Animal Day on the Lido

We have been wondering why we only have had four towel animals awaiting us in our rooms at night—a rabbit, lobster, elephant, and another. Used to get one every night along with our two chocolates, and these were always a lovely surprise. 

Today, the Lido Pool area is all decked out with every kind of standing, sitting, and hanging animal composed of towels and washcloths. Every passenger is smiling as they walk through this jungle.

 

Captain Paul

Captain Paul Adams joined our ship in San Diego where we boarded. The ship had just sailed in from an Alaska trip (some passengers stayed on board) and we were soon to embark on a 51-day of discovery of South Pacific islands on the Volendam.  Our journey was made exceptional by the warmth and passenger engagement of our Captain.

The Captain lives in Scarborough, England, with his wife Corie and two sons.  He has been with Holland America Lines since 2093, and currently works three months on board them three months off.  He also is involved with the Arisan Maritime Center CSMART (https://www.csmartalmere.com/about-us/).  

Our trip was made so much better with his passenger engagement and easy-going personality (including participating onstage with a juggler-comedian performer), and his Captain talks on our voyage were exceptional. Below is a photo from earlier in his career —the smile is genuine!

Sailing away

 We are now bound for San Diego.  The first night in this last bit had a beautiful time with albatrosses floating on our  air wake. They hung in the warm air riding the breeze from the ship just below our stateroom for over an hour.

Fakarova and Nuka Hiva

Fakarova was another tendered port in a beautiful setting.  Here I waded into the crystal clear water to sit among the tropical fish and watch the many black tipped sharks cavort.  One came within 25 feet of me but apparently they leave you alone as long as you don’t bother them.

The next and last port of our trip was in Nuka Hiva —it too was lovely as the above sunset attests—it was also the hottest day of our trip: 90 degrees..

Tahiti

 

Tahiti is a lovely port city, and we were moored in its downtown.  The first day was on Saturday Nov 11, Remembrance Day, and much was closed as people solemnly celebrated (and we passed through a small community just as a band was leading a parade).  Our guide was a knowledgeable lady, and she explained much of what we saw, including a lovely stood for refreshments at a resort on a beautiful small bay, explorations at a botanical garden and stops at a fern grotto (lava cave with a cool pool of water formed by rainwater dropping over a fern encrusted cave top).

A beautiful walkway borders the harbor and Liz and I walked all along it enjoying sculptures, carvings, and the beauty around us.

From our balcony, we could see an adjacent ship loading yachts aboard, and just past her was an enormous yacht owned by a billionaire New Zealander—the Andromeda is an impressive super yacht. We were here over-night and it was a lovely stop. Unfortunately, most things were also closed on the second day, Sunday.

Huahine

 

Our ship was anchored off-shore in Huahine (pronounced wah-hi-ne) and means female — again showing the connection of the South Pacific languages to Hawaii’s.  We had a wonderful, informative tour (probably the best of the trip) led by a local man who was actually born in California as his Huahine mother was having a difficult birth.  He returned to his island at 4 months of age, but has remained close with his family outside of Sonora and visited them often—his fluent English was a testament to the close family tie.

He shared much local history and botany of the island, and took us via boat to his family’s pearl farm in the middle of an only on the bay.  I had an unfortunate trip-and-fall on the wooden deck (missed a step) as I was looking ahead at a fish in the clear water when I should have been looking down at where I was stepping, but came through pretty much unscathed with some bruising and swelling that has mostly passed now. 

We stopped to watch 3-4 foot long blue-eyed eels swim in a stream and also visited a vanilla farm, tasting homemade vanilla ice cream—which was lovely as it was quite hot at the farm. 

Mo’orea

 

Mo’orea is a heart-shaped island with two deep bays:  Cooks Bay and Opunohu Bay—Captain Cook came into Oppunohu Bay, and so did we. Where we anchored for an overnight stay.  With two full days to explore this lovely island, we went out and about both days.   Liz and I loved the warmth of the people.  Mo’orea is part of French Polynesia, and French and Polynesian were the main languages, but many people also spoke English. 

 Its jagged mountains were topped with clouds at dawn, but the clouds burned off quickly— making it very warm.

On the first day we used a tour from Alpert’s—a huge family business was.  The next day, we followed the Ship’s Polynesian Ambassador, Kainoa from Hawaii, who referred us to his cousin’s pearl shop (Hina Pearls), taking the free black shuttle bus there to peruse quality documented pearls. It looks like both companies are connected, and family connections seem large on this island.

The show that was performed on our excursion was quite lovely and a short video of the fire dance (which I tried to put here but ship WiFi being problematic it ended up at the top, so be it) captures some of it.  

Uh-Oh. A wandering shell.

The Energizer Bunny (my sister-in-law, Liz) likes to walk along beaches and collect pretty shells.  She called some at Aitutaki day before yesterday. 

Yesterday was very rocking-and-rolling because of winds and high seas. Last night—still lots of rolling—I woke up in the night and on my way back from our stateroom bathroom, I found one of her shells she had collected in Aitutaki on the far side of my bed where it must have fallen off the table and rolled across the carpeted floor 10 feet.  I picked it up and put it on my bedside table. Next morning I got up and it was gone, so I warned your mother not to step on a loose shell rolling around and she said—“I almost stepped on it and I have picked it up and put it back on the counter.” Just now we found it on the floor again five feet away—and  your mom  said: “ I think it’s alive—there is something in it!”  Well, the hermit crab is now in a glass with a little bit of sea salt from our balcony dissolved in a little water. We are trying to decide the next step for returning it to a suitable habitat. 

Cook Islands

 Following sea days when we enjoyed shipboard activities (watching great shipmates dance, for example, during the 5 o’clock dance hour shown in the last image here ) and leisure time to read and relax, we reached Cook Island and Aitutaki.  

It is a beautiful island with a difficult tender transport—using the Lee of the island plus the Lee of the ship we were able to access tenders for the difficult journey ashore through a lengthy 45’ wide channel where only one vessel at a time could cross.  Once there, we easily walked to a lovely lagoon area full of birds, shells, and beautiful scenery.

The next day was another Cook Island stop at Raratonga, but the captain felt it was unsafe to tender ashore and instead we are circumnavigating this lovely island paradise. This island view is shown at the top. 

Halloween

 We decorated our door for Halloween and enjoyed the decor around the ship! 

NUKU'ALOFA, TONGATAPU, TONGA

 

We were warmly welcomed in Tonga with cultural dancers and music as we docked in the capital city of the Kingdom of Tonga. The island of Tongatapu is quite flat.  Very few areas appear more than 50 feet above sea level, and most are only a few feet. The Nuku’alofa dock is a very interesting pier that had obviously been destroyed in a disastrous storm or Tsunami, and had been rebuilt in the last decade — while the depth can handle ships, the pier is quite short with both the ship bow and stern extending past the pier length, and small support boats had to “ferry” bow and stern mooring lines to concrete islands for the more lengthy tie-up moorings.  It was quite complex maneuvering on arrival.

We had a lovely view of the Tongan Palace where we were docked:

Our excursion across the island involved a stop at a major volcanic sea-level plateau with fissures where tidal action created a string of huge blowholes like an aerial white water curtain that moves from one end of the plateau to the farthest end with each suitable wave. Just a fraction of the curtain can be seen in the image below. 

 Later, we visited Hino Cave resort where we were served a traditional feast of local foods and presented with a show of cultural dancing.  The cave itself was partially filled in with sand from the Tsunami which is where the feast used to be held, but at our stop we ate in a well ventilated structure located topside above the cave.  The view from the structure’s deck is shown below.

Back at the ship, we were greeted on return by cultural dancers who danced for nearly 2 hours as we prepared to sail away and leave the beautiful port.

Final Fiji

Our next day in the Fijian Islands was also on Vito Levi island but on the opposite site from Suva, the capital. The bus ride to the park was enjoyable and fun but long (2 hours one way) and our tour guide, whose long name began with the Fijian sound for “Joe” so he requested we call him that, gave us a running commentary on sites we were passing plus taught us bits of Fijian language: Vinaka (thank you), Bula (hello/welcome), io (yes) and many more.  In the above picture Joe is wearing traditional Fijian attire of a skirt below his knees. He gave us permission to take his photograph as he held up a sperm whale tooth necklace hung from braided coconut fiber.  

 This stop included an excursion to an Eco Park where endangered species are captive bred, including the Fijian Crested Iguana—about 24inches in length, and taking 5 years to reach maturity for breeding. This beautiful reptile and several native birds were part of the park’s species recovery work. 

More images from the eco park including an endangered parrot and my first ever in-person glimpse of the flying fox—a fruit eating fox-shaped  and furry bat that I just enjoy watching from bat world sanctuary but had never seen in person until this excursion.  It was very cute.

We were traveling to the sugar cane producing side of the island, principally owned and operated by people of Indian descent.  We passed a beautiful temple, one of the largest on the island, in Nadi. 

We made it back to our ship just in time because the 5.5 hour excursion turned out to be 7 hours. But it was booked through Holland America so the ship could not leave without us.  We were not the last bus to return, either, as several later returnees were apparently running on Fijian time.

Our next day was a stop at the beautiful garden island of 

Vanua Levi, Fiji. The total island population is less than 8,000, and we were tendered ashore. After a thankfully short (packed minibus) drive to Flora Tropica gardens, we climbed up what had to be 150 wooden steps on a plank way path (dry rot made that a bit scary) to this beautiful over look before heading back to the town where we tendered back to ship and just relaxed after the hot steep climb.

Fiji—Suva

 

A Fijian marching band warmly welcomed us to the Suva port at 7:30 am on October 23.  Their music was wonderful, lasted about 30 minutes while docking and port papers were completed.  I am still not feeling up to the excursion we had booked—caught a cold—but Liz left on her Eco-Park tour, and I stayed aboard to rest and catch a telephone call with Oona.

This a busy port, with lots of vessels of all types entering a very narrow passage through coral reefs and rocky shoals.  While Liz was  off-ship, the Volendam had a man overboard drill, where a tender was lowered and scurried over to pick up an overboard life preserver. This image was taken from the poolside of the Lido where I watched the drill.

Liz returned from her adventure and said it was good I didn’t go as it was muddy, slippery, uneven ground with at least 60 primitive steps, and two steep ups-and-downs, but very beautiful.  From the lovely rainforest plants to the Fijian kava ceremony, she enjoyed every minute (but had to scrub her tennis shoes and wash her slacks afterwards):

American Samoa

We moored in American Samoa on Friday morning and since we had an excursion, we went ashore right away and found our bus, which was an old wooden open air (open because all windows were open) bus trimmed on the outside with live ginger leaves and blossoms. The size of the closed in cab was tight, but the driver managed to put in a collapsible wheel chair for another guest. I’m guessing this vintage bus was of WWII era.  No loudspeakers so our lovely young Samoan woman in traditional dress had to project her voice.  We could hear as we wee in the second row—others behind us were likely not so lucky. 

We stopped at a tsunami memorial and saw this lovely protected beach and swim lagoon—but we couldn’t stop to swim. 

The vegetation around the memorial included a huge tall tree-like white gardenia—smelled so lovely, and the leaves and blossoms were absolutely  huge.

Lots of dogs wander the island—they look well fed but do not belong to anyone and just mingle with the population.