Did we say the Humpback whales woke us up with their singing? Well, if that’s not enough to get us roused and play then they get a little more insistent by rubbing themselves against the hulls of the ships at anchor! While they didn’t do this to our boat, other people in the anchorage reported it happening to them. Tiffany was even startled one evening out on the deck while we were moored when a whale blew off the stern of the boat. It was pitch black and unfortunately we couldn’t see it. Our current captain never being one to pass up an opportunity to play with whales, we “volunteered” to help out a visiting whale research team by taking them out for the day. The fact that we benefited from being able to use their gear to listen to whale songs and track down the whales ourselves was purely coincidental.
We learned that the researches were primarily interested in pictures of the whales’ humps and the undersides of their tails.
What are the three biggest unavoidable expenses of Travel?
1) Transportation
2) Accommodation
3) Food
Now what if, in order to not pay the first two, you were forced to spend your days in tropical splendor visiting the remote places completely inaccessible to common travelers? Continue reading “Volunteer Crewing 101”
Look, it’s not like we don’t think this trip has profoundly affected us or something but when multiple people come up to you and say that within hours of arriving, it begs the response:
Us: “Yes we did. Um, how did you know?”
Local: “Because you’re new here and it’s not Friday.”
This answer mystified us until one Friday we came ashore and everything was closed. Literally the entire capital village…er…city of Alofi was a ghost town. Then two hours later everyone showed back up. We later found out that on Fridays the one Air New Zealand flight that services Niue, The…One…Flight… arrives on Fridays at about 1pm local time and everyone goes up to meet the new tourists.
Anyone else just flash on a little short guy shouting “de plane! de plane!”? Glad we’re not the only ones.
Funny fact: Niueans love KFC. They love it so much that locals have their family members who are flying home pick up KFC in Auckland. We are told it is extremely common to have a couple of buckets of the Colonel’s special recipe onboard the 4 hour flight.
So we’re off the boat and into the “big city” (cough, hack, giggle).
First stop, the bank. We need currency and this is where we run into our first problem. See again to remind you, there are about 1300 people total on this island. Now these 1300 people have exactly 1 bank and that one bank only accepts exactly 1 type of card: Visa. Which we don’t have. We are actually saying to you that MasterCard is not accepted in this country. At all. So when Greg walks up to the bank teller and hands her his ATM card to make a withdrawal, she hands it back and says “sorry, we don’t accept MasterCard.”
Greg: “It’s an ATM card not a credit card.”
Teller: “Sorry, we can only process Visa cards for anything.”
Greg: “Ok, no problem, is there another bank in town where I can use this card?”
Teller: Sorry, we’re the only bank in the country. (emphasis added by us)
…
Holy cow we’re in Visa commercial! Where’s the voice over guy!?
It ended up being OK because luckily, we carry some cash for emergencies. But the emergencies we were thinking of were more like “abandoned in a foreign country and need airfare” vice, “hey I’d like some local currency to buy lunch.”
But an emergency it was and we were very grateful to have the cash. So lesson learned – always carry some extra cash because you never know when the one and only bank in the country won’t take your ATM card. Because not everyone takes MasterCard, but it seems greenbacks are still universally accepted.
Like this article? For more learn more about our varied shopping adventures in Polynesia by clicking on “Haven’t had a pig roast yet…”
About the authors
Greg and Tiffany are traveling around the world on sailing yachts and keep a video blog of their (mis)adventures. If sailing to Tahiti on a 44 ft sailboat, getting pooped on by seagulls, opening coconuts with dull machetes, sailing past tornadoes and ukulele Christmas carols are for you, then check them out at www.CoastGuardCouple.com!
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?“
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”
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”
Mooring up in Avarua, not as easy as one would think, even for salty dawgs such as ourselves.
The Cook Islands are also the first place we came into contact direct contact with the history of cannibalism in Polynesia. The practice is alive and well, just not exactly after a fashion you would expect: Continue reading “Cannibalism is Alive and Well in Rarotonga!”
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.
Departing Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia
Leaving Bora Bora spelled the end of our journeys in French Polynesia.
The feeling was…mixed. We had seen so much and at the same time had only scratched the surface of this complex colony were West meets South and Islanders mingle with Frenchmen. We saw about 14 different islands in “the blue continent.” We didn’t visit about 103 islands and 2 of the five island chains didn’t even get a passing glace from us. Because of our limited time here we didn’t even spend much more than a week in a given place.
It would be like saying you understand America after spending a week in New York, Huston and San Francisco. Granted, you’d know a great deal and there’d be a whole lot you missed too.
The decision to leave is pretty easy. The French government will make us vacate the country in about a week and being deported is rarely good for one’s continued welcome at other South Pacific countries. Also, French Polynesia is only the second country we’ve managed to visit in our grand tour of the Pacific; the first being Mexico. Though, arguably, you could say each island chain is a unique culture and you’d be right and while we’ve managed to travel thousands of miles by sea, we’re still on country #2.
We have traveled though French Polynesia under a simple philosophy “we may not pass this way again.” Because, odds are, we will not. Not that we couldn’t, just that now that we have been here there are a lot of other places both of us want to see before we come around for a second pass to our favorite parts of the world. There is a lot of planet out there and the more we see, the bigger it gets. The world is really a small place, right up until the point it becomes huge. Continue reading “Leaving French Polynesia”
While underway enroute to Bora Bora for our second visit we realized we had some business phone calls to make. They weren’t anything huge; just checking in with our virtual assistant, following up with Greg’s old business partner, that kind of stuff. But we figured since we already went and got the picture and all, we might as well actually have a business day in Bora Bora.
At its core, the work day is much the same as an inport workday is anywhere else: Greg and Tiffany sit at their respective computers and type, take photos of documents, make phone calls on Skype, etc. for a few hours at a time.
But there is something about our surroundings that just makes it somehow a little bit better. Imagine this as the view from your office: Continue reading “Bora Bora Business Day”
