The New Blog - Fiji

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Well, it’s been over a week that we’ve been home so I suppose it’s about time I got around to finishing up the blog. I’ve been busy wading through a six-month tall pile of bills, statements, letters and the ubiquitous paperwork of everyday life. And I haven’t even started our taxes yet (I filed an extension electronically while we were away). We are reacquainting ourselves with driving on the right side of the road. We’ve also been busy reconnecting with family and friends. I’m happy to report that the cat did not hold a grudge and instead welcomed us back into her life with no hard feelings over our unexplained absence.

Certainly it is in many ways good to be home, surrounded by the people and things we care for. We forgot how nice the space we live in is. I missed my art studio. Soon I might even escape the confines of paperwork management and get back to painting large works of art, not just the small pieces I’ve limited myself to as we have traveled.

I do miss the sunshine though. And living constantly in shorts and sandals. And the new friends we made in Australia. And the sight of Kangaroos, Rainbow Lorikeets and Sulfur Crested Cockatoos. And the sounds of the Kookaburras and the Magpies. And the constant surprise at how differently and colorfully the Australians use the English language. And using meters and kilograms and degrees Centigrade like the rest of the planet. And Tim Tam cookies. And of course the sense of adventure from living somewhere unfamiliar.

But we’ve already started preliminary planning for next winter. We’re thinking Europe; maybe Spain and Portugal. We’ll try to do house sitting again whenever possible. That saved us a ton of money and lent a richness to the experience that you just don’t get as a typical hotel-bound tourist. So this blog is ended now but I’ll start a new one when we start our next trip– most likely in early December. The new blog will have a new name but I’ll do my best to let everyone know where to find it. Thanks to you all for following along with our adventures.

Cruise - Maui

Our ship anchored off Lahaina, Maui in late morning. By the time everyone had gone through US Immigration and tendered ashore it was noon. I didn’t mind the late start because I had managed to come down with a nasty head cold and wasn’t feeling too energetic. We just walked through town checking out the many art galleries – most filled with awful tourist art – and a few other shops. Our only purchases were a large cup of mango-flavored shaved ice and some pharmaceuticals. We were back on the boat by 4pm. I know we’ll come back to Maui for an extended stay some day so I didn’t feel pressured to see that much. The highlight of our brief visit was the sight of two giant turtles mating in the shallow waters just offshore. They were at it for quite some time while we voyeuristic humans snapped what should probably be considered pornographic photos of them. Eventually the female had enough and threw the hapless male off her back. Then she bolted for the open water while the male swam confusedly around in circles looking for her. Pretty much like humans, really.

Maui is our last full day of the cruise. We head to Honolulu to disembark on Tuesday morning and fly home that afternoon. I’ll wrap up the blog with some closing thoughts upon our return.

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Maui

Lowering the tender boats


Long line of people waiting to tender back to another cruise boat (not ours, thankfully)

Turtles in love.

"I said that's enough Harold! Get the hell off of me!"

The last sunset.

Cruise - Lost at Sea

This stretch of four consecutive days at sea is a challenge. Both Deborah and I are struggling with boredom. We shouldn’t be; there are many activities on board. Things like bingo, dancing, cooking demonstrations, game shows, seminars on numerology... Yes, many activities in which I have absolutely no interest. I should be painting but, even if I had the necessary thinner with me, which I don’t, this windy, wave-tossed environment isn’t exactly conducive to my precise style of making art. So instead I edit my photographs, attend the daily history/destination lecture and write blog entries like this. Deborah goes to the gym every couple of days and has made use of the ship’s library to keep herself supplied with reading material. If the afternoon movie or evening show is of interest we attend that also. And of course we eat. Often.

Many people onboard seem to actually like the sea days. They lie all day in the sun, lined up in their deck chairs like sausages on a barbeque, self-turning every 30 minutes. All are dedicated to the proposition that, as one of the entertainers said, brown cellulite looks better than white cellulite. I tried the sunbathing gig one day but it just isn’t my scene. Deborah has to be careful about getting too much sun also.

The evening shows have been a mixed bag. Some, such a violinist and one of the singers, were actually pretty good. Others, such as the chubby Tom Jones impersonator, clearly demonstrated that they are at the point in their careers where they are reduced to working on cruise ships. Live music also pops up in the various lounges around the ship throughout the day. It too is a mixed bag. Unfortunately we often end up sitting within earshot of this one female vocalist who is just awful. Deborah just wants to wrestle the microphone away from her and beat her over the head with it.

I’ve heard an unsubstantiated rumor that the ship is only about half full, which perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given the state of the global economy. We paid just under $4000 for this cruise last summer. Just on a lark I checked the prices again a couple of weeks before we left and found the price had decreased to $2800 for the same type of stateroom. Once onboard, Deborah got to chatting (as she does) with a couple who booked at the last minute and paid only $1600. So much for the benefits of planning ahead.

Part of the difference is the $224 fuel surcharge, which was discontinued last fall, but only after we had already booked and paid. We didn’t get a refund in cash but we did get an onboard credit for that amount. That comes in handy since any illusion one may have had that everything on the ship is already paid for is quickly dispelled. All alcoholic drinks are extra. Sodas are extra. Lattes are extra. Many of the exercise classes are extra. You have to pay for any laundry services onboard, or salon services, or day spa services. Internet access is quite expensive. And of course there is the minibar, where even a bottle of water will set you back $5. All items are listed as available at a “nominal fee.” In this case a “nominal fee” translates as “an inflated price to which our captive audience has no alternative short of abstinence.” And any money left in your wallet after the plethora of nominal fees can be quickly extracted at the casino.

Fortunately we can be tightwads when necessary. So far we’ve managed to only splurge on one bottle of water (to be refilled and reused endlessly), one soda (to help Deborah choke down that cauliflower lodged in her esophagus), two laundry services, a whopping $3.50 poured foolishly into a slot machine, and of course a few hurried internet sessions to check email and post blog entries. We’ve also bought a few cocktails, although we generally wait for the two-for-one specials or just split one beer.

Some people must be racking up huge bills, especially given the amount of alcohol being consumed onboard. The cruise line must have underestimated the very considerable drinking capacity of the Australians, who make up the majority of guest onboard. Halfway through the trip they had already run out of the favored brands of Australian beer.

Tomorrow we will be landing in Laihaina, Maui. Later that evening we will be sailing over to Honolulu where our cruise will end the following morning. We fly home that same afternoon. I may not have the chance to blog on our day in Maui until we return home, but I’ll be sure to try and wrap things up in the next few days.

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Deborah passing the time.

Towel sculpture by Tony the room steward.

Cruise - Bora Bora

The doubly named Bora Bora was our third island in French Polynesia. It has a number of swanky resorts but the rest of the island is very pleasant also. We rented a couple of well-worn one speed bicycles (Deborah called them Pee Wee Herman bikes, but his was much nicer) with which to circle the island on a 22km (13 mi) mostly flat road. About a half hour down the road the seat on Deborah’s bike slid down to the bottom of the post, forcing her knees to be constantly bent as she tried to pedal. She said she felt like a circus monkey. I wisely refrained from drawing any correlation between the collapse of her bicycle seat and the weight of a certain part of her anatomy. We were able to borrow a wrench from a man working on his car to repair the seat to its proper height and continue on our journey.

Riding the bikes was great fun and we stopped often to admire views, take photos, grab a coke, and once to cool off in the lagoon. While floating in the water, a stingray passed between us and the shore, no more than 10 feet away. We also thought we saw a humpback whale but it turned out to just be another passenger from our cruise ship. All in all it was a great day which we finished off with some Tahitian beer before tendering back to the ship. Next up we have four straight days at sea (which is about three too many) before landing in Maui.

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Cruise - Raiatea

Our second island stop in French Polynesia was Raiatea. It’s lush, green, clean and beautiful. It doesn’t have Tahiti’s sandy beaches, but it also doesn’t have a lot of Tahiti’s problems. It’s not overdeveloped; traffic is not an issue; the houses are tidy and well cared for; there’s very little graffiti; and far fewer stray dogs. And if you really do want those sandy beaches you can just hire a boat to take you across the lagoon to one of the many little islands called motus.

We didn’t do that but we did hook up with another couple from the ship to hire a taxi to take us around the island. The driver spoke only a little English but enough for all of us to communicate what we wanted and understand what we were seeing. His wife and 2-year old daughter came along and rode quietly in the back. Apart from enjoying the general scenery as we drove around the island we stopped at a botanical garden, where even the dead leaves looked exotic, and a marae, or sacred site, where stone platforms and other structures were laid out for the performance of various rituals including sacrifices of vegetables, animals and tourists.

Our taxi companions Jim and Lisa were from Minnesota and therefore inevitably very nice. Her Midwest accent was so strong I could have sworn I was listening to a radio skit from Prairie Home Companion. She persuaded the taxi driver to stop somewhere she could buy some black pearls, a natural commodity for which these islands are famous, and she scored a good deal. We joined Jim and Lisa for lunch back on the ship before stepping back out in the heat and humidity to walk around town a bit. Eventually unable to stand our own B.O., we returned to the ship for a very necessary shower, followed by a beautiful sail out of the harbor near sunset before resuming the normally scheduled rounds of gluttony onboard.

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Botanical Garden

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Dead leaf as sculpture

The marae (sacred site)

View of nearby islands as we sail away from Raiatea.

Cruise - Tahiti

Tahiti was a disappointment. We docked at Papeete, the main town on the island. Our impression: dirty, overdeveloped, heavy traffic, ugly concrete buildings, litter, lots of graffiti, stray dogs – not at all the postcard paradise we had imagined. I’m sure the fancy resorts are little oases (if you can afford them) but the rest of the island is less than inspiring. Still, we disembarked in the morning and found a bus tour that circled the island (for half the price of the shore excursions offered through the cruise line). The tour guide was an American, originally from Hawaii, and he was quite good and informative. The sites included a couple of nice viewpoints, a seaside blow hole which was less than impressive with the current water conditions, a waterfall, a cave, and a crappy museum. The latter was the Paul Gauguin museum, devoted to the famous French painter who spent many years in the islands. The museum had no originals, only faded reproductions arranged haphazardly in open air displays. This was not the Louvre. Our hope is that the remaining islands will be more like Rarotonga and less like Tahiti.

Here are a few photos which I’m sure will put a more positive spin on the place because I tend not to photograph the ugly bits.

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Papeete - it looks better from the waterfront.

While docked, our cruise ship was the highest “building” on the island. There is a local law forbidding the construction of anything taller than a coconut tree (about 5 storeys).

A grotto or cave.

Cruise - Rarotonga

After 5 ½ days at sea we finally reached our first port of call: the lush little gem of an island called Rarotonga, part of the Cook Islands. It was hot and sticky (even Deborah was sweating) but it was so nice to be on terra firma again. The island didn’t have a dock sufficient to handle our behemoth of a vessel so we had to tender ashore, which, after a delayed start, went smoothly with minimal drownings. We walked up to the Saturday Market so Deborah could make her contribution to the local economy and take care of some small gift purchases. She gave most of her business to just one vendor, who in turn rewarded us with a coconut drink straight from the shell. I’ve heard it’s a laxative so we refrained from buying any additional drinks.

We arranged our own circle tour around the island by hopping on the local bus. We stopped at a beautiful beach to swim...well, stand really, in the lagoon. There were little fish circling around us and occasionally startling Deborah. I thought they might give us one of those nibbling pedicures you hear about but apparently they either weren’t that hungry or found our feet too distasteful. The hordes of tourists from our cruise ship nearly overwhelmed the bus system but everyone seemed to make it back on board. Next up is another sea day (just one thankfully) followed by Tahiti.

The market.

Cruise - Are We There Yet?

It’s Day 5 of our cruise and it’s Thursday. Yesterday was also Thursday. Strange thing, that International Dateline. Also strange is the realization that there is nothing but water for as far as the eye can see in every direction. We won’t reach our first destination, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, until Saturday. That’s the drawback to these repositioning cruises: you spend a lot of days at sea. We do our best to fill the time. We eat, walk laps around the deck, sit somewhere to read, hopefully in the sun, exercise, eat some more, sit somewhere else to read, go to a lecture, sit in the hot tub, eat some more, walk some more, go to a show. We nearly always take the stairs, even though we are on Deck 3 and usually end up hanging out on Decks 9 or 10, in a desperate attempt to burn off all those extra calories. Yes, the food is great, and ever abundant.

The ship is beautiful, albeit in a Disneyfied fashion. Our inside cabin, though windowless, is quite comfortable, and larger than I expected. It’s pitch black when the lights are out though. At night we leave the bathroom light on but the bathroom door closed so that a sliver of light escapes around the edges, just enough for navigation purposes when nature calls. Getting up in the morning is a challenge with the absence of natural light (or kookaburras) to announce the dawn. We find we need a wake up call.

The weather so far has gradually improved from our rainy departure in Sydney to sunny days on our two consecutive Thursdays. Temperatures have been in the 70s to low 80s (F). Until today it has been quite blustery though, with winds of 25-30 knots, enough to make those laps around the upper deck even better calorie burners. And of course those strong winds make for rough seas, the worst of which we felt last night. Fortunately those rough seas are supposed to be easing, otherwise we’ll be losing our extra calories a different way.

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Just a bit windy.

Pool deck.

Proverbial Caribbean band.

Hopefully won't need this.

The Solarium (covered pool area).

Our little room on the seas.

Cruise - Goodbye Sydney, Goodbye Australia

We spent our last few hours in Sydney walking through the Royal Botanical Gardens (again) and visiting the Art Museum (again). The latter had a special portrait exhibition that we wanted to see so it was worth the return trip. Or maybe we are more creatures of habit than we thought.

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We boarded our Royal Caribbean cruise ship around 2:00pm and are now working our way through Sydney Harbour, headed for the South Pacific. We'll be out to sea for 3 or 4 days before we reach the Cook Islands. The onboard experience started on less than ideal terms for Deborah who, during our first meal, chipped a front tooth biting a little too vigorously on her fork, and later nearly passed out while trying to swallow an inadequately masticated chunk of califlower. She also got her period. Happy sailing!

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Our floating monstrosity of luxury.

The two of us standing in front of our floating monstrosity of luxury.

View of Harbour Bridge (aka, the Coat Hanger) from the deck.


Sydney Opera House under stormy skies (it was raining as we pulled out of port).

Cooloola Cove - Departure

As should be obvious from the lead photo on yesterday’s blog post, Kaz was quite pleased with what we did to her home. There really wasn’t a single room we didn’t do at least something to, and she wouldn’t admit to disliking anything. She liked our color choices, the new furniture arrangement, the repositioning of her wall art, the addition of the kitchen shelf and bamboo screen, and the way Deborah reinvented her furniture pieces. She was also very happy with the spruced up front garden. With the new landscaping plan in hand and some advice from Deborah on how to better approach pruning and the display of yard art, it seems that Kaz is brimming with ideas and newfound enthusiasm to tackle the rest of the yard.

We tagged along with Kaz’s son-in-law Ray who had some errands to run in Tin Can Bay. He took us to the “Tip Shop,” a section of the dump where they scavenge potentially valuable bits from the rest of the debris and offer it for sale to the public. Deborah was in shabby-chic heaven - fantastic browsing. If I were a sculptor instead of a painter I would be drooling over all the interesting chunks of metal and industrial springs and discarded car parts. Maybe construct a giant metallic wombat. If we had known of this place earlier we probably would have dragged countless cast-offs back to Kaz’s to use both inside and out. As it was, we couldn’t resist a shoulder-high metal windmill frame (a whopping $2) to plop in the yard.

Kaz’s granddaughter Kara, 5-year old daughter of Julie and Ray, presented us with an armful of souvenir prezzies (presents) to remind us of our time in Australia. We all enjoyed a nice meal together: dinner by Deborah, dessert (pavlova) by Julie. Nice, nice family. We hope we’ll cross paths again. The following morning we said our goodbyes and were driven by Ray to the Hervey Bay airport to catch our flight back to Sydney. Infant daughter Jazmine shared the back seat with Deborah and kept her entertained.

Back in Sydney we took a long walk through the city and returned to our favorite Indian restaurant for a late lunch. We’re just spending the one night here in Sydney. Tomorrow we catch our cruise ship and start winding our way through the South Pacific, ending up in Hawaii 16 days later, and from there we fly home. I’ll do my best to keep up with the blog during the cruise, but it will depend on the difficulty and/or expense of internet access on the high seas.

Cooloola Cove - The Reveal

Today was the day for the big reveal. Kaz came back with daughter Julie, son-in-law Ray, and granddaughters Kara and Jasmine to see all the changes we've been making inside and out. For now I'll let the pictures tell the story.

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Kaz is just a little excited to see the decorating changes.

Living Room. New furniture arrangement, which, as we can attest from having lived with it for a couple of weeks, works quite well. New gold paint, including a horizontal stripe to feature the grandchildren's art.

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New paint on focal wall in bathroom.

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This shelving unit was originally in the garage; works well with the gold paint and new display arrangement by Deborah (grandchildren's art again features prominently).

Gold paint carried into kitchen. Wall hangings relocated.



New shelf in kitchen.

China hutch (1930s?) repainted, distressed and reorganized by Deborah.

New focal wall in Master Bedroom painted to match existing bedding.

Kaz has no car so the garage is used as living space with screen doors facing the front garden.

New bamboo screen hides laundry area.

The front garden. Garage screen doors are to the left. New stone border, new placement of benches, yard art.

Arbor with bench and coffee maker planter on left.

Front gate, path leads to front door.

Really like that stone border.

Aloe relocated to form border, several plants relocated, pruned, benches and yard art relocated.