The thing we were most looking forward to is visiting Australia, and we started that today. It’s always nice to start out with a welcome from the aboriginal owners of the land. We got a first-class welcome from a story teller and a didjeridu player.

The thing I most wanted to see in Brisbane is Kinston-Smith’s plane, the Southern Cross. Kingsford-Smith is probably the best pilot from the early days of aviation. He used this Folker tri-motor to gain many of his records, including first to circumnavigate the world crossing the equator and first to fly across the Pacific ocean. The latter was the harder. He and his crew had to navigate to and land on Fiji so they could refuel. This is an incredibly dangerous task, as Amelia Earhart found out. The plane had a crew of 4 — engineer and navigator in the back, pilot and copilot in the front. They couldn’t see each other because there was a huge gas tank between them. They communicated by taping a note to a stick and passing it back and forth. I was disappointed that the windows of the exhibit were covered with condensation. But I am glad I was able to see the plane.

We originally planed to go to the Long Pine Koala Sanctuary. We decided it wasn’t wise to try. It is a bit of a drive. We are on the rainy side of the continent during the rainy season. A cyclone has passed through a few days ago, plus there was a heavy rain overnight last night. We were there at high tide. Some areas had significant flooding. So we dropped that idea and decided to visit the Brisbane museums. The science museum had two highlights. The first is a Box jellyfish. This is one of the most venomous animals in the world.

The other highlight was a display about moth wings. It turns out their wings are not smooth. They are covered with 200 nm spikes that can penetrate the cell membrane of a bacteria, rupturing the cell. It’s a pretty cool idea.

The last surprise of the day was a tour of the art museum given by Greg. We were the only two who wanted the 1:00 tour. The highlight was a description of dot art. Aborigines use art to tell dreamings. But only men can se the men’s dreamings, and only women can see the women’s. How could they exhibit the art? The solution was to hide the dreaming under dots. A man can see the art and understand the dreaming. Anybody else can’t see the dreaming but can appreciate the art.

Tomorrow is a sea day. I hope everybody is doing well.

New Caledonia is different than the other S. Pacific Islands we have visited. I don’t have much of a grasp, but I know that during WW II, the US took over the island and made it a supply depot. There were more than a million GIs plus various Australians and New Zelenders. They quickly overwhelmed the 55,000 Kanuk (as the island natives are called). There was some kind of a “free the natives” movement in the 1960s. One of the leaders was Tjibaou. He was assonated. Later the populous built the Tjibaou Cultural Center.

Much of the cultural center is in French, and Google translate does a poor job of letting us read the placards. But we still learned a lot. The one exhibit everybody sees is the Story of Olal, which goes like this:

A long time ago, all the men wanted to have sex with an Olal woman who enjoyed love making. But his woman didn’t feel well. In all of the north Ambrym villages men spoke of her. In Wisal, a village situated in the region of Willit, a giant with a long penis heard this story. So he went up to Mount Tuvio clearing a path with his penis. Then he ran to Olal to plant his penis into this woman. Carried away by his own momentum, he broke the reef with his penis. Half the reef moved west to Magam whereas the other half went east to Barereo. This is how Olal pass was opened. The giant and the woman threw themselves into the sea. Since then, they both live outside the reef of Olal Bay.

One of the exhibits I enjoyed was a petroglyph often found near the source of water. The spiral is assumed to stand for fertility or fecund crops or something similar. If you go to the website, you sill see a picture of the petroglyph plus a couple of modern art works inspired by the petroglyph.

This Lapita pot helps establish the arrival of the Kanuk in 1200 BC.

We also visited the maritime museum. We saw a lot, but the most unbelievable exhibit was about the La Monique, which went down with all hands. The only item found from the ship is a single life saver. What’s so unusual about a ship going down? This ship went down in 1953. They were equipped with a modern radio and four radio operators. Unfortunately, radio signals were monitored only at specific times. Monitoring was significantly reduced on weekends. If you send an emergency signal and nobody hears it, was the signal ever sent?

We have a couple of sea days. Our next stop is Brisbane, Australia.

Yesterday was Mystery Island. It turns out not to be all that mysterious. There are no inhabitants. The only infrastructure are some pit toilets and an air strip. (I’m not making this up.) When a cruise ship visits, the locals bring items to sell and set up a BBQ. Passengers that like laying in the sand, or swimming, or snorkeling can indulge themselves. Danita and I didn’t see any compelling reason to tender over to the island, so we didn’t.

Today we visited Easo, Lifou. This country was occupied by the French. Inhabitants speak their native language and French. Those who cater to tourists also speak English. The natives seemed to have a lot in common with other S. Pacific islands, but I learned very little about their history or how they govern themselves.

We visited a vanilla farm. The pictures were a disaster from the very beginning. They had a welcoming ceremony that included placing wreathes on our heads. I was all set up to record Danita getting her wreath when I was photo bombed by a young man handing out vanilla beans. Unfortunately, picture taking didn’t improve. They had a kind of zoo of native animals, but I never got a decent picture of even one animal in the deep shade the vanilla plants require. But I learned that they love to trap wild pigs. Not only do they get rid of a very destructive animal, but the village gets an delicious feast.

We learned a lot about vanilla. The plant is the only orchid that makes an edible food. It’s considerably harder to grow than most other orchids. The only way to pollenate the flowers is with the human hand. Plants start producing beans after 3 years, but don’t yield a good crop until 5 years. Insects are a problem. They can’t use chemical sprays, so they developed an insecticide made from tomato leaves, peppers, and other ingredients. Once they are getting a good crop of beans, it takes about a year to turn raw beans into good vanilla beans. The process is very labor intensive and not amenable to automation. I can’t for the life of me imagine how anybody figured out how to get vanilla. Here are a few pics.

We left the wet side of Fiji where we had no rain and sailed to the dry side of Fiji where we had heavy showers in the early morning. Today we took an excursion to a small island that had a lot of coral.

It didn’t take long for the rain to end. Danita and I decided that a glass bottom boat is more our speed than snorkeling. The main thing I learned is that while you can see some amazing things in a glass bottom boat, it’s a lousy place to try to get good pictures. But we did get a couple of pics. Here you see some blue coral. We are told the blue zone indicates coral growth.

Here you see a blue starfish. In this case, the blue color indicates we are looking at a blue star fish. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but we saw several of them today.

Other activities were planned, but nobody wanted to play volleyball. People were snorkeling, swimming, or just relaxing. We had a nice lunch, then returned to our home ship.

Tomorrow is a sea day. Our next port of call is Mystery Island. What an intriguing name.

This is what it’s all about. This little bottle is huge. Fiji water actually comes from a Fiji Aquaphor, and it’s 24% of Fiji’s exports. The next largest export item is only 6%. Ironically, over 10% of Fiji’s residents don’t have access to safe clean drinking water.

My understanding of Fiji history is extremely incomplete. Fiji natives used to practice cannibalism. Later they became a British colony. Britan decided to plant sugar plantations, and brought Indians over to work on the plantations. Today many Indians display a red flag on their house as a sign of pride. Many Fijians still live in small villages managed and ruled by a chief. Also, Fijians never, ever, eat tourists these days.

We docked in Suva, the capital city. We went on an excursion. We took a very long bus ride with no A/C to a river, then switched to long boats to take us to a remote area.

The building you see here was built to be a cathedral. The priest that built it wanted it to be the center of French Catholicism. (Who knew there was such a thing?) But there were a bunch of disagreements, and the priest switched to Roman Catholicism, and he burnt a bunch of French Catholicism books and also a bunch of Protestant books and sorry for your trouble, Father, but a building in the middle of a remote area just isn’t going to make it as a cathedral. But it still serves as a place of worship. (I might have missed some details.)

We got back on the long boats and went to a remote village. This village has about 900 houses. Not long ago, they got electricity and flush toilets. I saw some very poor shanties, but everyplace I saw seemed to have electricity. Unsurprisingly, smart phones are incredibly popular. Even young kids know all about them.

We started with a Kava ceremony. Kava is a root plant. They dig it up, break it into pieces, put it in a rag, add water, and squish the rag around. Presto! Kava. Both Danita and I agree with our ship’s entertainment director, who said Kava tastes like dirty water. We did some dancing, which was a lot of fun in spite of the hot, humid weather. Then we goofed around with some of the kids and took a very long bus ride back to the ship.

If you don’t feel grateful that I took a shower before writing this, you should. We were incredibly sweaty and stinky. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I don’t normally write on a sea day because they are – shall we say relaxing. Yesterday somewhat more exciting. We were in our cabin waiting for dinner service to begin when we heard an emergency signal followed by an unknown voice, who I will call the Commander, call the emergency fire crew to activate. A quick check of our balcony showed black smoke, apparently coming from one of the stacks.

Throughout dinner, messages from the commander interleaved with messages from the captain. The commander’s messages were orders to emergency responders. They were short, professional, and completely clear. That was reassuring. It was obvious the captain was waiting to confirm the situation before using the same ship-wide system to update the passengers. That was also quite reassuring. The captain continuously said there was no action required of the passengers, the situation was well in hand. But the emergency evacuation lights were on. They were a quite attractive shade of green. When the captain said the black smoke was entirely normal, I began to wonder. The emergency exit lights were still on. We decided to go to the evening show, but we brought our tote bags with medicine and a jacket, just in case.

The evening show went on as scheduled. The emergency lights eventually turned off. We went back to our cabin and unpacked the tote bags. We’re still sailing on the Pacific, still headed for Fiji. We should arrive about 8:00 AM local time.

Today we had a program seeing the ship through the eyes of cadets studying to earn officer’s positions. As everybody knew, somebody would ask about the incident. We learned there was a fire in the number 2 generator. The ship has 5 generators. It uses two or three at any one time. There are also two emergency backup generators. We are assured the cruise will continue as scheduled.

We sailed from American Samoa to Samoa. Samoa is on the other side of the date line. Thursday night we skipped “tomorrow” and went directly to Saturday. Samoa is quite similar to American Samoa politically. The families, chiefs, and land management are all quite similar. The major difference is that Samoa is not a protectorate. It is an independent country. A second important difference is that Samoa is much more focused on the East. Their major trading partner is Australia. They even switched from right hand drive to left hand drive to follow what Australia does. A third difference is that it was a colony of Germany. Surprisingly, other than a few families with German surnames and some buildings the Germans built, there is little that can be considered German in Samoa. The languages are Samoan and English. German is not spoken.

We took an excursion in Samoa. We had comfortable, air conditioned busses, which were a gift from Japan. While touring, out guide pointed out several major buildings, two of which were gifts from China. One of the China-built buildings is now abandoned because it needs major repairs.

One can’t visit a Polynesian country without visiting the market. The Samoa market is large, crowded, and colorful. I’m not comfortable in crowds. I took a quick tour. One stand had some kid of fresh bread. They continuously waved cloth flags to keep the bugs off. Saturday is the biggest day for shopping, but the market is open 6 days a week. The only thing open Sunday is the supermarket, which is open from 6 AM to 9 AM. Church service starts at 10. Everybody has to go to Church on Sunday. Nobody works. So said our guide. In response to a question, she said the younger generation accepts the practice.

We stopped to see the new cathedral. The original was destroyed by a storm. The new was opened in 2014. It nice, but one wonders at the wisdom of spending $14 Million on a building for a country where the average wage is $1.50 per hour. The church imported special wood, stained glass windows, and even an Italian architect. The inside is beautiful, but one doesn’t have to look very hard to see areas that are badly in need of repair. They will be paying the mortgage for a very long time.

The main attraction in Samoa is Robert Lewis Stevenson’s house. Stevenson is a big name in Samoa because he was a leader in the “Free Samoa” movement. Stevenson was very ill most of his life. But he was wealthy enough to buy a very large plot of land and put an amazing house right in the middle of it. The grounds and the house are immaculately maintained. Here’s a pic of the tropical plants, along with a hint of the rain that makes these plants possible.

Stevenson imported California redwood to build the house. This picture that shows how he used siapo on the walls of the dining area.

We ended the day with a Polynesian dance and concert. It was a wonderful tour. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I feel like this was our first real stop. There isn’t a ton of stuff, but what there is, is breathtaking.

Back around 1900, the Samoa was organized into families or villages. Each had a chief. Each chief wanted to be the big chief. Being typical people, they settled their differences with ongoing war. Samoa was an important stop for sailing ships trading with the East. With inhabitants already divided, conquering was pretty easy. (It sounds to me like the best description for political organization back then would be not families but clans.) The US took Eastern Samoa, the Germans Western. From there the history is atypical. Both countries maintained their Polynesian culture. Almost all Samoan residents speak Samoan fluently. In American Samoa, villages or families manage their part of the island, especially when to fish and how many to take. American Soma has a large tuna cannery. They are a US protectorate which allows them to export canned tuna without paying duties. They have their own constitution and laws. In the on-board presentation, the presenter used the description “island quality, mainland prices”.

As we approached American Samoa, I saw two things. Samoa is a beautiful verdant green, as shown by the first picture. The main mountain blocks rain clouds, dumping rain on the windward side. While it didn’t rain while we were in town, you can clearly see how the effect works in the second picture.

We left the ship early to beat the heat. (Mid 80s and extremely high humidity, even early in the day.) In the disembarkation area, the local tour guides were quite aggressive, nearly blocking my exit with large cardboard signs. We only wanted to see three things, all a short walk from the pier, so we resisted the island tours. As you will see, we’re glad we did. It was impossible to take a picture in the disembarkation area, but I did get a pic of the tour busses used for the second wave of tourists. When we got back to the ship, all these busses were filled with tourists.

We stopped at a few places and didn’t see much of interest until we got to the National Park Visitor Center. They have a movie that shows how they make Siapo cloth. It was a long movie, maybe 20 minutes. We enjoyed the entire movie. One busload of people came in near the beginning of the movie, and had to leave before it got to the most impressive part. Making Siapo is an amazing process, requiring untold woman-hours of effort. Making a Siapo requires many steps. Each step requires care, talent, and even strength. After we watched the movie, we saw an excellent and impressive example you see below.

The main attraction turned out to be a private museum which was a total bust except for one exhibit — a museum quality example of Siapo cloth you see below. It blew us away. “Island Quality” is probably an accurate description of the cheap tourist shops that line the street, but this Siapo is simply amazing.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Not only are we Shellbacks, we are golden shellbacks. To earn the “golden”, one must cross the equator and the international date line at the same time. The captain announced we did that at 8:07 AM local time today.

There was much silliness about King Neptune. Several of the staff volunteered to be put on trial to see if they were worthy of being shellbacks. For some strange reason, they didn’t allow any of the passengers to be put on trial. We just watched the staff. And we drank gallons of booze. (Not “we” as in passengers, not as Danita and I.) They were selling drinks as fast as the waiters could deliver the drinks.

If you like silliness, there are pictures on the web site. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We were scheduled to visit Fanning Island today. HA (Holland America) made all the arrangements with the local government. Unfortunately, two days before visiting, the local government informed us that it is impossible for the customs officials to travel to Fanning Island and consequently, we would not be able to visit. I personally found this amazing because I had just learned that Polynesians could easily travel between islands with nothing more than an outrigger canoe and their knowledge of the sky. It makes no difference. Impossible is impossible and I’m sure there’s an excellent reason (not). Anyway, it’s all part of the adventure.

So HA made arrangements to visit Christmas Island. This island is rarely visited by cruise ships. In fact our specific ship, the Volendam, has never visited Easter Island. Christmas Island is only a few tens of feet above sea level. One town has been deserted. But the islanders were welcoming our visit. They even went so far as to set up a market aboard our ship. As you can see, the market is wildly popular.

Conditions for tendering are not very good. We have 6 foot swells. You can’t see it from the picture, but the tender boats are bouncing around in the most lively way. Safely transiting from the ship to the shore is a 30 minute ride. Danita and I aren’t beach people. We quickly decided not to visit. Our decision was reinforced by a couple that had visited the island while on another cruise. As the husband so elegantly put it, “There’s nothing there.” Nevertheless, many brave people wanted to visit the island. The captain had to get on the PA and ask passengers for their patience several times.

As the day wore on, conditions continued to deteriorate. The tide was going out. The tenders were in danger of running aground even with only 20 passengers on board. About 1:00, the captain announced he was canceling the visitation and focusing on getting passengers already on the island back to the ship. Tendering started about Noon. Danita and I watched a couple of tenders load up from our balcony. There have to be at least 100 people on the island. I don’t envy the crew’s job of rounding up everybody on the island.

We had a rather interesting sidelight. You may remember the hullaballoo in 2000 about being on the spot where the sunrise was earliest, hence being the first to usher in the new century. (I’ll skip over the point that the century actually began on 1/1/2001.) Easter Island invented an impossible time zone of GMT – 14. This put them on the other side of the international date line and made Christmas Island the point where the new century started. The captain decided to ignore the date line crossing. As a result, people on the island are experiencing the day as Monday, while on board ship, it is still Sunday. You could say that the islanders who came aboard to sell their wares stepped back one day into the past.

There’s only a couple of pics. You can find them on the website. I hope all are well.