Rarotonga

Rarotonga
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2.17.2007 Rarotonga

The past two days at sea have been busy and enjoyable. The time has gone quickly and we seem to be kept busy all the time. We had dinner one night with an attractive couple from Bill and Sally Arata from Veazie,Maine near Bar Harbour. It’s their 10th Silverseas trip but they are only on this time for a month. They are younger but introduced themselves to us because of our first names. Certainly one of the most interesting dinners we have had was the next night with our great guest lecturer Tony Wilson and his lovely wife, Janet. He was born in England, grew up in Virginia, spent 28 year’ s in the British Army and made a 7,000 mile ocean voyage with a young couple on a 26 foot catamaran. They have a place in Woodstock, Vermont and Jupiter ,Florida but they spend a lot of time traveling, lecturing and writing. Joanne knew his father and that contributed to a lively evening.

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We arrived in Rarotonga and again were impressed by the beauty of it all. Since Rarotonga is the youngest island in the Cook Islands southern group it is physically unlike it’s other volcanic neighbors where erosion and periodic submersions have reduced the mountains to gentle hills. The island is surrounded by a lagoon which extends several hundred yards to the reef which then slopes steeply to deep water. After our experience on Bora Bora we decided to cancel our plans to take the tour. Instead, we had a leisurely breakfast and workout we took the tender ashore and spent time walking through the local weekly market where everyone comes to sell handicrafts and foodstuffs needed for the coming week. We had planned to have lunch ashore but it was so hot that Sallie wanted to get back to our nice air conditioned home. We sailed in the afternoon for Nuku’alofa,Tonga. On the our two day trip we will cross the International Date Line and will lose a day –going from Sunday,Feb.18 to Tues.,Feb.20. On Sunday we attended another great lecture by Tony Wilson on the history of the Suez Canal, enjoyed a most entertaining performance by an Australian magician during cocktails and ended up having a beautifully served dinner for two in our suite. We love traveling with friends but all of us agree that perhaps it’s a good idea to have dinner alone once a week.