South Pacific Part 1

Tahiti

Our first port in French Polynesia was Pape’ete, the capital of Tahiti. Upon disembarking the ship there were locals dressed in authentic Tahitian garb performing songs and dances while selling some handmade jewelry. I eyed some black pearl earrings that I would have to come back for. As soon as we exited the port, a large rat darted across the road in front of us. Ashley is NOT a fan of rats. She took this as an ill omen. If you read our previous blog about Hawaii, you may remember that we happened to be in possession of lava rocks that were said to be cursed, and Ashley was on high alert for any sinister happenings.

We brushed off the rat encounter and began wondering through Pape’ete. There was a lot of cool graffiti to find, and we checked out the black pearl museum, which had some very beautiful specimens, but honestly the best part about it was the air conditioning. It was about 98 degrees with 100% humidity, we were pretty much just swimming through the air. We took a short cab to the nearest hotel with beach access. We found ourselves a perfect secluded beach to laze in the sand and watch the sun set. The property had over-the-water huts and we agreed that next time we were in Tahiti we would be staying in our own over-the-water hut - We’ll see when that happens. On the horizon we could see the island of Moorea in the distance where we would go the next day.

Moorea is what I think of when I imagine paradise. The island’s green peaks jut away from the crystal clear blue shores, and it was one of the most picturesque places we went. I was excited to do some more snorkeling and we were not disappointed. We booked a small boat with some friends from the cruise so we had our own personal snorkel guide and boat captain for the 4 of us. They took us first to snorkel with black tip reef sharks and sting rays. I was so jazzed about it they couldn’t keep me in the boat as soon as we came to a stop. Ashley was a bit apprehensive about swimming with sharks intentionally, being that sharks are one of her greatest fears. While floating in the shallow water, I coaxed her to jump in, “The water is so warm, and look, I haven’t lost any limbs yet!” With an eye roll she tucked away her fear and splashed into the water because, well, YOLO. I was so proud of her for taking the leap. Our entire trip offered many opportunities that shoved us our of our comfort zones, and this was one for Ashley. The reef sharks were about 4-6 ft. long and not much of a threat to us. They mostly kept to themselves darting in and out of view. The rays would swoop in and swim right underneath us. We were swimming in about 5 ft. of water so we got to see both the rays and sharks pretty close up. It was a magical experience for me, and Ashley got through it without peeing her swim suit - or losing any limbs.

Our guides had prepared a picnic lunch for us on the boat, fresh fruit, sandwiches, and cookies. We soaked in the sun and let the salt dry on our skin. We had one more snorkel site where we would swim on the coral reef. Again we swam in about 5-8 ft. of water so we had excellent views and visibility. For about an hour we floated over beautiful corals and we even saw a massive school of fish that moved together effortlessly. It was the best snorkeling we had done on the whole trip. It was such a beautiful and relaxing day. The only bummer was that I lost another earring (it was the 2nd earring I had lost since Hawaii a few days before.) As I was moping about the disappearance of my Guatemalan jade earring, Ashley looked at me and said, “Maybe it’s the curse.” I glared at her hoping she wasn’t right.

We returned to the port just in time to buy a few trinkets, I got my oldest niece some small black pearl earrings, hoping that a.) she could keep track of earrings better than I could, and b.) she too will adventure to Tahiti one day to see some of the beauty we had witnessed that day.

Bora Bora

We were thrilled that this journey was bringing us to Bora Bora, just the name sounds exotic. It’s one of those places you feel like you’ll never see, but there we were drifting up to the atoll with the sun rising behind the mountains of Bora Bora, our hearts leaping with excitement. We chatted with a few locals who were so friendly and welcoming, once out of the port we hopped in a taxi van with a few other people and the driver was also so friendly! He welcomed us to the island asking what we wanted to do/where we wanted to go. We let him know we were looking for a good snorkeling spot. He was excited to share one of his favorite places with us, “I’ll drop you off at the best spot. Just be careful of your shiny jewelry, you’ll want to take it off so the eels don’t bite you.” A few minutes later he dropped us off at a beach with a few other people, and we recognized some of them from our ship. We asked them if they would be sitting there for a while, to which they said yes they’ll be there for at least an hour. We plopped our bags down near them, stripped down to our bikinis, and removed a few pieces of shiny jewelry to keep the eels at bay. Every other place we had snorkeled we were with a tour or we would take turns in the water so someone could watch our stuff. This day however, we were lulled into a false sense of island hospitality and friendliness. While we did ask the people we recognized from the ship if they’d be around, we hadn’t specifically asked them to watch our bags. We came out of the water heading for the spot where we left our bags, but they were no where in sight.

You know that moment when you can’t believe something is real because it’s too terrible to be real? It’s like an out of body experience. Maybe someone moved them? Was this the same tree we left them under? Our bags were gone. Our hearts were racing as we began asking people nearby if they had seen anyone come by and take our stuff, it had been only a few feet from them. They didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, just that two guys had ridden by on a moped and maybe they grabbed the bags. I began mentally running through everything that was in my bag… cell phone, camera, lenses, drone, credit cards, sketch book, my family ring that I had just taken off, my favorite t shirt. Ashely’s held her cell phone, credit cards, driver’s license. We were frantic trying to think what to do next. We didn’t have any money or phones, but we encountered some more people from our ship and a kind lady paid for our cab and rode with us to the police station.

We had been so vigilant with our belongings on the entire trip so far. We were constantly making sure one of us had an eye on our stuff everywhere we went, except for this day. Bora Bora is a small island, it has something like 10,000 inhabitants. We thought maybe we would be able to track down our stuff, but the clock was ticking because we had to be back on board at 6:00pm because the ship would depart with or without us after that.

We marched into the Brigade de Gendarmerie and hysterically explained what had just happened. We were slapped in the face with some French island nonchalance. Without so much as a look in our direction the uniformed man said, “Ve are closed from 12:00 to 2:00pm for lunch. Come back at 2:00.”

Seething with incredulity we walked back to the ship clad only in our wet bikinis. We went to the front desk of the ship to secure a translator to aid us upon our return to the gendarmerie since the official language is French. We were very thankful to have a Mauritian fellow named Neeram agree to go back with us at 2:00 and translate for us so we could make a police report. He encouraged us to get some lunch while we waited, but the only hunger we felt was one to catch the bastards who robbed us.

Back in the police station the officer taking our statement was rude right from the beginning and appeared border line amused at our situation. After Neeram, our translator, explained what occurred the officer shrugged his shoulders and chuckled looking back to our translator. I’m glad I couldn’t tell what he was saying because I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked it. We already felt terrible for our lapse in judgement in leaving the bags without asking those people to keep an eye on them, this man’s laughter was salt in the wound. We painstakingly walked through each item in our bags and its value. After each piece of information we gave the officer, he would type into his computer for about 2 minutes, look through paperwork on his desk for another 2 minutes, get up and leave the room for about 5 minutes then sit down and take the next part of our statement. This went on for about 2 hours. This officer was a young guy, and despite his arrogance and smugness he seemed quite novice at taking statements. There were multiple times I almost got up and stormed out of his office believing this process to be utter bullsh*t. Ashley, patient as ever, clenched my arm a few times to stop me from doing so. After all, we would need a completed police report to file an insurance claim.

We left the gendarmerie station feeling ashamed, dejected, and irate - that’s a lot to feel at once. The tears promptly followed. How could we have let this happen! We had been so careful our whole trip except for this one moment. Neeram tried to console us, explaining that the officer told him there had recently been a big increase in drug use on the island, specifically meth, which had led to an increase in theft to get money for drugs. It didn’t console us.

Back on the ship Ashley had the brilliant idea to get on my computer and log into Find My Phone to see where it was. Ashley’s phone was on, and we were able to locate it on the other side of the island. I took a screen shot of the map exactly where our stuff was and we quickly went back to Neeram to show him we knew where our stuff was and to please communicate it to the officer. By this time the ship was about 20 minutes from pulling away from Bora Bora so we did not have enough time to get to the gendarmerie station and back. We asked Neeram to draft us an email in French explaining what we found and if they could locate our belongings we would pay them to ship it back to us. The email was sent and all we could do was hope.

As we pulled away from this picturesque island during another extraordinary sunset, it was hard to enjoy knowing that we were sailing away from so many of our essential belongings. The next day we woke up more than a bit doleful. There’s that moment when you wake up and realize, it wasn’t a dream, that really did happen and your stomach drops again. We sat on the back deck somberly gazing at the deep blue waters of the South Pacific, and we did our best to tell ourselves that we had cried our tears and now we had to focus on the positive things and try to enjoy the rest of the time we had on our trip. After all, we still had our passports, we were not physically accosted, we had a safe place to sleep, and food to eat. I turned to to Ashley and said, “Well, I guess the curse is real.”

After our unfortunate story had made it around the ship people were very kind and generous to us. A wonderful American family lent us a small camera to use and another Hungarian friend let us borrow his extra cell phone to use as a camera. And most graciously our English friends let us “borrow” one of their extra credit cards that we would use for the month and pay the balance to them at the end of the month. They were all truly life savers as we would not get our own new credit cards, phones or cameras for 4 more weeks.

We would never hear from Officer Sh*thead at the Brigade de Gendarmerie ever again, even though we informed him precisely where are our things were. Ashley lamented the loss all of the silly selfies and other photos from our 2 months of travel that were on her phone that never got uploaded to the cloud. I would never see my irreplaceable family ring again or the sketch book full of dozens of drawings over the years.

American Samoa

We tried our best to put the prior days’ events behind us and enjoy the day ahead of us, after all, how many days does one get to spend in American Samoa? It was 1 for us, and we wanted to enjoy it. But first we had some business to handle.

If you read our last blog about Hawaii you’re aware that we had apparently fallen under a curse after taking lava rocks from the volcano. I had been skeptical about this curse until I lost 3 earrings and we were robbed of all of our belongings in a span of 10 days. During our day at sea between Bora Bora and American Samoa I did a bit of internet digging on this supposed Pele’s Curse. I found several articles and blog posts about it, and the comment sections were lengthy. Apparently we were not the only ones who believed some bad luck had come our way shortly after absconding with Hawaiian soil. Pele is the volcano goddess of Hawaii, and the legend says bad luck will befall anyone who takes rocks or sand away until the elements are returned. This legend is also said to be invented by a disgruntled National Park employee who was upset at the amount of rocks that people made off with under his watch. Either way, with our recent mishaps, we were eager to rid ourselves of anything that might end a bad luck streak. Apparently Hawaii Volcanos National Park receives 100s of packages of returned lava rocks each year, we decided to add ours to that pile. Being a territory of the United States, American Samoa has operating US Post Offices. I happened to have a large padded envelope with us on the ship so we stuffed it full of the purloined rocks and slapped 10 stamps on it. We gave the package our apologies and some well wishes for it’s journey and promptly dropped it in a familiar looking blue mail box, fingers crossed.

Finally we could enjoy the day ahead in Pago Pago - pronounced Pango Pango - that one is still a mystery to us. Armed with our borrowed camera and iphone (and literally nothing else) we joined a small group of Americans, English, and Australians to take a retro school bus through some noteworthy spots on the Island of American Samoa. We visited the aptly named National Park of American Samoa and saw some beautiful shoreline and jungle areas. We also got to learn how to crack open a coconut, scrape out the meat, and turn it into coconut milk. It tasted so fresh and delicious, but it was quite a chore. Boy am I glad I can buy coconut milk in the grocery store. We drove past the Starkist Tuna plant, which you can smell from a mile away literally. Once we were safely away from the stench on the other side of the island we had a chance to hop in the water, and I spotted another sea turtle which put a smile on my face. We wrapped up our afternoon with our butts on the beach and a couple of 40oz Vailima Beers in our hands.