The Hughes Zoo

Honolulu was the first of our four stops in Hawaii and to make sure we eased into things we had absolutely no plans. Everyone on the ship needed to go through US immigration before anyone could disembark, but it was relatively painless and before long we were walking down the gangway. Ange was keen to do some shopping, so after a brief detour through Chinatown we found a nice semi-open air mall called Aloha Towers which is right on the waterfront.

As usual, the first order of business was food. Luck was very much on our side - Ange fairly randomly picked Don Ho’s Island Grill which had excellent, down to earth food and great service. I had these vegetable lettuce wrap things that we just beautiful. During lunch a warning came over the radio about he earthquake in Samoa and the possibility of a resultant tsunami, although of course nothing eventuated from it.

After lunch Ange took Will for a bit of a shopping adventure and Jeremy and I watched ships and forklifts and planes and helicopters do lots of interesting things. Then we wandered back into the city where Ange picked up some clothes, the boys got some toys, and I got a mild gastro bug. Shopping done, it was time for Will’s afternoon sleep so we headed back to Aloha Towers, which was quiet, outdoors-ish and cool. While Ange walked Will around, Jeremy played with his new motorbikes and I tried to catch up on some blogging. Ange did some more shopping, including finding an Hawaiian babushka store which her and the boys loved.

This was my first time in the US, and I have to say I really like it. I’m sure it varies a lot around the country, but Honolulu felt really… well.. comfortable. If it wasn’t for the different accents and backwards traffic we easily could have been wandering around an Australian city. So despite in the past being fairly nonplussed about  going to the US I’m looking forward to the next 3 days and adding the rest of the country to my ‘places to visit’ list.

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There’s 5 days travel time between Bora Bora and Honolulu. It was a good time to rest and regroup after a few busy days. Jeremy has started to get bored of creche - because he’s the youngest some of the activities are too old for him (he said musical chairs was “mean”)  plus he has the teachers wrapped around his little finger. Which means he spends most of his time there watching the Wiggles or playing the Playstation2. Which means he’s more than a little crazy by the time we pick him up, even if it’s only been a couple of hours.

So, there’s no more creche, which has been great. We’re in a nice routine now where one of us entertains Jeremy for the morning while the other one gets Will to bed, then we swap in the afternoon, and play together as a family when Will’s awake. But we’re being much more relaxed with the routine now that the boys are comfortable, the only real consistency is Will’s sleep times and the dinner/bath/bed timeslot. Of a night Ange and I are alternating going to the gym, then grabbing dinner and sometimes drinks afterwards.

On the Bora Bora tourist bus ride I let Jeremy use my (brand new, eeek) SLR. He loved it and was surprisingly good, especially seeing as he doesn’t really look through the viewfinder. He’s asked to use it a couple more times and really seems to enjoy it. You can see some his photos here.

Although 90% of the people on-board are lovely, the other 10% are starting to drive us a little nuts. Someone actually tried to tell Ange that Jeremy is small for his age the other day - he had his health check before we left and he’s in the 80th+ percentile for everything and (literally) off the charts for weight. Uh huh, that’s right lady, he’s tiny. Ange seems to cop of a lot more of it than I do, probably as a result of my friendly disposition. I keep telling her to scowl at people more, but she doesn’t seem interested.

On the flipside, we have so many people randomly stop us when the boys are with us or not to tell us something nice about them - how well behaved they are, how polite, how quiet, how well they eat etc. It more than makes up for the minority of old grouches.

The only other really young kids on board are a brother and sister and their cousin on holiday with their parents and grandparents.  We didn’t get much of a chance to hang out together until this week. Funnily enough, they’re public servants from Canberra (is that redundant?). Unfortunately, they’re getting off at Honolulu and flying back to Sydney. They boys had a great time playing with kids closer to their age, particularly Jeremy who loved hanging out with Kyan.

A fair few of the crew are also getting off at Honolulu, including Viktoria who has been absolutely lovely to us since our first night. All of the crew are fantastic and they work incredibly hard. It’s only been a few weeks but we’re already quite attached to them.

There was some rough weather out at sea, causing the ship to create quite a bit of whitewater. Jeremy, looking out of our window, wanted to know who’d put soap in the ocean to make it bubbly. Rough oceans also makes the pools interesting to swim in because of course the water moves around quite a lot. It’s almost like being in a mini-ocean. When it gets too rough they close off the pools, but before that happened Jeremy and I had a great time.

Bora Bora was our third straight in-port stop, and our last in French Polynesia. To give Will the chance of a good sleep after two hectic days, Ange and he stayed on the ship in the morning while Jeremy and I took a tender to the island. We had a short wander around and even found a crane and front end loader to watch for a while.

We headed back to the ship to meet Ange and Will for lunch, and then planned to head back to Bora Bora for a glass bottomed boat cruise at 1:45pm. There was only one small problem with that plan: the cruise was at midday. We decided to try our luck and see if they had any spaces on the 1:45 cruise. Despite the best efforts of the Princess tour organiser, the best we could manage was a round-the-island bus tour. Which, it turned out, was a whole heap of fun.

From what we could see it looked like Bora Bora would be every bit the paradise that Moorea was, although we mostly saw it from a distance. It made me particularly glad that we had hired the car  in Moorea and explored in more fully. Again, there’s the brilliant beaches, turquoise water,  mountains and great weather. It is a lot more tourist-conscious though: there’s a lot of hotels and the locals are obviously a lot more used to having thousands of people turn up for a day.

Both the boys were excellently behaved on the bus and thoroughly exhausted by the by the time it finished in the late afternoon. We  got back to the ship just in time for dinner and the boys went to bed straight afterwards. Ange and I forewent gym for the night and instead went to dinner together, followed by a martini. Very sophisticated
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If Rarotonga was beautiful, Moorea is absolutely mind-blowing. It’s the quintessential south pacific island - gorgeous clear aqua water with waves  breaking 100m out on the reef, dramatic cloud-topped mountains, an approachable working class rural population and perfect weather.

We didn’t have much of a plan (as usual) and when we got off the tender Ange suggested hiring a car for the day.  It was pretty pricey (US$150, plus US$30 in fuel) but it allowed us to do whatever we wanted and comfortably spend the entire day onshore. We would have paid almost as much for a couple of hour guided tour.

As an added bonus, the hire car lady pointed out the local places that were worth visiting, including hands down the most unbelievably stunning beach I’ve ever seen. We spent probably 4 hours there and it was seriously like the rest of existence had stopped. None of us really got hungry or thirsty or distracted or bored. We just wanted to swim. Ange was smart enough to pack our swimming goggles, so we were able to do some skin diving over the small reef close to shore.

Jeremy was at first a little freaked out by having to share the water with fish, but quickly got used to the idea. Will had is morning sleep in the pram in the shade of a palm tree, while the rest of us swam a few meters away. Ange and I, and Jeremy to a much lesser extent, got a good case of sunburn. Jeremy was so excited about going to the beach that he was in a particularly demanding mood, so we sort of only half remembered to cream ourselves up. Still, it was worth it.

For lunch we hopped back in the car and drove a little further around the beach to the Sofitel resort. The place is seriously awesome - traditional looking huts on stilts out over the water. The food was pretty nice too. If it wasn’t for the reportedly $600/night price tag, I’d have added it to our list of places to come back to.

After lunch Ange did a fantastic job of driving the left-hand-drive Mondeo up a very narrow winding mountain road to a lookout. The mountain formations are so dramatic and beautiful.

As with Pepeete, the main language is French which makes it feel like you’re really quite a long way from home. Although it made sign-reading a pain, it was pretty cool.

For me, and I think everyone else agrees, so far Moorea is the highlight of the trip. I could have spent a week here. Or a month.

Photos for the day

Yesterday was an at-sea day between the Cook Islands and Tahiti, a nice day to relax and take it extra slow. There’s a couple of photos from the day here.

This morning we arrived in Papeete and actually docked at a wharf, meaning  we could walk on and off the boat easily. It’s so much easier than having to go by tender. According to the Lonely Planet guide, Tahiti’s capital isn’t much to write home about, but we all had a fantastic time. If you want to see the more scenic parts of the island you have to travel a bit, but we were perfectly happy wandering around Papeete.

Ange had a bit of a route planned based on the Lonely Planet guide, so after breakfast we wrangled the kids and headed into town. Although it’s not a huge city  by any stretch, it was nice to actually see traffic and be surrounded by a decent density of people. It’s pretty run down in places, and getting around the busy, narrow, cracked and broken footpaths with the pram was a challenge.

Despite obviously being conscious of tourists the people don’t really seem that happy to see you. Then again, 2000 old middle class white folk turning up and making a nuisance of themselves would probably annoy me too. Not that anyone was overtly rude, but the attitude was quite different to Tonga and the Cook Islands where people were helpful and interested.

After lunch (and some perl buying) at a market, we wandered some more can found a kids playground. The boys had a ball and Will caught the attention of a couple of local girls with his patented LookAtMeLaugh. We all headed back to the ship after that so that Will could have his afternoon sleep somewhere quiet. Ange decided to take Jeremy back so they had a couple of extra fun hours.

Although there wasn’t a whole lot to do as such, I think we all enjoyed being around a fair volume of people for a change.

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Mist covered mountains overlooking coral covered beaches with crystal clear water. Kids riding the back of utes, singing. Scooters everywhere.

It’s such a shame that we only had half a day scheduled in Rarotonga, and even more of a shame that we arrived late so most people only got a couple of hours ashore. The weather was stunning: mid 20s, with just enough cloud to take some off the sting out of the sun. We were all really looking forward get hitting a beach and spending a good part of the afternoon there. Unfortunately, our tickets for the tender off the boat wouldn’t have us leaving until after 4, way too close the boy’s night time routine. So instead we all went for a swim in the ship’s pool, and then Ange stayed back with the boys and I had an hour or so to explore by myself.

It was very relaxing to just wander around taking photos, without having to lug prams, bags and kids around. I think we’re going to try and give each other that opportunity more often. After 2 hours it felt like I’d had about a week off.

We’re back out at see now, heading to Tahiti. Both the boys are getting an inordinate amount of attention from the staff and other passengers, and people keep stopping me when I’m by myself to tell me what good kids we have. The other night, after a pretty difficult day, another couple with young kids asked us at dinner how we managed to get them to be so quiet and well behaved. We both  laughed like crazy - it was the first time one of us hadn’t been yelling at the other 3 for the whole day.

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After the  hectic day at Vava’u we all really enjoyed a ‘nothing’ day at sea. About the biggest event was crossing the international date line overnight, so we’re now officially a day behind Aus.

Will has developed a brand new laugh whose sole purpose seems to be to get the attention of the wait staff at the ship’s restaurants. Unfortunately, it works really, really well and he almost constantly has someone talking to him. The boys have started to develop an even closer friendship, happily playing together instead of just around each other. If Jeremy upsets Will, Will now demands a cuddle from him and then everything’s OK again. It’s really cute.

They’ve started to circulate brief newsletters about what’s happening in Aus, which is nice because I’ve had absolutely no idea what’s been happening in the world. With no net access (well, 55c/min, which equates to no access) I’ve become completely out of touch with everything. It’s mostly nice but at times really frustrating. Like when I want to Google define: something and have to resort to hunting down a dictionary or live with not knowing.

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Our first real day off the boat - how exciting! Because of the size of the ship we needed to anchor offshore then take the ship’s tenders (life boats) to shore. That made taking the pram a bit more of a challenge, but we managed.

It was overcast and very muggy. Within a few minutes of being out of the aircon we were sweating. Once we were ashore we didn’t really know what t0 do, so we just wandered into the town to find somewhere to get a drink. We found a nice little ice cream place with great views over the water. The heat and our disorganisation though took its toll and it was  a pretty tense morning. Exacerbated by Jeremy running head-long towards roads and sheer drops.

Ange had read about a restaurant and bar called The Mermaid and took us on quite and adventure t get to it, down a few hundred stairs, over unpaved paths behind boat sheds following hand painted signs. With the pram. We got there eventually though, and were initially pretty disappointed. It looked more like a backpacker’s hangout. But the food was excellent, the vegie tortilla we  shared was better than anything we’d had on the ship in the last week. The staff were really laid back and friendly, though sort of reserved. Suited me down to the ground. Jeremy found a girl a few years older than him to play with and had a great time, much helped by the canon and steering wheel.

Will has really come out of his shell, either that or he just likes Tongan women. Usually he won’t let anyone else pick him up, but he happily spent quite a bit of time with a lady from the ice cream shop and the woman in The Mermaid.

The boys got a couple of shirts coloured with dye made from Tongan dirt and Ange and I got some sun and fresh air. Despite the tension we had a great time.

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Today was supposed to be our first scheduled stop, at Nuku’alofa. However the rough weather from a couple of days ago resurfaced and it wasn’t safe to enter the port, so we skipped the stop and headed for the next Tongan port on our list, Vava’u. Jeremy was a bit crazy - not really being able to run around for 5 days is  a pretty big ask for a kid with as much energy as he has. He held it together pretty well though, all things considered.

As you might have guessed, the ship is pretty much a floating retirement village. Generally that’s not so bad, but the main downside is that the only people more arrogant than parents with prams are old shufflers. I guess when it takes so much effort to get started, you’re not going to stop for anyone. A compromised ability to judge relative speed and distance has ended in a couple of minor collisions - mostly people who walk past me when I’m pushing the pram, and cut in front without keeping up en0ugh speed.

Usually Ange and I tag-team watching the boys of a night,  but last night we both went out for a couple of drinks at the bar that’s literally at the end of our hallway. We checked in on the boys every 15 minutes or so, they didn’t even notice we were gone. It was really nice to get to spend some time together, especially when it involved Martini-drinking.

Late this afternoon we arrived in Vava’u. Just seeing land for the first time in a week was a bit special. The islands look beautiful, I can’t wait to explore them tomorrow.

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The last of our uninterrupted at-sea days, before we arrive in Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa tomorrow morning was another laid back and relaxed day. The sea today was much calmer than is has been, and the water is such a beautiful deep blue. Jeremy was very keen to go to creche in the morning and afternoon, so Ange and I actually got to explore the ship a little, and both squeezed in one nap each during Will’s two daytime sleeps.

Almost all of the staff on the ship seem to know us now - being one of the few families makes us fairly obvious. Plus everyone seems to love both the boys, and both of them are having to get used to a lot more attention from strangers than they are used to. A lot of the staff seem to have young families at home - I can’t even being to imagine how hard it would be being away for months at a time.

Jeremy has made some good friends at creche, including 3 older girls who love looking after him and Will.

Speaking of Will, he’s really taken to the ocean life. He’s now crawling comfortably, and pulling himself up on things to stand up. His eyes, which have been various shades of blue-grey since he was born, seem to be going hazel. So currently they’re blue/grey/green/brown. Pretty impressive.

The biggest problem we’re all having is not constantly eating dessert. Plus they’re not exactly flush with high-protein vegetarian options, so I’m stuffing myself with eggs and beans in the morning and finding whatever I can for the rest of the day.

Although we’re very used to ship life, we’re  all really looking forward having a day out and about tomorrow.

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