Circling Back

The sun is shining and the birds are chirping here on Christmas morning in Tahiti.

And Santa didn't find me. Was I naughty or does he not read this blog?

Today I travel to Auckland, sleep in a hotel, then proceed on to Tokyo the next morning.

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.

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.

Journey's End

"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.

"Uh, bar?" I didn't want to go to a bar. I wanted to pack.

"Sure, come to the bar."

"mumblestall no?"

"Well, if you come to the bar then, I will see you there."

Code Oscar

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.

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.

Let's start with facts, what I saw firsthand, then move on to what witnesses told me.

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.

Dare

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.

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.

Maybe You Had to Be There

Here's the video proof of our silliness on Polynesian Night.

On the Way Back

On our last day in the Marquesas, the ship woke up late.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Polynesian Night

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.

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.

Stupid Ship Tricks

Everyone on the ship, including the guides, was up and out on deck at six this morning.

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.

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.