Just to bring you up to date

At the moment we are sailing to Moorea, French Polynesia. And, by the way, that volcanic eruption near Samoa did not affect us at all.

Last Saturday, we visited Hilo, Hawaii. It’s the biggest island, and still growing because of the flowing lava from Kilauea, the world’s most active volcano. We toured the island via SUV and saw waterfalls and many beautiful sights. We took a long walk on old lava flow at a black sand beach, and were about half a mile from where molten lava is still flowing into the sea. We were told it has added about 600 miles of island in the past twenty years.

We then drove to a privately run macadamia nut farm and had a delicious barbeque lunch and all the macadamia nuts we could eat.

We were supposed to go to Maui the next day, but that stop had to be cancelled because of high winds that would have made it impossible to dock there. So instead we headed straight to Christmas Island, Kiribati, about 2 degrees north of the Equator. Captain James Cook discovered it on Christmas Eve in 1777, and that’s why he named it Christmas Island (its official name is Kiritimati, pronounced “kee-rees-mass”, which means Christmas in the local language, Gilbertese. It is a totally unspoiled island and about six thousand people live there. They are very warm and friendly, and most walk around barefoot and live in shacks with no sides. They entertained us with a lot of native dancing and singing.

We were only on Christmas Island for a few hours, and but it gave us the flavor of the South Pacific and what is ahead in the coming weeks. Once back onboard ship, we learned that we were heading further south (crossing the Equator!), although that was not our intended direction. Turns out the ship’s captain made that choice so the high winds heading north wouldn’t spoil our barbeque on deck last night. So we made a big circle at sea through the night and are now heading toward French Polynesia.

And that brings you up to date.