The First Couple Ports

Hello everyone….
As you know I am currently cruising in the South Pacific and I’m here with an update for the last couple days. After 6 long days at sea we dropped anchor in Nuka Hiva. This port as well as the others we have visited so far are part of French Polynesia. This means everyone speaks French and the prices for everything are expensive. I’m talking about $16 US for a drink, $107 US for 3 shirts (not that I have had to spend this). There are no shore excursions on this island and not too many beaches. The one we did find was very rocky and therefore we were forced just to sit in the sun and bake. The sun down here is a lot stronger then up north so even a couple minutes in the sun can make you red. Luckily I have SPF 50 and 30 sunscreen…not really doing much for a tan. : )
The second port we stopped at was in Papeete, which is the main city in Tahiti. Being that I had to stay on the ship due to IPM, I didn’t really get to explore this port. We stayed there over night till 5:30am the following day. The only time I did get off was to stop at a restaurant quickly with my friend Laura (where we got those expensive drinks I talked about earlier), and to watch some Polynesian dancers a plaza by the ship. The following morning, after leaving Tahiti at 5:30am, we had a short trip to the island of Moorea. You can get between both islands on a 20 minute ferry ride.
Moorea is gorgeous and another island of French Polynesia. For most people this is their favorite island due to the beautiful mountains and white sand beaches. We decided to go to a “resort” where there was a proper beach. Finally time to try out the new snorkel gear. Unfortunately, even though the water was warm and crystal blue there was no sea life to look at. Two of our cast members, Laura and Nicole, went on shore excursions where they went snorkeling in deeper water and got to swim with sharks and sting rays. Can we say…Amazing??? The rest of us hung out at the beach and wasted the day away. On a side note, I have decided to start an album with pictures of the dogs on these islands. At every single island there have been stray dogs everywhere. In Moorea while I was eating a sandwich I had two little visitors who were more then friendly and decided to roll around on top of me before I had to give them some of my sandwich. They were pretty cute and I have decided that I can say NO to anyone, just not a dog. Keep a look out for this album as I will probably put it up on my Facebook account. Click below on the link to be taken to my album of all the other pictures I have so far.
Our next stop was Bora Bora, which is probably everyone’s favorite place to stop at. Besides being super expensive, this port is amazing. When you hear of Bora Bora I’m pretty sure these words come to mind…Tropical, Paradise, Heaven, etc, etc, etc. This is true. Being that we were there for two days this was another overnight port, but like before I had to stay on because I had IPM. Boooooo It actually wasn’t to bad though as I was able to get some things done and got caught up on some reading. (NOTE: I’m currently reading “Barrel Fever,” by David Sedaris and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guerrilla Marketing,” by Susan Drake and Colleen Wells) The rest of the cast and other crew members rented a bungalow over the water at a resort and spent the night of the ship. Today was our second day and I was finally able to get off the ship. I along with some friends went swimming with sharks and sting rays. Yes I said sharks. I finally get to do this. Yayyyyy The shark encounter was our first stop of three and after donning our snorkel gear it was time to jump in the water. Our guide first threw in small pieces of fish to attract hundreds and hundreds of fish which was amazing. They came right up to the boat and didn’t really mind us in the water with them. This however did not attract the sharks but as we ducked our heads under the water you could see the. Unfortunately, they stayed on the bottom and didn’t come up near us. The two types of sharks that were below us were Lemon and Black Tip sharks. Totally harmless to us humans but they feed off of fish, stingrays, and other sharks. There were probably 4 -5 sharks with us at any given time and the two biggest probably were approximately 5-6 feet in length. Talk about a spooky feeling watching them circle beneath you without glass protecting you like at an aquarium. After spending about 30 minutes here we went to another part of the water that was shallow enough to stand in. Almost suddenly in swam about 7 stingrays to play. Our guide came in the water with us and showed us how he could hang on the back of one of the rays and ride it like a “taxi,” which he proudly explained to us. The rays were super gentle and found it fun to scare us a little on purpose. They would do this by swimming near us and brushing their wet velvet skin against our legs. You got used to this after a while but it was still funny at times. We spent about 20 minutes with the rays before heading to our third and last stop, a reef garden. At the reef garden we jumped in the water above the reef which was swarming with different types of fish. No sharks this time but the colors and amount of fish were amazing. We could see fish that were solid colors to rainbow colored and “sparkly” fish. I called them this because when the light hit them they looked like they could light up any color and shine it back at you. These fish were generally friendly and would get pretty close to us, probably just as curious as we were to them. After about 20 minutes of swimming around the reef we got back in the boat and headed back to land.
This was such a fun experience and just a hint of hopefully things to come in the next ports ahead of us. Tomorrow we dock in Raiatea, our last stop in the French Polynesian island group. Once again I have IPM so no exploring for me. After that we port in Rarotonga and Pago Pago and then we cross the International Date Line. Right now we are 3 hours behind the West Coast but after that cross the line it’s pretty much jumping into the future by 23 hours. More of that later.
A lot of people are asking, how many shows are you doing on a 67 day cruise. The answer is….the same we have always done. 5 shows, one opening night show we did about 2 weeks ago and 4 full production shows. Nothing changes, just that we have anywhere from 9 to 19 days in between shows. Pretty nice job to have at this moment.
I have written a lot and will let you digest it all now. I will write again in a few days wither right before or after we cross the Intl. Date Line. Till then have fun and stay healthy. Write back if you can and once again I posted some pictures from the last couple ports on my facebook so click on the link below to check them out. Miss you all.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=127251&id=509162521&l=d94d55bcba


Danny