The weather cleared up yesterday evening, promising a lovely stop this morning to explore Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. I was keen to step foot on this new country for me (#138, but who's counting) since the large sea swells in December 2008 prevented the ship's tenders to be deployed. This morning was a repeat, alas. I'm now 0 for 2 for the Cook Islands. The Tour Desk Manager, Mark, told me that he's 0 for 3. I guess the Cook Islands may not get a lot of cruise visitors judging for our experiences. But it was pretty enough for a nice picture from the unsheltered anchorage. We are hoping for a full day stop in 4 days at the Bay of Islands on the North Island of New Zealand as a compensation. It should be possible to arrive at 8am or so instead of the scheduled 1:30pm on Thursday.
My technical sense was satisfied by the ship's engineering staff dealing with the supersaturated humidity of over 100% over the last few days by removing the humidity field from the ship's information display. I suspect Rarotonga will somehow disappear from this cruise segment's itinerary overnight as well. Oh well.
Speaking of interesting technical details, as we leave Polynesia heading west we will set our clocks back one more hour to the GMT -11 hour timezone. This means we will be the last folks on Earth to see the sunrise tomorrow morning. Midnight tonight will be the beginning of Sunday, noon in England, and because of Summer Time (aka Daylight Savings Time) it will be 1 am Monday morning in Auckland. Therefore for us tomorrow (Sunday) will be followed by Tuesday without our changing our clocks as we will be crossing the International Dateline and entering the oddball timezone of GMT +13 hours. Kind of goes with the 108% humidity. I suspect a lot of the guests will be more confused than ever as they have accepted the 108% humidity as "really, really, humid". It is what it is.
Dinner tonight with the Hotel Director. I will try to think of something arcane to ask about. Maybe something about the butler's supply of optician supplies. (See, I'm still very impressed by out butler, Chen, repairing Barbara's glasses.) Today, a deck hand told me how much he is enjoying my blog. So it goes....
More in a few days from New Zealand. Meanwhile check out Barbara's blog at barbara-spacific.blogspot.com. She will be posting her experiences in French Polynesia later today.
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