Where In the World Are Tom and Jet

First off, thank you very much for your write ups.

Am I understanding you correctly, the ship’s tenders are breaking down. Wouldn’t those need to be working during an emergency? Translation: These are not shore tenders that are breaking down.

I’m curious if you have crossed the International Date Line or not. I’ve looked at a few maps but the line bulges east in that area so it isn’t clear.

The reason I asked was that I was trying to figure out the timing of your posts. I’m reading them every morning and a noticed that it seemed that you were writing up a full days report for the same date I was reading them.

This would make sense if you crossed the IDL.

Thanks,

Larry

Thank you for your reports, I am greatly enjoying reading them each day here in cold and grey Germany. Hope Jet recovers quickly and both of you continue to have a wonderful cruise.

January 20, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Today was a sea day heading to our next four port days. Tomorrow is Rangiroa, then Papeete, Tahiti on Monday, Tuesday is Moorea and Wednesday is Bora Bora.

I’m very happy to say that Jet seems to making good progress this afternoon for her recovery. Her color looks better and she’s smiling more and interacting with the other passengers more like her “don’t know any strangers” normal self.

We don’t have any tour planned for tomorrow since the island may be very quiet since its Sunday and most people will be at church and the island has strict laws about what can open on Sundays. As I mentioned yesterday, the ship had to get special permission to even come to Rangiroa tomorrow.

I contacted our tour company for Tahiti and asked if Jet needing a wheelchair would pose any problems and her gracious answer was, “No problem. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her and we’ll put the wheelchair in the back of the Mercedes.” Can’t ask for any more than that! If any of you come Tahiti, contact Tracey at Unique Tahiti Tours.

Our stop in Moorea requires that we tender to shore. The ship publications say that they can’t accommodate passengers who need assistance devices that require more than one person to handle them. I asked one of the ship supervisors if it would be possible for Jet to go on the tender in Morrea, where we have a tour planned. Without hesitation, he said that, as long as she can get up and down the gangway steps to the tender that the crew will handle getting the wheelchair off the ship and onto the pier for us. Knowing this crew we have, 3 of them will probably try to help her up and down the steps of the gangway! They’re the best!

Wednesday, I have a tour to swim with the sharks and rays. I hope to continue my reports after that as long as I still have all my fingers and toes!

Had something funny happen on board today. We were doing laundry in the facility right next to our cabin and two of the young ladies from a group of Polynesian educators we’ve had on board for a week were in there. They’ve been giving ukulele lessons and discussing native customs as well as teaching native dances and other cultural education for the passengers.

They asked me how to use the washing machine. I helped them and one of them made a comment that she had never done her own laundry. I ran into them at dinner this evening and asked how their laundry turned out and they said it was great due to my help. I asked who normally did their laundry and they said their “auntie” did it for them. I asked for their “auntie’s” phone number so I could call her in Tahiti to tell her she didn’t need to do their laundry any more. They quickly refused to give me that information. LOL

One of my readers asked if we had crossed the International Dateline yet. We haven’t yet. We will cross on January 29.

Until tomorrow.

Just catching up. Sorry Jet got the flu, it is nasty and then With bronchitis, yikes!

Hope you are able to enjoy Tahiti! We hope to go in October so will enjoy tagging along!

SKI WW love the name! We too are busy doing ski holidays! My brother died at 30 so we learned to do it now, and travelled a lot over the years. Our kids were taken many places, now our turn, though they were both with us in Hawaii, lol.

Great reading.

Hope the crew get those tenders repaired for your next tender port.

Cute about the ladies having their "auntie" doing their laundry.

January 21, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Talk about a big difference in terrain today? Whereas Nuku Hiva was a very mountainous volcanic island, Rangiroa was a very flat coal atoll. I would guess that the highest point on the island wasn’t more than 25 feet above sea level.

I went ashore for a couple of hours today while Jet continued to rest up in hopes of being able to go ashore tomorrow in Tahiti. She had a setback today but we think it was due to a reaction to the inhaler she’s been using. Instead of it helping her breathe better, it made her breathing worse. Needless to say, she wont be using that any more.

The people on Rangiroa were very friendly but it definitely is not a place where there are many people with a high income. The water is absolutely beautiful and a crystal blue color. The beach I walked on on the windward side of the island was nothing but pieces of broken coral. The leeward side had some narrow sand beaches.

In order for the ship to anchor on the leeward side of the island, it had to pass through a very narrow treacherous channel where the currents and waves were really strong. When we left, the captain made a comment that we were going to go out to sea a little bit so we could pick up a good bit of speed to allow us to navigate the channel and overpower the currents.

While I was walking on the island, I went to one side of the channel where the waves were breaking hard. I saw two young boys who were boogie boarding on the waves and somehow managing not to get cut up by the coral heads they were surfing towards. They were also walking on the coral with bare feet which astonished me because walking on the coral with my good walking shoes was tough on my feet.

Lots of pretty flowers and palm trees were on the island and I stopped by the combination hardware/grocery store which was in a very large metal barn type building. Surprisingly, considering everything has to be shipped here, the prices were not as high as I thought they’d be. I even got a Schweppes lemon drink for $1.50 which is less than it would have cost at 7-11 back home.

I heard one passenger on the tender talking about her scuba dive. She said she saw 3 sharks about 12 feet long and a very large sea turtle along with a pod of dolphins who were swimming around the divers. It sounds like diving and snorkeling were two of the better things to do here due to the abundant sea life.

Until tomorrow.

January 22, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

We had a great day today in Tahiti. The ship is docked in the city of Papeete which is a bustling city.

There are 2 islands that form Tahiti. One is very large and the other is about 1/3 the size of the largest one. The main road that goes around the larger island is about 180 kilometers long.

The Polynesian Islands are a protectorate of France which provides an annual budget to the islands for basic infrastructure such as roads, schools, government administration etc. When the students here want to go to college, they have the ability to go to France at a cost of 600 Euros per semester which includes, room, board, tuition and books!!!. They may also go to other countries for specialty college education which is subsidized as well but not as well as if they go to school in France.

The island is absolutely gorgeous with lots of lush foliage and beautiful beaches. 20% of the beaches are white sand and the rest are black volcanic sand or pebble beaches. There is a reef which surrounds the western half of the island which forms a protective barrier for the island during storms. You could see the waves breaking on the coral reef barrier and the the water inside the reef was very calm. There are some breaks in the reef for boats to go through. In general, if the fishermen want to catch smaller fish, they fish inside the reef. If they want bigger fish like tuna, they fish outside the reef.

When the fishermen bring their catch ashore, many of them will sell their fish along the side of the main road.

The eastern side of the island has the mountains oo right down to the water and is the wetter side of Tahiti and is the side hit by the more severe storms.

I’m happy to report that Jet went on the tour with me today. Tracy from Unique Tahiti Tours, was a fantastic guide and made sure that Jet was comfortable in her van as we rode around today. Even though she stayed in the car most of the day, Jet still saw a lot and Tracy made sure she wasn’t left out in any way. If you want an excellent knowledgable guide when you come to Tahiti, contact Tracy.

One thing that was very interesting was how attached the natives here are to their land. Families tend to stay together on the land that they own. Tracy commented that many of the streets are named after the family that owns that particular area of land and that there are no numbered addresses on the streets. Therefore, if you were looking for Sam Jones and knew what street he lived on, you’d just have to go to that street and ask his family members which house Sam lived in. So, in general, any type of GPS on the island is useless.

We also learned that the tattos a native has are all related to his tribal and family history. Tracy told us that you could look at a person’s tattoos and they would tell you which tribe they belonged to, who their parents and siblings are and also who their children are. A great deal of pride is taken in the tattoos. Tracy, who is British, married a native here. She said that their16 year old daughter wanted to get a tattoo. Her father said that was OK until he found out that she wanted some Chinese symbols tattooed on her and, since they didn’t have anything to do with her family or tribal heritage, he refused to let her get them and told the tattoo artists on the island not to tattoo her. Because they all respect each others tribal heritage so much, no one will touch the daughter. However, when she’s 18, she may get any tattoo she wants but the tattoo artists will most likely try to convince her to stay with something indicative of her family background.

The last thing we did on our tour was to go to the office of one of the largest pearl wholesalers in the world. It’s a family business and they sell to most of the large Japanese and Chinese pearl retailers. They literally had large plastic tubs filled with pearls of various colors, sizes and grades on their desks. The husband told us that a “nucleus” which is made from a shell, which actually comes from Mississippi, is implanted in the pearl oyster. The nucleus is round and sized to the diameter of the pearl they want and is left in the oyster for about 18 months to be “coated” by the natural pearl material the oyster makes and is then harvested. These pearls are what is known as “cultured” pearls. In order for a cultured pearl to meet the international standard to qualify as a quality pearl, the coating on the nuclear must be at least 0.8 mm thick. The thickness is checked using X-rays. A “natural” pearl is produced when the oyster produces a pearl on its own without a nucleus. These are the ones that you see with the very odd shapes. There is a grading system for pearls similar to that of diamonds which is based on size, color, luster and other specific qualities.

Tonight, we have a native Polynesian show on board which we’re looking forward to attending.

Until tomorrow.

Thanks for All the info! I am drooling over those pearls!

January 23, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Today, we stop at Moorea, French Polynesia, which is a very short distance from Tahiti. It’s a very rugged looking volcanic island which seems to have very little in the way of flat land. The very steep sides of the mountains come straight down and end just a relatively short distance from the ocean.

Jet stayed on board the ship today while I ventured to shore. Once there, a couple of people were promoting a free shuttle to “town” which was supposed to be a short 5 minute ride. Thinking that shouldn’t be too long of a walk, I thought I’d set off on foot. But first, I sampled one of the local beers which wasn’t too bad actually.

Once I started walking, I took advantage of many good photo opportunities. The mountains and water here are really gorgeous with rich deep green and blue colors respectively.

One thing that has been fairly consistent on these islands is that most of the houses, if you want to call them that, look pretty dilapidated. As one of our shipmates commented today, you have a house that looks like it was built with about $50 worth of construction material overlooking a multimillion dollar view. As our guide yesterday told us, the Polynesian people seem much more interested in living their lives as they want versus having material things.

After walking 45 minutes and not finding anything resembling a “town”, I decided to turn back to the ship tender area. By that time, it had gotten pretty hot and I was really dragging despite having cold water to drink. As I walked back, I kept hoping a taxi would come by to take me back. Although several passed me, they all had fares and wouldn’t stop.

When I got back to the tender pier, I grabbed a cold washcloth from the ship’s crew and quickly got on the tender. The folks sitting behind me must have thought I had bugs on me because I kept wiping my face, arms and legs down with the cloth and rewetting it with water from my thermos bottle.

I was very happy to get back to the cabin and take a cold shower. However, I have a feeling I’m going to suffer the consequences of my shoreside adventure later as my legs cramp up and my sunburn, since I didn’t put any sunscreen on, makes me uncomfortable.

I forgot to put in an interesting fact about Tahiti yesterday. There are two police forces on the island. One made up of locals which mainly handles traffic and crowd control, and another of French Gendarmes (sp) which is actually made up French police officers who are stationed there for 2 years, who handle the investigation of crimes since, as Tracy our guide said, the locals might be more inclined to give some criminals a free pass if they knew them. The French police were apparently bragging to everyone about a major drug bust they just conducted. They recovered 2 kilos of marijuana! As Tracy said, not really a big deal but it made the French police happy.

Tomorrow is Bora Bora where I go off to swim with the rays and sharks.

Until tomorrow.

Just got caught up.

Wonderful reports. Hope you aren't too sun burned.

Thanks so much for your reports! We'll be visiting this area next January and it's great to hear what other people enjoyed during their visits.

Enjoying the travelogue. Thanks.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

January 24, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

After swimming with the sharks and rays today, I’m sitting here typing this with four fingers.

Aha, scared you didn’t I? I only type with four fingers all the time.

I’m sitting here in the ship’s library looking over the harbor to the beautiful island of Bora Bora. Not a bad place to work from and I’m so lucky to be here doing this.

I’m glad to report that Jet continues to improve. She walked all the way to and from the dining room last night and the Lido cafe this morning. We still need to use the wheelchair but she’s definitely improving. Slowly but surely. She’s been a real trooper through all of this. I’m just sorry that she hasn’t been able to get off the ship at most of the islands because we have had to be tendered to shore.

While we were at lunch today, one of the crew members in Lido who has been very concerned about Jet and has been praying for her, along with many of you, told her he had something for her. He came back in a few minutes with a beautiful card that he had drawn by hand with a beautiful message for her. That’s the type of crew members we have taking care of us. Most are Indonesian and they are a very kind and caring people.

Swimming with the rays and sharks was a blast this morning! The rays will come right up to you and try to climb up your chest if they think you have something for them to eat. Most of them were about 3 feet across. Their skin has a slippery rough texture to it. The black tipped reef sharks were all about 4 to 5 feet long. We were told not to reach out to touch them because they might think we had something for them to eat and they actually might nip a finger. They swam around us for a good while.

We saw lots of different tropical fish including trigger fish, which tended to nip at your ankles, and butter fish which were a pretty yellow color. There were also many different types of coral of various colors and shapes.

The island is very pretty and even though there are only about 9000 people who live here, it’s a busy place. We’re leaving here at 11 p.m. tonight which is good because it gives some of the crew members a chance to get off the ship.

This is the last of the French Polynesian islands we will visit. We have a sea day tomorrow and then we visit a couple of the Cook Islands which are affiliated with New Zealand.

The crew has decorated the Lido and dining room with lots of pretty lanterns and other tropical decor tonight for Polynesian night.

Well, I’m off to dinner now after I pick Jet up.

Until tomorrow.

Glad to hear that Jet is slowly improving.

Yes -- HAL's crew are the greatest.

January 25, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Well, after the excitement of swimming with the sharks and rays yesterday, today has been a quiet day at sea. Few did exciting things like play trivia, doing our laundry and going to craft class to make two pairs of earrings. Jet also had a massage this afternoon.

I told Jet that Id wear one pair and she could wear the other and but I’d have to get my ears pierced first. She said she could do that for me if desired but I thought I’d put it off after she mentioned something about using an ice pick!

Tomorrow, we arrive at Rarotonga, an island in the southern Cook Island group, which is part of New Zealand. I found out today that the people of the island group begged the Queen of England to agree to take them on since they weren’t enamored with the idea of France doing so. That apparently happened in 1901 and they were made citizens of New Zealand in 1949.

Im hoping that we can go ashore tomorrow and wander around for a while. I’ll have to go over to check it out before Jet goes ashore since I know she’ll need the wheel chair to get around there.

Well, have to go now. We’re getting ready for evening trivia.

Until tomorrow.

January 26, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Happy Australia Day!

We just left there island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. It was a very difficult day for the ship’s crew that handled the tenders. There was a strong swell coming in from the ocean, even though the waves were not that big, and the tenders were moving quite a bit at the ship landing deck. That slowed the tender loading quite a bit. Whereas they usually stop requiring tender tickets about 11 a.m., it was almost 2 p.m. before they opened them up to passengers who didn’t have a ticket.

They weren’t allowing anyone who needed a walker or wheelchair to go on the tenders today, so Jet stayed aboard while I explored on shore.

The island was very pretty and I happened to come upon a local wedding at the Catholic cathedral. The colors everyone wore were very bright and the flowers on the headdresses and the bride’s bouquet were beautiful.

We had a good show last night done by 3 young men who called themselves The Knights. They did hits from several of the well known British musicians and were quite good.

Tonight, we have a show with The Mad Irishman who is billed as doing lots of different music types with a Celtic beat. Should be interesting.

Our trivia this afternoon was all questions about Australis, in honor of Australia Day. We had 2 Australians on our team but the questions were so obscure that they, along with other Australians in the room, couldn’t answer most of them. I think the high score was 7 out of a possible 17!

We had another random act of kindness from a crew member yesterday. We’re on open dining which means we go to dinner any time we want and just have an open table assigned to us. The hostess who helps us seems to have taken a liking to us and knew our name after the first night. While Jet was staying in the cabin a lot, I ferried most of her meals to her from the Lido cafe but she did order from room service once and the food wasn’t that great. We happened to mention this to our hostess who also happened to be the room service manager. For a couple of days, she sent the full Lido menu to our room and told Jet to order anything from that and her staff would bring it for her. Great service!

Anyhow, the last few nights, we’ve been going back to the main restaurant for dinner. The hostess sent us some delicious truffles to the cabin with a note saying how glad she was that we were able to come back to the dining room for dinner and was glad to see that Jet was looking so much better. How’s that for thoughtful and going above and beyond?

Tomorrow, we have another sea day and then arrive at the island of Nuie which will be our last tendered port, thank God, for the next 2+ weeks.

Until tomorrow.

So happy to hear of Jet's improvement. Thanks for sharing another example of how wonderful the staff & crew are.

Thanks for your updates.

Pleased that you were able to get ashore in Rarotonga.

Happy to hear that Jet has improved :)

Your hostess did a great job taking care of her, indeed :)

Great reading that the hostess is taking care of Jet.

January 27, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Today has been a fairly quiet day so my report will be short.

We’ve been at sea today on our way to the island of Niue, part of the Cook Islands, where we arrive tomorrow morning. We’re not sure what will be available when we arrive there since it will be Sunday and, the people of the islands being pretty religious, most people will be at church, at least in the morning.

We’ve been walking around the ship to get some exercise, me pushing and Jet riding, and some fresh air. We participated in trivia twice and also played bingo, which I won for one of the four games. First time that’s happened in a long time for me.

We cross the International Dateline in a couple of days and will actually lose a day, January 30, as we do. Right now, we’re 6 hours behind Eastern Standard time.

The show last night was great. It was an Irish musician who played the flute and the “penny whistle.” The title of the show was, “An Irish Party in Third Class.” He opened the show playing along with the film clip from Titanic where Kate Winslet went down to the third class passenger section and danced with Leonardo DeCaprio as the Irish band played. He also did other music from other movies and finished with a beautiful version of Danny Boy.

We have a comedian tonight. So far, we’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of the entertainers they’ve brought on board for our shows except for one of the magicians.

Well, time to get ready for dinner.

Until tomorrow.

Good that Jet is improving.

Hope you were able to go safely ashore at Niue.

Glad you took it easy on your sea day.

Congratulations at winning bingo.

January 30, 2018

Aboard MS Amsterdam

Just a reminder that we crossed the International Dateline last night and skipped merrily past January 29 without feeling the effects of a time warp!

When we woke this morning, it was cloudy and the waves were about 4-5 feet high and we were wondering where the big storm the caption told us about had gone. Well, by about 3 p.m., we found it. Waves 10-12 feet high and the wind was so strong that I couldn’t open the door to the deck to take some pictures of the ocean.

The ship has been handling things well and, although we are rocking and rolling some, we’ve experienced worse on other ships. We’re supposed to be out of the storm some time late tomorrow.

Despite the ship rocking, Jet has walked more on her own today than she has in the past 2 weeks.

The Knights did another great show last night and everyone really enjoyed their song choices.

We had a pretty busy day today between trivia, crafts, bingo, doing laundry and just talking to some of our friends. We weren’t able to do our normal number of laps around the deck throughout the day but did get a few laps in this morning before the storm really strengthened.

Two more days at sea and then we land in New Zealand.

Until tomorrow.

Glad to hear that Jet is walking more.