Tiffany and Greg Around the World
Alofi, Niue
Now that we got some cash, what can we buy?
This was a smaller example of the Niuean coconut crab which all reports point to being delicious. Take a giant Polynesian crab. Feed it coconut for its entire life. Cook and eat. Mind the vorpal blades on its hands. The gastronomic rapture should be rather obvious. Continue reading “Free WiFi!!!”
Hey, it’s our anniversary! We got married in Las Vegas 8 years ago today!
It’s been an interesting ride for us over the years, going from Coast Guard officers, to business owners, to around the world sailors, but we’ve enjoyed it all.
This is the second anniversary that we’ve had since we started our trip back in October of 2009, and it’s strange how people think we should celebrate it. “Normal” people go out for dinner, or on a short vacation, but we do that stuff all of the time! One person was stunned to hear that we don’t have any special plans for today. “You’re not going to go out to dinner? Well that’s not very romantic” were her exact words. But my question to you is – what exactly is romance?
Since we’ve been on this trip, we’ve spent more time in each other’s company on a daily basis than we ever have. And I mean EVER. Most “normal” people spend all day with their coworkers, not their spouses. Prior to this trip, the most time we regularly spent together was every evening and weekends. When we were working together we still didn’t spend this much time together because we went to different meetings and worked with other people. So what can be more “romantic” than getting to spend all day, every day, with your chosen spouse?
We thought about today, and talked about making plans to “do something”, but we already have lots of amazing things planned! Any one of them could be a “second honeymoon” or an “anniversary vacation”. Why does it have to happen now, today? We acknowledge between us the significance of this day, but it’s more of a “hey, cool, eight years!”
Like this article? Check out our thoughts on coming home by clicking on Greg’s last birthday entry “So, when are you coming home?“
Like many Americans, 9/11 had a major effect on our lives at the time.
On the morning of September 11th 2001, Greg was an extremely junior officer serving the first months of his first tour of duty on a US Coast Guard cutter patrolling off the coast of Haiti. He was performing counter-migrant and counter-drug operations as a ship driver and a boarding officer. 24 hours later Greg was off the Coast of Louisiana boarding cargo ships looking for bombs. A year later he was recruited into the new field of counter-terrorism operations in the US Coast Guard.
Tiffany was a senior cadet at the Coast Guard Academy getting ready to graduate and take her first tour onboard a cutter stationed in the Pacific Northwest. The Coast Guard missions she had trained for 4 years to accomplish were no longer the primary missions she would perform in that job.
Since then a decade has passed. We received our honorable discharges, Greg started and sold a business and Tiffany became a leading sailing instructor. We sailed across the Pacific Ocean. A few months ago Greg was in New York for 36 hours and he gave up some sleep to see the World Trade Center site. Neither of us had ever been and it seemed a good idea to at least see the location where the event that shaped our military careers happened:
Alofi, Niue
Notice anything different about the description of where we are? Normally we give you the city, the island and the country. In Niue though, the island IS the country. With a total number of 1 island and a total population of approximately 1300 citizens in country at any one time, this island-nation is a very different experience from the other countries we have visited so far. There are more Niueans in the main New Zealand city of Auckland than there are in Niue. It’s actually kind of funny because the Miss Niue beauty pageant is actually held in Auckland and broadcast live over the internet & TV back to the home country.
This isn’t too surprising being as all Niueans are dual citizens of New Zealand, there are only so many jobs a nation of 1300 people can support, and finally, Niue, along with The Cook Islands and quite a few other island chains out here are all protectorates of New Zealand. This basically means that, though the Kiwis play it down a lot, the tiny little country of New Zealand is a major regional power player in the South Pacific. It’s basically France, the USA and NZ that own something like 80% of the islands out here. Which is really impressive that: Continue reading “National Population – 1300”
Enroute Niue
Couple things from this video:
First off, that little scrap of paper with the photocopied hand drawn chart of the reef? It’s photocopied over and over and passed on from one cruiser to the next. It is literally the best and only chart available for Beveridge Reef. There may not be too many unexplored places left on this globe but there are at least some places less explored than others.
Two, did you hear those numbers? Again to remind you, these islands are both very tiny and extremely far apart in a vast ocean. It’s 120 miles to the next island, 500 back to the one we came from and the nearest land? It’s only 3 miles away…straight down. So a hand drawn map from who knows when Continue reading “3 Miles Straight Down”
Avarua, Rarotonga, Cook Islands
That’s the flag, So where are we now?
Yep, still in the middle of the blue stuff. Oh but hey, now we’re in the left-middle.
The Cook Islands are a lot different than what we’ve come to expect from the South Pacific.
First off, everyone speaks English! That’s right, the Cook Islands are a protectorate of New Zealand, a member of the British Commonwealth, so therefore they are English-speakers! Which means Greg’s months of struggling to order burgers with fries on the side instead of in the bun are finally over.
But like their neighbors over in Tahiti, there are just some parts of Polynesian culture that simply persist despite all foreign influence. Why these parts revolve around sex remains a mystery to us, but these Cook Islanders ain’t letting go of their freedom of expression anytime soon!
Ok so the dude on their dollar? That’s Tangaroa, their EXTREMELY well endowed god of fertility and fishing. No, seriously, if you want to get fish or get laid apparently this is the guy to see. And it’s no real big secret why; brother-man always has his fishing rod!
He is not only a god in their pantheon, he was also selected, in all his well-endowed glory as it were, to be the international representative of the Cook Island tourism department! As a result, he is on everything: the money, the maps, the government buildings. Everything! If it has to do with tourism baby, the naked tripod guy is prominently featured. If this doesn’t finally prove that Polynesian culture’s perception on sexuality are superior to our own, then you’re just not paying attention!
Oh and just in case you were worried about sexism in their exploitation / utilization of nudity in the monetary documents; put your mind at ease. The naked chick riding a shark is on their 3 dollar bill:
Like this article? Check out our series on “Sex and Jesus” for more on the Polynesian perception on acceptable sexuality in normal society.
En route Rarotonga, Cook Islands
Before we enter the Cook Islands you may be curious where they take their name from.
The fact that you don’t yet know means that we have been horribly remiss in failing to enlighten you about Captain James Cook, one of the most amazing explorers in the history of the planet Earth. Ever. No exceptions or qualifications or riders necessary. Dude’s at the top of the heap. Though Greg cannot find any hard confirmation, similarities to names of captains of starships with almost identical missions are more than likely not coincidental. (Ok look, both went “boldly where no man went before” and ended up stumbling across insanely sexually open women, both were captains, both came from poor backgrounds, both were pretty handy in a fight, one ship was “Enterprise” the other “Endeavor” I mean come on!)
If you spend any time in any part of the South Pacific you will find bays, islands, mountains, heck entire countries named “Cook.”
The man has his own line of island beers named after him! (and they’re good beers too!)
Well why is that?
British Captain James Cook basically discovered the entire South Pacific. Yep. Whole thing. Not exaggerating. Everything from the Marquesas to…and including…Australia. Thousands of islands, millions of square miles of open ocean, almost all of it gets attributed to him and his sailing ships. Oh and he didn’t sail because, like us, it sounded like fun to get mugged by a freaking Kracken in the middle of the night. He sailed because “back in the day,” that was the only option. Pop his name into a Google search sometime and do a little reading on this guy. He’s scary amazing and was wicked smart. Sailed off into the blue back in the day when a lot of people would bet even money that that you would fall off the side of the planet and your odds of actually figuring out where you were with any accuracy was about a billion to one. Have you ever tried celestial navigation? We took a college course in it and we still wouldn’t put even money on it as a reliable means of navigation.
It’s a better way to go than calculating local apparent noon, trust us.
He came back from the unknown with accurate charts, detailed accounts of hundreds of plants that no one had ever heard of, places that defied the imagination and some of the most interesting cultures of humans on the planet hereto unknown to Europe. Oh wait, he also discovered a continent for the Western world…which, being as there are only 7 on the planet and 3 were “discovered” by either being rigidly attached to or being Europe…look it’s impressive. Here’s a rough approximation of what he explored for the British Crown
We’ve been sailing for months and we haven’t even managed to hardly scratch the surface of what this guy pulled off…and we had charts and a GPS! Now granted, some of those charts have likely not been updated since he last dropped by but the point is, what we’re doing is considered ambitious and we actually know there is land out there. He didn’t. When his ship hit a reef because literally no one had ever charted those waters before, he didn’t just pull into the marina for a haul out and refit…oh no, this dude beaches his ship, tells his crew to put their big kid pants on and start chopping trees on an unknown island for replacement parts. And let us tell you what, rebuilding a tall ship by hand in the middle of the greatest expanse of nothing on the planet with 10 trees on the island wasn’t any small feat.
After defying death on a mostly daily basis for years at a time on 3 voyages off into the great blue unknown, he finally died in Hawaii when he was attacked by locals while exploring. After a vicious battle the islanders killed him and ate his remains in order to grow stronger, a local custom. They sent some of his remains back to his First Officer who returned them to Britain for burial.
So the reason everything from the bay we’re in, to the island it’s attached to, to the country that owns it, to the beer in our hands is named Cook? Because if you discovered 1/3 of the entire planet you’d probably call dibs on a few islands too.
…and we’d agree you’d earned it.
Like this article? Check out our exploration of the capital of the Marquesas in the entry Next Stop: Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia for more history on the Europeans in French Polynesia.
En-route Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia
Before we return to Bora Bora to experience Battle Fortress: South Pacific as a cruiser instead of a “normal tourist” let us take a moment to draw attention to a particular little point of interest that we figured out on our first trip here:
But hey, maybe those numbers aren’t hitting you with quite the magnitude that they hit us. It’s in kilometers even, so how far is that? Aren’t kilometers shorter than miles anyway? (PS- yes, they are. 1 kilometer = .62 miles, but still, that’s a long way!) So let’s avoid the numbers for a second and cut to the skinny: after all this time, we’re only half way there, give or take. Even then we’re assuming “there” is Sydney vice Moscow, Europe, India or any other arbitrary point of land. So Tiffany attempted a more graphic presentation to provide some perspective on our total distance traveled vs distance left to go in this ocean.
The word “size” takes on completely new dimensions when you are dealing with the Pacific Ocean. We have previously described to you the continent-sized island nations that are in abundance throughout the Pacific, but we haven’t actually described the size of the ocean itself. When we were working in Coast Guard Pacific Command both of us had the phrase “millions of square miles of open ocean” listed under our responsibilities but that number is just to big to get a grip on. Seriously, can you picture in your mind a million square miles of water?
The Pacific Ocean is the largest single body on our planet. You mean body of water, right? No, no we don’t. We mean the largest body of ANYTHING on our planet. North America pales in comparison, the Atlantic Ocean really shouldn’t share the same last name and Asia isn’t much more than, if you’ll excuse the somewhat appropriate pun, a drop in the bucket compared to the vastness of the Pacific. In fact, speaking of continents, we have been told that if you took every single scrap of dry land on Earth and put it into the Pacific, you’d still have room for a second Africa!
One of the things we learned on this journey is that some things cannot be accurately described…or even filmed. How do we describe to you a barren desert larger than anything else on this Earth filled with salt water? How do we show you what it feels like to know you are on a 50 foot ship and that for days, if not weeks, the closest point of land in any direction is two miles straight down? Everest could get dumped into this ocean and no one would ever find it!
This ocean borders our home country. In the past it has protected us and even today she feeds us. We have sailed her for quite a while now, but nowhere near as long as many others have. The Pacific is huge, diverse and amazing…and we’ve only come less than half way across her.
Taha’a, Society Islands, French Polynesia
Hey see that name up there? Yeah, you try and say that on your own and you’ll understand exactly where Greg is coming from in this video.
Aside from having a deceptively difficult name to pronounce in the English language, Taha’a shares a reef with Raiatea and therefore the same volcanic soil. Continue reading “How well can Vanilla really age?”
Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia
(cont’d from previous post)
Finally, the Polynesian dance school also had a group of little girls, which were there either because they were in fact learning or just because they were ridiculously adorable.
How the heck do they get their hips to do that? It like they dislocate their spines from their pelvic bones or something. It boggles the mind!
One of the things we found interesting was just how young some of the kids who were learning the Tahitian dance were. One little girl was only five! It was something of a culture shock to see such young kids learning a dance with such sexual overtones to it! Interestingly enough, we did not find ourselves completely repulsed like we are when we seen pre-teens in the States wearing push up bras or hip hugging skin tight jeans. So what was the basis for the difference? Continue reading “Fine line between cute and slutty”
