I/TvT-UF9l0rI/AAAAAAAAQVE/WK02f6ufxbo/s320/Ekidsswim05.jpg" width="213" /></a>"No, I don't."<br />
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"Sold."<br />
<br />
She handed over 25,000 francs.<br />
<br />
And we were all happy.<br />
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At least, until I found out that the internet in Ua Pou was broken and I wouldn't get another chance to email in my Wanderlust blog due Friday in the UK. We'd arrive in Papeete after the end of the day in the UK, because of the time difference.<br />
<br />
"Maybe I'll get a chance in Rangiroa on Thursday," I thought.<br />
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Fingers in a crescent, as we say in Kuwait.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-2703223241296660302011-12-20T04:45:00.014-05:002011-12-23T17:20:46.790-05:00Polynesian Night<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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How had this happened? How had I ended up standing in front of the whole ship's passengers and crew on the Aranui's "Polynesian Night," ad-libbing into the microphone to introduce our parody of Jingle Bells? I don't even know how to deal with other people, remember? I live alone. I travel alone. I don't even like people most of the time.<br />
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But here I was, bullshitting my way through an introduction speech, then jingling my keys along as we sang an Aranui-themed version of a holiday classic.<br />
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The instructions had been to produce a song or dance from our home culture. The crew did it, singing and dancing for us. Mana, the entertainment director, had rounded up and taught passengers how to dance and scored a number. Six crew members—including a waiter, a security guy, and a man who worked in freight—who had danced in the festival in the Tahiti troupe donned their loincloths one more time to bellow and stomp around for us. <br />
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The French had cobbled together a song at the last minute, led by one of my dorm-mates. The Germans hadn't bothered. I figured the only thing more embarrassing than actually doing something would be NOT doing something, so along with Bob from Waynesboro and Maggie from Oakland and a germ of an idea from "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells," we wrote a song, completely with Vern, Bob, and Barry from Oakland doing hakkas at the "ha ha ha" and "hey" parts. <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kwDCKOz83aM/TvPNZ4png9I/AAAAAAAAQT8/-jq2COPIft4/s1600/Dpolynight12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kwDCKOz83aM/TvPNZ4png9I/AAAAAAAAQT8/-jq2COPIft4/s320/Dpolynight12.jpg" width="320" /></a>Unfortunately, organizing the gang meant emceeing and singing. I'm a reluctant performer, never the first one to take the mic. But when pressed, I know I can do it, so it wasn't the worst thing when I was suddenly up on stage. <br />
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The whole event was kind of ridiculous but was also highly amusing. I've acquired a video, which I'll upload from Tahiti.<br />
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To me, anyway.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-41392618688908664792011-12-19T22:00:00.016-05:002011-12-24T23:30:11.032-05:00Stupid Ship Tricks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Everyone on the ship, including the guides, was up and out on deck at six this morning.<br />
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We were all dressed and gawking with our cameras—the Aranui was performing a cool party trick this morning and no one wanted to miss it.<br />
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On approach to 'Ua Huka's bay of Vaipaee—which is rightly named Invisible Bay since it has a narrow mouth and doesn't really look like a bay until you're right up next to it and can see that there's a narrow passage between the cliffs—is too narrow to navigate the ship through. So the Aranui sits just outside of the inlet and sends cargo and us passengers in on barges. But 1) the ship has to get out of there later and 2) the ship could drift into the cliffs without constant vigilance, so the crew perfoms a fancy 180-degree turn first, effectively reversing into the bay, nose out. Then, to keep the Aranui in place between the cliffs, one of the crane operators wanders up into this cage as two crew members dons safety harnesses and hop into one of the green-and-white whaleboats.<br />
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This boat is then lowered into the sea, where the crew members detach the crane chains from the whaleboat, swap their safety harnesses for life jackets, start up the engine, and then take a rope lead that is unspooled from the back of the restaurant deck. They speed over to the cliffs with the rope, and one man then hops out of the whaleboat with the rope, which he loops over a huge permanent peg. Another rope is placed there as well, and then the crew does the same thing on the opposite side. The ship can then drift no farther than the give of the rope on either side, and can safely stay put.<br />
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We didn't go to shore at six a.m. We ate breakfast, showered, and prepared for our days as soon as the docking maneuver had ended. Then, at 8:15, passengers boarded the two barges 35 people at a time for our visit to the 'Ua Huka, one of the less frequently visited islands of the Marquesas. There, we piled into pick-up trucks for a ride to Vaipaee's small but excellent museum and arboretum.<br />
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Vern and I both headed for the first pick-up truck. He'd worked out before I had that you get the choicest handicrafts by being first on the scene and by sticking with the ship's guest lecturer, who normally works at a museum in France, but I'm a fast learner. We didn't just get in the first truck. We got in the first truck alongside the guest lecturer.<br />
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"Hey, there's a ukelele in my seat," I exclaimed. Our driver, it turned out, was also the musical accompaniment for Vaipaee's welcoming committee.<br />
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At the museum, women placed flower or seed leis around our necks.<br />
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"Is that the handicraft center?" I tried to act casual as I spoke to our guest lecturer.<br />
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"Yes."<br />
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Vern and I headed straight over and picked up the best pieces. He decided to buy two of them while I went for wooden tikis.<br />
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The museum, meanwhile, turned out to be run by one of the region's top sculptors, who sat behind its front desk. He'd collected artifacts from as far away as Papua New Guinea and had them all labelled and displayed. We browsed war clubs, spears, tikis, and ax heads before watching a welcome dance and then loading back into the trucks to ride over to the botanical garden.<br />
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The garden, or arboretum, houses all kinds of trees, many of them fruit-producing. Today's guide, Steven, shimmied up trees for us to pass down oranges, avocados, starfruit, and mangoes.<br />
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Mmmm, mangoes.<br />
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Our next stop was another handicraft center, in the village of Hane. Why mess with a winning formula? Vern and I headed in. I grabbed a herminette, another one of those war club-type things like the one I'd been wanting so badly a few days back at the Marquesan Arts Festival. This one wasn't as rarely exquisite, and I didn't personally know the carver, but it also wasn't $250 like that one had been. This one was $60. I held it in my hand, thinking about if I needed it.<br />
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Cedric from the dorm wandered by. "Don't put it down," he said. "Someone else will snap it up."<br />
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He was right. Others were hungrily oogling my herminette.<br />
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"If I buy this, it's going to be an albatross all the way home" I said to Cedric.<br />
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"But look at the price."<br />
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Damn.<br />
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I bought it. I now have a decorative herminette that is three-quarters my height. One end has a pointy beak on it, and the other has a pointy horn, or maybe bone. Neither end is suitable for shipping or carry-on, or even for packed luggage.<br />
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But it was only $60.<br />
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Lunch was a smorgasbord of all things fishy down the road in Hane (no, I didn't eat much with my seafood allergy), followed by a choice of a hike up to look at a tiki or the handicraft center of Hokatu. The Aranui crew had untied the ropes and sailed the ship around to meet us at Hokatu. The surf here was rough and wild, the coast similar to the rugged coast of Easter Island—even wild horses wandered around. There was no pier or dock or boat launch. The Aranui crew came to fetch the passengers in the whaleboats, so we had to pick our way along the rocks, then wade into the surf to twist around onto the boats.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEslAMRB1evgVEfgn0434kZzNROfCr1e95GIRaORSalY1sY0zqzWPJdbq_RtJnM_uG6MNhUE9uMoHl5oxHqaVTFnXNYzgyG_mZy_fT5p9D0AicpliaPGXygFAFfdxN1RaTgvAiEpyNg4Ml/s1600/B12-1929.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEslAMRB1evgVEfgn0434kZzNROfCr1e95GIRaORSalY1sY0zqzWPJdbq_RtJnM_uG6MNhUE9uMoHl5oxHqaVTFnXNYzgyG_mZy_fT5p9D0AicpliaPGXygFAFfdxN1RaTgvAiEpyNg4Ml/s320/B12-1929.jpg" width="320" /></a>One of the crew startled me by swinging himself up onto the boat—out of the sea and over the side. Where had he come from? He was wearing swim trunks and a hard hat, which made me laugh.<br />
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The whaleboats were smaller than the barges, and it took more trips to get everyone back on board the Aranui.<br />
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We chugged away from 'Ua Huka at four, passing two craggy islets some twenty minutes later. These were Teuaua and Hemeni, protected homes to thousands of terns, called kaveka. The birds chattered like mad and flew above their cliffs in giant swirls. They look like specks of dirt in my photos.<br />
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We'd had a long-day of excursions under the hot sun.<br />
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But there was no time for sleep. Tonight was Polynesian Night.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-79988295642721174612011-12-19T03:22:00.004-05:002011-12-24T23:24:57.087-05:00Lessons from Susan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've surprised myself with my ability to exist in a dorm and interact all day with other people. I'd even taken to joking with one French man about him running around the dorm in his underwear, whereas before I'd just pretended not to see.<br />
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The sole limit to my tolerance seemed to be breakfast. I'd choose a table where I could be relatively alone at for my morning meal—picking one where three of the four place settings had already been used, or taking one next to French-speakers that didn't mix with others, of which there were a few though not many—and down a few liters of the ship's weak coffee before pleading with one of the staff for a bit of yogurt. I'd cut up whatever fruit—which would change depending on the output of whichever island we were near—we were given into a bowl on top of granola, and then douse it in yogurt and voila, a decent breakfast. I passed up the eggs and bacon every morning. I'd had quite enough eggs in the earlier part of MariesWorldTour.<br />
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Some days yogurt was available on the breakfast buffet, but on days when it wasn't, I'd receive my yogurt quietly, as it was palmed off to me in a corner. I assume it's a "by request" thing, like fried eggs on a plate instead of scrambled eggs from the buffet.<br />
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Speaking of requests, I'd made a strategical error on Day One. I'd known through my own connections there had been a last-minute cancellation by a high-end magazine writer, and that a cabin had become available on this sold-out cruise, but I hadn't had the gumption to get upgraded out of the dorm by throwing around my credentials on the first morning on board, and anyway, maybe they'd sold off the cabin to a person on the waiting list. I'd quietly mentioned my writing work later in the day to one of the higher-level staff—though I'd foolishly downplayed it and hadn't even mention my weekly Wanderlust magazine web posts—after I'd been horrified at the size and population-density of the dorm.<br />
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As the days went on, I'd developed strategies for handling the situation—I'd shower during the French-speaking meeting when the other dorm occupants were away, use the tiny shower no one else liked anyway so I could take my time even once some French-speakers realized that by attending the English daily meeting, they too could have some down time. I avoided the musty co-ed toilet stall room by going into the ladies rooms by the lounge or restaurant. And I'd brought my own dollar-store power strip from Tahiti—which gave up the ghost with five days remaining—so that our room of 10 could manage charging our cameras and phones on the single outlet our room provided.<br />
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But as the days went on, I realized that the older man who had been magically spirited out of the dorm in the first 20 minutes on-board had taken the cabin I'd had my eye on. It took me several more days to piece together that he took some travel photos and that I could have been the one showering in private and not looking at French men in their underwear.<br />
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But then, I think of Susan, the passenger who teaches conflict resolution in California.<br />
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"Sometimes your needs and that of someone else are just different." That's one of the things she teachers her students. That's tough to accept sometimes, but the best example of that from my last few weeks has to be the person I saw on Day One in the guesthouse in Tahiti. She was going on about her phone not working here. I thought that was silly. Days later, I learned that she had a sick mother and it was actually a really big deal that she couldn't communicate with home. Now that her mother had died, I'd taken to communicating for her. I feel guilty every time I think of my non-charitable reaction to her initial remarks.<br />
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"You don't know her needs."<br />
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The other thing Susan had told me was about exclusivity. Would I really want the exclusivity of being upgraded, or being given an elite press experience, or being shown the best experience on board while the others experienced the reality that most of the 2,200 passengers a year experienced?<br />
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The answer at night, when I would clumsily climb up into my tiny berth, shifting my weigh while shimmying along up the bed to avoid bashing my eye on the sprinkler head on the ceiling, was "Hell yeah." <br />
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But during my rational moments of thought—post-liters of coffee—I knew the answer was "Certainly not." <br />
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I'd taken free stuff during the first MariesWorldTour. Mostly, I'd gotten things I'd learned I didn't need anyway, but I'd gotten a few trips that I'd had mixed reactions to. The best had been the canoe-camping safari in Zimbabwe. This was fantastic and I rate it among my top trips of all time. I had no problem writing rave reviews. But other trips had been mediocre—with one being just plain awful—and what I learned was that when you've met the press agents, made friends with them, and you have been hosted as opposed to paying your own way, you feel compelled to say something nice about an endeavor.<br />
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Much better to be objective, I'd remind myself when I thought about the sprinkler head, about the musty toilets, about me being in the way of seven others whenever I'm standing in the aisle by my locker, about how when you have the top bunk, you have nowhere to sit just to put sunscreen on your legs. I'd found very little information online about the dorms, so it's good to be free to write about the experience. Which wasn't horrible but wasn't great either.<br />
<br />
I still feel compelled to say nice things about the Aranui, even without the exclusivity factor. The sweet dining room staff goes to a lot of effort to find me food that doesn't have fish or shrimp in it. The kind man that makes sure I get my yogurt told me on Sunday that it was God's day—I have no concept of days here at sea and am a mild-atheist, meaning I don't care if other people want to believe in whatever they please so long as they leave me alone about not believing—and that seemed so gentle that I couldn't help but smile. The guy who teaches us drums, dancing, and hat-making also happens to like to go into shady Marquesan churches to sing beautiful hymns. The guides are patient beyond description, tolerating repeated requests for information that they've just finishing explaning to us. And watching the ship provide a lifeline of cargo to these remote islands is a marvelous experience. Seeing the cars, beer, canned goods, washing machines, and new bicycles materialize by crane out of our cargo hold is a unique experience in the world of containerized freighter travel. <br />
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But the number of passengers on board is the Achilles heel of the trip, as the swarms of people and the management it takes to transport them makes it feel more cruise-like and less freighter-like than most cargo ship journeys. We were carrying around 160-170 passengers, as opposed to the few dozen Paul Theroux described in his 1992 book "The Happy Isles of Oceania." He would have been on Aranui 1, I think, though it might have been the 2. The Aranui 1 held 25 passengers and was in service until 1991, when the Aranui 2 took over. The current Aranui will be replaced by the Aranui 5 next year, which will hold around 270 passengers—sixty more than the current ship. (There is no Aranui 4, since four is an unlucky number to the owners of the Aranui, whose heritage is Chinese.) On the up side, the trips will cost less, with the increased volume of passengers making up the difference in cost and ultimately generating more bookings. <br />
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For those of you looking for a smaller ship, you might check out the Tuhaa Pae, which makes similar runs to the Australs. These are only a week long except for the occasional itineraries that also take in Rapa Iti. Rumor has it that the next incarnation of the Tuhaa Pae (#4—this isn't a Chinese company) is a miniature version of the Aranui 3 and will carry up to 100 passengers.<br />
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By the time you read this, I'll have only two more days to go in my top-berth dorm bed in the Aranui 3. The close quarters have been trying but also a little funny. Everyone in the dorm has worked hard to cooperate in making a tolerable environment, and most surprisingly, I didn't explode at the close quarters and large groups of people on the ship. <br />
<br />
I think I even enjoyed it. <br />
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And I did it on my own terms—no freebies, no upgrades, and no exclusivity.
</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-87422790320533436372011-12-18T17:09:00.016-05:002011-12-24T23:19:22.016-05:00Souvenir Hunting in Tahuata<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On Sunday morning, one of the French women called my attention to the dorm's power strip, which was actually my power strip.<br />
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"Marie, it isn't working."<br />
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I'd bought the power strip in Papeete for five bucks at the local equivalent of a dollar store, and didn't plan on keeping it, but its resignation was five days early, and now eight of us would have to recharge our cameras and phones from a single outlet.<br />
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I shrugged, apologized for my feeble piece of electronics, and tossed it in the trash (then hilariously, a few minutes later, a different French women retrieved it to take to Reception to demand a new one—results TBD). I'd wondered why my camera battery had stopped charging early last night after our our afternoon excursion to Vaitahu, Tahuata.<br />
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Tahuata, just 4 kilometers away from Hiva Oa, is the smallest populated island in the Marquesas. The main village, which we had anchored next to, is called Vaitahu, and like most places we'd seen, it's a small village set against dramatic craggy hills carpeted in green foliage and trees. This shoreline was dramatic and rocky, and more importantly, this island featured a pig on a leash.<br />
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The pig belongs to the village of Vaitahu and she has produced two litters, so she's quite a valuable commodity on the local scene. She's taken for a daily swim on a leash, which is how she happened to be walking on a leash right when us Aranui tourists were unleashed onto Vaitahu.<br />
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I missed the pig swimming part and didn't hear about it until later—I was in the town's church, listening to Manarii of the Aranui staff singing hymns while I thought about bone carvings.<br />
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I'd never had much need for a bone carving before, but a carver named Teiki Barsinas had set up a table here and he was selling intricate and unique bone carvings for between $30 and $200. Vern had snapped up three items before I'd even seen the table. I'd fingered a piece and decided they were too expensive for me. <br />
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I checked out Teiki's table again on the way back to the ship. He had only a few pieces left—one stunning $200 tiki, some shark-tooth earrings, one carving of a whale, and one ivory-colored tiki necklace that I'd been coveting earlier but at $80, I didn't think I could swing it.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TakRadhzZpI/TvBTDtVfaII/AAAAAAAAQN8/Vk9CJZhW_OQ/s1600/EVaitahu20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TakRadhzZpI/TvBTDtVfaII/AAAAAAAAQN8/Vk9CJZhW_OQ/s320/EVaitahu20.jpg" width="320" /></a>"Now you have to wait three weeks to sell these," I joked with the carver. The Aranui comes by this town once every three weeks or so.<br />
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"True, so these are now on sale," he said via an interpreter, who was also the guest lecturer on our ship.<br />
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"Oh, really?" I tried not to appear too interested. "And how much might this be?" I pointed to the tiki necklace I'd been looking at earlier.<br />
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"5,000," answered Teiki. About fifty bucks.<br />
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"Sold," said Vern, picking up the necklace.<br />
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"Hey, I want that," I said in faux-indignation.<br />
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"Oh, sorry!" Vern didn't really need another tiki. He just couldn't walk away from such an exquisite piece at such a low price.<br />
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And that is how I ended up with a bone tiki from Tahuata.<br />
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Now if only I had a power strip.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-25356711792297436092011-12-18T02:07:00.009-05:002011-12-24T23:06:21.899-05:00Puamau, Hiva Oa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The English and German-speaking guests disembarked by barge at eight this morning for our excursion to the Iipona archeological site above Puamau, Hiva Oa. The French passengers were told to be ready for 8:30. At least Aranui had halved the swarms of people all descending into a small harbor at one time.<br />
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SUVs whooshed us up the hill to Iipona (admission 300 francs, pay at Therese Snack Bar, please—included on Aranui trips), where we were left in a mossy clearing in the woods. Five tikis surrounded us, including a frog-like woman tiki and also the largest tiki in Polynesia. The female tiki—Tiki Maki Taua Pepe—is said to represent a woman who died during childbirth, and was carved by her partner as a way to sooth her spirit, so she would protect the community rather than torment it. An animal is carved into the reddish base of the tiki.<br />
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"Some people say this is a llama, some people say dog. Me, I think it is a dog, because the dog is important to the Marquesan people," announced Meela, one of our English-language guides. I agreed with her—the dog does look like a llama, but what would a llama be doing here on Hiva Oa? Unless Thor Heyerdahl was right.<br />
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The tikis are in various states of completeness, with one being headless, but the largest tiki—Tiki Takaii—is missing his genitals and one arm, but is otherwise intact. He's said to represent a warrior chief. In "The Happy Isles of Oceania," Paul Theroux describes him as a "seven-foot monster, grimacing and clutching its belly," and describes the Iipona site as "a jumble of overgrown and scattered stones, and many carvings, some beheaded and castrated by souvenir hunters or missionaries." But this site was restored in 1991, and it's no longer overgrown or scattered, but instead is one of the top archeological sites in French Polynesia.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J9EzyqivmVo/TvBRjeF0FyI/AAAAAAAAQIk/PP4bv1hdVfA/s1600/DPuamau08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J9EzyqivmVo/TvBRjeF0FyI/AAAAAAAAQIk/PP4bv1hdVfA/s320/DPuamau08.jpg" width="320" /></a>The French passengers arrived and we English and German speakers scattered to walk or ride down the hill. Five minutes away was the tomb of the last chief of Puamau, who was the first of the valley's leaders to have converted to Christianity when the missionaries came. He asked to be buried in the Christian fashion, instead of having his body be placed in a cave or banyan tree, but, just in case the new god did not accept him, he also asked for tikis.<br />
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We walked back to the port, choosing one of two ways at the fork in the road.<br />
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"They both go to the same place," our guide Mila had told us. "But one goes through town and takes longer."<br />
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When I got to the fork in the road, I took it. And ended up in town, walking past trees and undergrowth so green I took off my sunglasses to make sure the polarized lenses weren't fooling me. The road curved past banana trees and exotic, colorful flowers, eventually leading me to the post office, which was closed on Saturdays and didn't offer wifi anyway, and then finally down to the sea, where the Aranui waited.<br />
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</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-44333182362401017322011-12-17T02:53:00.009-05:002011-12-24T23:02:25.198-05:00Marquesan Festival Day Two: Dancing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"They are not prepared for tourists," groused one of the ship's passengers, an expat from New Caledonia. "They should have this set up for tourists, but they are only doing the dancing for themselves, to show off to other islands. This whole thing is for locals, not for tourists."<br />
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"That is why I'm here," I thought, then edged away from her. You can't find the holy grail of non-beaten-paths and then complain that it's not touristy enough.<br />
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We were standing under a tree, cowering from the brutal sunlight with 35 other Aranui passengers as we tried to figure out where we were supposed to go to watch the morning's dances here on the second day of the Festival of the Arts of the Marquesas. We'd been told there was a covered place for us, but no one knew where that might be and the ship's guides were still transferring the other passengers by bus from where the barge had dropped them on the beach to the Tohua, the outdoor stage, which was a grassy square surrounded by a couple of lean-tos and one pavilion for VIPs.<br />
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We'd brought the VIPs with us from Taiohae's festivities where they'd been yesterday, and soon learned we could join them in spare seats in the pavilion. We headed around the back of it and to the right, where we were offered hands to be hauled up the side, one by one, over the steep rock base and up onto the platform.<br />
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A Polynesian woman in a straw hat motioned us into red plastic chairs in the back of four rows, where we sat to watch Nuku Hiva dances. The kids were dancing first. <br />
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The theme of this festival—which only happens every four years—is "The Apprentice." That means the kids are featured in some of the dances and songs. A group of kids—including a few blond ones—in green leafy skirts performed dances pretty well, twisting, jumping, and stomping. Their two dance coaches danced along from the crowd of spectactors, reminding the kids of their next steps—I saw the kids looking over at the men more as the dance wore on and they began to tire. The men zealously encouraged them, dancing vigorously from the sidelines.<br />
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After the kids danced off the field, the adults of the host island of Nuku Hiva took over, shimmying their way onstage.<br />
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A few speeches followed, and right on their heels was a two-hour lunch break. Everyone moved to a far pavilion, but the pig hadn't finished cooking yet, so people stood, bored, in close quarters. I headed back to the seating area where I snacked on walnuts I'd bought weeks ago at the Auckland airport supermarket, and sipped some water. I realized now that I should have stayed on the ship for lunch, and come in late afternoon as the most colorful events happened in the latter part of the day.<br />
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"Did you see the ceremony of the chairs," one of the ship's passengers asked me later. I witnessed the start of this now, as the Aranui staff came to the viewing platform to swipe all the plastic red chairs. Later, passengers returned with them, one by one, as they finished their lunches. The VIPs, meanwhile, looked flummoxed. Where had all their chairs gone? <br />
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The German couple next to me acquired two coconut halves from one of the snack stalls, which they dutifully attacked with my titanium spork. They made some progress but in time, gave up on the second half. We three stayed in the shade, doing nothing, bored while waiting for the dances to start. <br />
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Finally, all the red chairs had returned from their holidays and lunch was complete. New Caledonia's drummers took the corner of the field, beating up a pounding rhythm to welcome their dancers who showed up in a selected variety of New Caledonian traditional skirts. Some wore magenta and yellow while others wore dried grass. Rapa Iti's dancers, who had made such a dramatic entry yesterday when they shimmied and swaggered their way into the welcoming ceremonies, did not disappoint when they were up next.<br />
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Rapa Iti dancers wore what looked to be dried leaves and skeleton paint. They roared and vamped—these guys had great senses of humor and were real crowd-pleasers as they leapt about, stomped, and generally tried to look terrifying. The women laughed and the men stuck out their tongues. One man in white paint—who turned out to be the nephew of one of our guides—danced so hard his skirt shimmied right off leaving him surprised to unexpectedly be shaking his butt in his blue-and-white-striped underwear in full view of several hundred spectators. He laughed, reached down to his ankles to grab his skirt, and tied it back on as he did an abbreviated dance.<br />
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<br />
"Where is Rapa Iti?" I whispered to the blond German woman next to me. "I'd never head of it before yesterday." <br />
<br />
"I don't know," she answered. She'd never heard of it either. Someone later told me that it's the southernmost of the Australs, the most isolated of all the islands in French Polynesia. Obviously, it's small—the word "iti" means small in contrast to "nui" meaning big—but Rapa Iti's size didn't deter its dancers from joyfully producing some of the most raucous dancing of the day.<br />
<br />
Rapa Iti and New Caledonia were part of the guest delegations, groups that were not from the Marquesas, which included the Tahiti delegation that six staff members from our ship were dancing and playing with. <br />
<br />
Rapa Nui performed next—that's Easter Island's delegation, and they'd been on the same flight with me a week ago. Yesterday someone near me had commented on their pale skin color. True, they were the palest delegation. They were also the only Spanish-speaking group. <br />
<br />
Later, someone had joked to me about how they'd been surprised Easter Island even sent a delegation. "How many people can live on Easter Island?" <br />
<br />
I bristled. "Nearly five thousand people, and there are two dance troupes that perform almost nightly for all the tourists." <br />
<br />
Some of the smaller islands were were visiting had total populations of 600-700. The largest population of any of the Marquesan islands was here on Nuku Hiva—2,664 inhabitants. Easter Island was huge by comparison. Their dance troupe showed it—they were well-rehearsed, even slick.<br />
<br />
A barge for dinner on the Aranui was leaving at five, and I was dehydrated and ready for a break. I jumped off of the raised platform, went around the performers, and walked up to the handicrafts pavilion. I wanted to buy a piece from the man we'd met yesterday, a master carver from Ua Pou. He'd told me the remaining "herminettes" were needed for the dancing tonight, but I wanted to make sure he knew I was serious about buying one. <br />
<br />
I couldn't find him. I'd have to look for him when we next visited Ua Pou again, later in the week. <br />
<br />
I found a 4WD that was filling up with Aranui passengers. It was "Vai'i," the Toyota Hilux that I'd been in for our safari from Taiohai the first day we'd arrived on Nuku Hiva. We drove back to the barge, which was pulled right up to the beach. The staff dropped the hinged front side of the boat down into the surf, and helped us all on board, one by one. We motored around the dozen moored sailboats—everyone traveling in the region had come to the festival, including a couple from Long Beach, NY, that was sailing around the world—and when we reached the staircase that led up to the ship, we all stepped off the barge and onto the ship's staircase, one by one, timing our steps with the waves which gently controlled our ascents.<br />
<br />
Later, I'd go back to the dances, where by night, hundreds of Marquesans in yellows, reds, and greens would stomp, shake, and whirl about under the floodlights, to the thundering of a dozen tall drums.<br />
<br />
Marvelous.
</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-56774526293797624952011-12-16T03:21:00.010-05:002011-12-24T22:58:09.258-05:00Marquesas Arts Festival Opening Ceremony<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Men in traditional dress pounded on drums while each island's delegation walked, shimmied, or hakkaed onto the grassy football field on the edge of Taiohae. This was the Festival of Marquesan Arts, which happens once every four years. Like Leap Year, but with drums.<br />
<br />
I cowered under a scarf while a woman from Tahiti explained to me what was going on. "Now that's the Catholic priest doing a prayer. Now they will sing hymns. Now there will be speeches."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7IyG048LoYo/TureUeYVuOI/AAAAAAAAQD0/MhQdzkahPYE/s1600/Bopeningceremony18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7IyG048LoYo/TureUeYVuOI/AAAAAAAAQD0/MhQdzkahPYE/s320/Bopeningceremony18.jpg" width="213" /></a>At the speeches, a low groan went over the crowd. Half the people left, so I did too, to head downtown to walk around and see what handicrafts were on offer.<br />
<br />
In the afternoon, we went to an event that showcased traditional tattooing, basket and hat-weaving, and wood carving.<br />
<br />
The Ua Pou delegation was demonstrating the wood carving. One of the Aranui passengers bought an exquisite piece with an ax-head on one end and what looked like a giant tusk on the other (sort of like a huge wooden bottle opener) for 25,000 frances, which is roughly $250.<br />
<br />
I'm jealous. I might have to buy a piece too, though the carver told me he couldn't sell them until after the dances tomorrow. The team is using the pieces in their dance.<br />
<br />
A French man was documenting the Ua Pou delegations experience here as part of a larger project, and he translated for me as I asked questions to the carver about when I could buy a piece from him.<br />
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His work was exquisitely detailed. Vern had shown me the difference between a highly crafted piece and a simple piece done with no nod to craftsmanship. These were brilliant.<br />
<br />
"Why does he sell them so cheap?" I asked the French man as we walked away from the Ua Pou pavilion.<br />
<br />
"That's the culture of Ua Pou. It upsets me—I know how long they've spent working on these pieces and how little they have, but it isn't in their culture to overcharge."<br />
<br />
I'd thought he'd looked upset that the man had charged 25,000 francs. He'd given me something to consider, though it seems NOT-buying wouldn't help the situation.<br />
<br />
Here are some photos from the opening ceremonies.<br />
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</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-15671052035572305272011-12-14T21:57:00.003-05:002011-12-24T22:49:35.264-05:00On Safari in Nuku Hiva<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zHbMqRBYHPg/TupdW-1OwzI/AAAAAAAAP7U/64X2JgZVbPU/s1600/121401.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zHbMqRBYHPg/TupdW-1OwzI/AAAAAAAAP7U/64X2JgZVbPU/s320/121401.jpg" width="320" /></a>The ship had pulled into Nuku Hiva's port of Taiohae sometime during the night, but apparently the wifi signal doesn't work until "someone goes into the gas station and turns on the router."</div>
<br />
Lots of people desperate for news from home were giving me the hairy eyeball in the the lounge. I'd positioned myself by the window, where I could grab the paid signal with my username and password I'd purchased while in Tahiti. I was starting to fear for my safety when I realized it was time to disembark for our "safari."<br />
<br />
We all disembarked by walking down the portable stairs to the dock. There, dozens—maybe 50 or 60—of Land Rover, Toyota Hiluxes, and any 4WD the island of Nuku Hiva could dig up waited for us. Every vehicle came with a driver, decked out in a yellow button-up shirt.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W6ax8mM2IuY/TuqvWtRpsOI/AAAAAAAAP7s/1VLZifB7qPE/s1600/121405.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W6ax8mM2IuY/TuqvWtRpsOI/AAAAAAAAP7s/1VLZifB7qPE/s320/121405.jpg" width="320" /></a>I'd eaten breakfast with Vern the cartographer and tiki hobbyist, and he found us a Toyota Hilux with two remaining seats. Nuku Hiva is Typee territoriy, where Melville famously jumped ship, hung out for three weeks, and managed to make an outstanding book out of it, about two seamen who unexpectedly find themselves among cannibals.<br />
<br />
Salacious unsubstantiated man-eating guide stories aside, Marquesans don't eat people and haven't done this in any of our lifetimes. Anyway, Vern and two French people were in the car with me, and two of the three would make a heartier meal than I would.<br />
<br />
The tremendous line of vehicles roared out of port and into Taiohae, then hung a right to follow a mountain road to the top of a peak, where somehow, all these trucks found parking.<br />
<br />
We all swarmed out of the 4WDs and over to the viewpoint for a nice, green panorama and bay beyond. One man had the ground collapse below him and slid down the cliff. Fortunately, he didn't fall far, but he'll spend the next week with his foot up in his cabin.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tCWJx14K1UA/TuqvdL4j8KI/AAAAAAAAP8Q/AJ0Bqa9A_-0/s1600/121409.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tCWJx14K1UA/TuqvdL4j8KI/AAAAAAAAP8Q/AJ0Bqa9A_-0/s320/121409.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
I was enjoying the truck trip but the masses thing was not so cool. That's been the down side of this whole trip. I can't say that the tremendous number of people ruined the view—it didn't. But every photo stop took 20 minutes and this was one of the largest groups I'd even been a part of. (I was on a cruise ship once, the QE2, but you didn't travel as a pack on the QE2.)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YK4rBRT1lFQ/TuqvjTOgtVI/AAAAAAAAP8k/Ira9zBCXUSg/s1600/121412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YK4rBRT1lFQ/TuqvjTOgtVI/AAAAAAAAP8k/Ira9zBCXUSg/s320/121412.jpg" width="213" /></a>Once we were back in the car, we headed on up the mountain and down switchbacks on the other side, to the Kamuhei archeological site, which is in the shade of a huge banyan tree. I wandered off by myself to look at petroglyphs, but this turned out to be an error as I had to then wait for the rest of the group to finish its guided tour before the line of trucks drove back to the Aranui for lunch as we motored out of the Nuku Hiva and to the next island of Ua Pou.<br />
<br />
Hakahau, Ua Pou, is probably pretty slow most days, but with much of the population gone to Nuku Hiva for the Marquesan Arts Festival that was due to start in the morning, the pace of life was catatonic. We fanned out to walk the streets, view the church with its uniquely carved pulpit, or hike to a nearby viewpoint. I used the post office wifi signal even though the post office was shut—not because I needed to go online, but because there wasn't much else to do.<br />
<br />
Then, as I walked slowly back to the beach near the port, I came across a bocce game of about ten players. Men and women of all ages were playing, pitching underhand or with a rolling technique, and everyone was really into the game.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UiJ_mr2tpjw/TuqwKmmRLGI/AAAAAAAAP_A/aRc9F9ykTb0/s1600/121431.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UiJ_mr2tpjw/TuqwKmmRLGI/AAAAAAAAP_A/aRc9F9ykTb0/s320/121431.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
I was too, and stood watching for 15 minutes. This was what we were here for, to see local life.<br />
<br />
I never did figure out who scored and who didn't, but no one seemed to mind me watching, and in time, I walked back to the ship, dodging newly opened containers, shiny new girls bicycles, and palettes of junk food.<br />
<br />
We'd turn around and head back to Nuku Hiva tonight, with 15 new passengers who were local people going to the festival. There were no berths left, so they'd sleep around the swimming pool. Our arrival was scheduled for four, but we'd have to wait until seven for a spot to open up at the dock.<br />
<br />
Then, tomorrow the festival would begin.
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia-8.8604808 -140.1420882-8.9526963 -140.2650592 -8.7682653 -140.01911719999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-50036506158242614232011-12-13T23:41:00.034-05:002011-12-24T22:45:26.790-05:00Atuona, Hiva Oa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For once, I didn't wake up frozen in place by the knowledge that 7 people were bustling about right where I had to perform acrobatic moves to descent from my bunk via a small ladder.<br />
<br />
That's because we were due to have a wifi signal in the lounge this morning and it was only five a.m. I was determined to get online and send my outgoing mails before the signal rush.<br />
<br />
I spider-shuffled my way down the berth—ouch, hell, what was that? Oh, so THAT's why the sprinkler head at forehead-level was duct-taped with padding—and flopped down the ladder. I pulled on my clothes in the one large bathroom, grabbed my laptop, and headed upstairs to the lounge.<br />
<br />
Where the wifi signal was slow but reliable until too many people joined the network. It slowed down, but was still working until one couple came in and sat down.<br />
<br />
I didn't notice it was off at first, but then Judy's MacBook Air wouldn't go online. It wasn't her. See if you can identify the culprits here.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq30rP9ZM2Utn25Ux-C71lPStvEvQXLGLUiXaQPSOg29yUmLRRj1p1rb-WvdDL5Ey6dfVxz3zu9H3je8-vXWNcTTXAzyeGizphYyHDtpOHPbm17ur4o3MairCL7tAdb4fFk35JmWeOLLf4/s1600/Cdec12-1303.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq30rP9ZM2Utn25Ux-C71lPStvEvQXLGLUiXaQPSOg29yUmLRRj1p1rb-WvdDL5Ey6dfVxz3zu9H3je8-vXWNcTTXAzyeGizphYyHDtpOHPbm17ur4o3MairCL7tAdb4fFk35JmWeOLLf4/s320/Cdec12-1303.jpg" width="213" /></a>Woman: "My video says it's going to take 17 hours to upload."<br />
<br />
Her husband: "My antivirus is updating. It said I had a virus and had to download an update immediately."<br />
<br />
Internet go boom.<br />
<br />
After breakfast, I told the front desk that the internet-go-boom, and one of them came up and said "Did someone download an antivirus?" They re-set, and it worked fine for a while.<br />
<br />
At nine, I caught the Aranui-sponsored bus to the Atuona town cemetery. We were on Hiva Oa, former home to Gauguin and burial site of both him and Jacques Brel, who was a famous Belgian singer. Not so famous that I know much about him, but quite famous during his time in Europe.<br />
<br />
Huh. So that's Gauguin's grave, I thought. He seemed like a jerk to me, so I wasn't quite sure what I was doing here at his grave, nor was I sure what I was doing at the Gauguin Center a short time later after I walked down the hill to town (Aranui provided a bus for this for those who weren't into walking but it's a short distance).<br />
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Aranui sent a bus again to take us to what seemed to be the town's only large restaurant, where a buffet feast of fish products was provided. There was some pork and goat too, but I'm not really big on those, and didn't really even want the smoked chicken. I overdosed on carbs then bolted.<br />
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Back in town, I was the only Aranui passenger roaming the streets. Well, streets is a bit of an exaggeration. While this was a metropolis compared to Fakarava or Fatu Hiva, not a lot happens in Atuona. I'd already looked at the handicrafts—amazing bone carvings here for $700—and Gauguin stuff, so I walked along the road looking for the snack bar mentioned in my Lonely Planet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCSckLOnkBDCgveUeHjJ0vl_qqV-AFItEV9YPSirHtZKE-sY_6x6nldYwaYY31Ml76qFNmiG8Fn4ozroso_iL3Lw19xFJgmfRgOfMqlqhzKLCBIsn0QynuxetvGfvL5kMDmVenTqwxxLos/s1600/Edec12-136.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCSckLOnkBDCgveUeHjJ0vl_qqV-AFItEV9YPSirHtZKE-sY_6x6nldYwaYY31Ml76qFNmiG8Fn4ozroso_iL3Lw19xFJgmfRgOfMqlqhzKLCBIsn0QynuxetvGfvL5kMDmVenTqwxxLos/s320/Edec12-136.jpg" width="320" /></a>And there it was, right across from the post office.<br />
<br />
I noticed an espresso machine behind the counter. Gobsmacked, I asked the shopkeeper "Avez-vous espresso?" "Oui." "Avez-vous cappuccino?" "Non." "Okay, un espresso, por favor."<br />
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<i>Shit. I was doing it again.</i><br />
<br />
He answered me in English. "250 francs, please."<br />
<br />
I sat down with my espresso, pulled out my laptop, hit my espresso with my laptop and promptly spilled half my espresso all over the table, cleaned it up and meekly sat grabbing the post office signal until my espresso ran down, then I bought more and sat in the snack bar until my battery ran down.<br />
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<br />
The buses roared by, taking the Aranui passengers back to the boat. Some of them walked. I walked too at 2:30 when I realized the bus didn't leave until 3 and that the walk would probably be pleasant.<br />
<br />
The hike was easy, with only a gentle slope, and it took me three miles around the large bay and through the palm trees and foliage that lined the single road back to the port. The hills rose above me on the left, covered in trees. The sun beat down, but I was swathed in a scarf, having learned my lesson yesterday with the sunburned nose.<br />
<br />
And best of all, I was completely by myself.<br />
<br />
Alone at last.<br />
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</div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0Atuona, French Polynesia-9.802999999999999 -139.0396-9.80839 -139.0511375 -9.7976099999999988 -139.0280625tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-13046241529154071192011-12-13T02:35:00.040-05:002011-12-24T22:43:22.433-05:00Fatu Hiva<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Oh god, they're still out there."<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nC1pJh9WVj8/Tud22zFxW8I/AAAAAAAAPxI/Zjmg7SieCEQ/s1600/Ofatuhiva03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nC1pJh9WVj8/Tud22zFxW8I/AAAAAAAAPxI/Zjmg7SieCEQ/s320/Ofatuhiva03.jpg" width="320" /></a>
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<br />
I peeked out of the curtain on my top bunk in the dorm on the Aranui combination freighter/passenger vessel. We were almost to Fatu Hiva, and I had to find my way out of bed. More importantly, I had to pee.<br />
<br />
But the other dorm residents were standing under my bed in the tiny corridor, shuffling back and forth to begin their days.<br />
<br />
Again I was faced with the issue of crawling out of the top bunk while avoiding the sprinkler hub with the ladder being by my feet, people just below, and no way to get out gracefully due to the shallow depth of the berth. My feet had to go first and I'd been scooting/shuffling out for a few days.<br />
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And there were French people in their underwear all over and me without coffee again.<br />
<br />
<i>Sigh.</i><br />
<br />
Every morning was going to start like this, wasn't it? With me having an inward hate-fest about the dorm bunk. I suddenly found myself regretting my distaste for exclusive treatment and press trips. Should I have waved around my book credits and <i>Wanderlust</i> magazine cred?<br />
<br />
No, no. That would be wrong. I'd be beholden to the ship's PR department, and the free trips I'd taken in the past had given me mixed results. When they're good, they're fun. When they're bad, you're stuck with a moral dilemma. Anyway, no one offered.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B2JhQDXppqc/Tud4IrfTHeI/AAAAAAAAPx4/JnHJze8jWOc/s1600/Ofatuhiva08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B2JhQDXppqc/Tud4IrfTHeI/AAAAAAAAPx4/JnHJze8jWOc/s320/Ofatuhiva08.jpg" width="320" /></a>I grumpily managed my way out and into one of the co-ed toilet compartments, then squeezed into the incredibly small shower. I hung things from hooks and balanced my Aranui-provided towel and Sydney-provided flip-flops on top of the door opening.<br />
<br />
I headed in late to breakfast and sat in the corner alone, but was soon joined by a pleasant British couple. After two cups of weak coffee, I was a little more human, which is good as I had to spend the day in the company of others touring two smalls towns on the island of Fatu Hiva.<br />
<br />
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We disembarked before the cargo unloading begain, and that's when I remembered my Antarctica trip. We'd had a hundred people then, and the hundred people descending onto an island to photograph penguins hadn't been anything like I imagined. And here in the Marquesas, we had somewhere between 160 and 200 people, all making a beeline for the handicraft center.<br />
<br />
This was okay, in the end, but it took some getting used to. I was able to visit the church with Susan from Long Beach who was originally from the Bronx, and after we re-boarded the Aranui and sailed around this hilly green barely populated island, then hiked above the Bay of Penises with Vern from Lorton.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0DvGLjiBBaM/Tud6ghU3ugI/AAAAAAAAPyo/DCsWd-zFZ7E/s1600/Pfatuhiva3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0DvGLjiBBaM/Tud6ghU3ugI/AAAAAAAAPyo/DCsWd-zFZ7E/s320/Pfatuhiva3.jpg" width="240" /></a>The Bay of Penises was beautiful on the scenic view department, but a total disappointment on the phallic front. The pinnacles in the surrounding hills reputedly look just like penises. Well, I suppose there are all shapes and sizes in the world, but the hills just looked kind of hilly and a bit rocky, not really phallic at all.<br />
<br />
"I guess there might've been erosion," said Vern, doubtfully.<br />
<br />
The missionaries had changed the name to Bay of Virgins when they arrived, which I could find even less justification for in the rocks.<br />
<br />
We were rained on and sunned on over the course of the two small villages, and when we finally arrived at the pier for our barge back to the ship, a local woman was screaming a steady stream of obscenities at another local woman. This was a town of 200, so bad blood must be a tough thing, but fortunately, the town's policeman showed up quickly and intervened. I wonder what other crimes he'd had to solve. Missing pig? Cat up a tree? Container showed up with half a delivery of Coke?<br />
<br />
The rain pattered on and off as we stood alongside the docking area on a concrete volleyball court, keeping an eye on the angry woman to make sure she was nowhere near us. The policeman stayed with her for a long time, talking her down, until she sat crying, her fury spent.<br />
<br />
The barge slipped in between cargo deliveries and ferried us back to the ship for sunset.<br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com2Fatu Hiva, French Polynesia-10.4904907 -138.64891339999997-10.5578962 -138.69022989999996 -10.423085200000001 -138.60759689999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829868374604632146.post-60359467731374471832011-12-12T02:20:00.003-05:002011-12-24T22:41:22.871-05:00A Day at Sea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I awoke in my top bunk and stared at the ceiling for a while.<br />
<br />
What the hell am I doing, I thought. 15 days in a dorm, stuck in a shallow top bunk with no privacy retreat on the whole ship! I live alone. What made me think I could do this? I didn't even want to go to breakfast. There would be other people at breakfast, all crowding around the buffet table for dibs on salami, weak coffee, and cheese.<br />
<br />
<i>Ugh.</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ixr2cRwsGJo/Tud0-Rp46iI/AAAAAAAAPvo/aZ5AeOn3uTM/s1600/Kdrumschool3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ixr2cRwsGJo/Tud0-Rp46iI/AAAAAAAAPvo/aZ5AeOn3uTM/s320/Kdrumschool3.jpg" width="213" /></a>Eventually, my body rebelled against lying prone in the top bunk—I'd taken my Kindle to bed early last night, coincidentally reading the first of Jack London's South Sea Tales the night we'd gone to Fakarava, setting for his hurricane and pearl story, and there's only so much time you can lie down in a confined space—and made me scrunch my way to the bottom of the bed where the ladder lives.<br />
<br />
I peeked out of the curtain, waiting for a moment when I wouldn't stick my foot in someone's face in the aisle.<br />
<br />
There, now's my chance.<br />
<br />
I stuck one foot on the ladder. My other foot was curled up underneath me and wasn't going to be able to swing around to get on the ladder. I couldn't lift my body to move my head due to being hindered by something immoveable above me. I pushed it—oh, the ceiling. I needed a new plan.<br />
<br />
Pulling my foot back in, I tried again, this time catching on to leverage my weight against my locker to lift my body out of the bunk and onto the ladder.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OBy3XBWIvm0/Tud0zgMB_dI/AAAAAAAAPvY/Qy_wYH_7MUU/s1600/Kdrumschool1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OBy3XBWIvm0/Tud0zgMB_dI/AAAAAAAAPvY/Qy_wYH_7MUU/s320/Kdrumschool1.jpg" width="320" /></a>At least I'd stayed in bed long enough that the other dorm inhabitants had already gotten up and left. I showered, changed clothes quickly while others were out, left my laundry bag on the bed for collection for free laundry day ("We don't do socks or underwear") and headed late to breakfast.<br />
<br />
Almost all the food was gone, which was good as I had to improvise. Ah, we had yogurt, granola, fruit, and bowls! I had this with a few schooners of the weak coffee and headed down to Polynesian drumming school.<br />
<br />
Four tourists were banging on drums in the video room. Six more watched. The drummers made a loud, pounding racket, smiling with delight as they thumped the drums.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XODt34NRq0Y/Tud1doe4NfI/AAAAAAAAPvw/eykUoUE8w0E/s1600/Lhats1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XODt34NRq0Y/Tud1doe4NfI/AAAAAAAAPvw/eykUoUE8w0E/s320/Lhats1.jpg" width="320" /></a>Now I was in a much better mood. Happy drummers had the side effect of making the at-sea day that stretched out ahead of me more appealing.<br />
<br />
At 9:30, the instructor announced it was time to go upstairs and make hats. We dutifully followed him up to poolside, though no one was quite sure what he had in mind.<br />
<br />
Hats made of leaves was what he had in mind. He showed the group how to weave reeds into matted hats. People who just happened by also stopped in, curious about weaving a hat out of reeds.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OR9okAbWovw/Tud2cG6U_sI/AAAAAAAAPwg/dUYqoxQPzb8/s1600/Nbridge2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OR9okAbWovw/Tud2cG6U_sI/AAAAAAAAPwg/dUYqoxQPzb8/s320/Nbridge2.jpg" width="320" /></a>"Marie, did you see how he did that?" One of the women who had been staying at Fare-Suisse in Tahiti was struggling.<br />
<br />
"Over under over," I said. This was like a Looper-Loom, like making a hot pad on a toy loom in fourth grade.<br />
<br />
Then it was time for our first lecture on the history of the Marquesas. The woman who had struggled brought along her hat, dismantled it and started over, ending up with a perfectly acceptable plant-hat.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZwksX6zYfHk/Tud2l3WMjZI/AAAAAAAAPw4/irBMlk7kwRk/s1600/Ofatuhiva01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZwksX6zYfHk/Tud2l3WMjZI/AAAAAAAAPw4/irBMlk7kwRk/s320/Ofatuhiva01.jpg" width="320" /></a>After lunch, we had a bridge tour followed by a lecture on tomorrow's activities. I wanted to nap after, but dreaded the thought of climbing back into my top berth.<br />
<br />
But I was in a better mood now. The Aranui crew had done a great job of filling up our first sea day. I was still apprehensive, but today had worked out well and I hadn't lost it over the dorm yet.<br />
<br />
This morning, I'd woken up knowing I didn't want to sit in a dorm on a ship for two weeks. But today, after the staff activities, I thought that maybe I could pull this off. <br />
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<br /></div>Marie Javinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12632729774717864231noreply@blogger.com0