The Season Of Rain Won

Dammit!  The weather has been so bad in Moorea, they closed the damn pier!  They've had so much rain, the pier was flooded with a foot of water and who knows how many inches of sea floor sandy sludge.  No tenders.  No excursions.  No nothing.  No one gets off this ship.  So now we're roaming around with all the little old people trying to figure out something to do.

They (the ship) did refund all the monies, and they did add some shipboard activities, but I really really wanted to go to our friend Ron Hall's Island Fashions and buy some pearls...and a Hinano t-shirt.  I really really wanted to find a little beach and chill out.  I really really wanted to find that little restaurant where the Reverend had the hamburger with the fried egg on it and thought he'd found a little piece of heaven.

Oh, well.  You can't argue with mother nature.  So we had a late breakfast.  Peered through the fog and tried try to see the shark tooth ridge that tells me I'm in Moorea.



But to no avail.  Only gray and drizzle.  We explored the ship as much as we could:  We tried on outrageously expensive sunglasses in the boutique, checked out the whisky selection in about three bars, read up on posted menus to help decide where dinner will be, and stood in line to talk to the Internet Manager to make help us figure out why we couldn't get online.  (Worst job in the world: the guy at the gift shop at the top of Mount Vesuvius.  The second worst: IT guy on a ship full of a bunch of old people.)

Time for lunch.  Just as we were finishing up, the sky cleared a bit.  Sharp intake of breath!  We ran back to our room and pulled on our swimsuits, grabbed sunscreen, towels and books and headed for the pool deck...just in time to catch the next rain shower.  Shit!

So we planted ourselves just under the eave of the upper deck, ordered a beer and relaxed for a couple of hours in the warm, rain-sogged breeze.  Really not a bad way to spend the afternoon.  Shipboard pools tend to be more like wave pools.  They're usually not filled up all the way, and the water sloshes back and forth with the motion of the ship making you feel as though you're on the beach.  Now, Joe and I are definitely in the minority around here.  We're on an 18 day cruise in the middle of winter...no kids, no mid-career yuppies, not even any honeymooners.  It's us, about 20 other people under the age of 60, and the rest of the 1250 souls onboard who are fun-loving geriatrics.  This afternoon, there were several of them in the pool playing a game of Marco Polo, made more enjoyable for us to watch because half of them couldn't see and the other half couldn't hear.  The game is still going on.

Bora Bora tomorrow.  Here's hoping for better weather!