Pitcairn Island

Today we made a visit to Pitcairn Island,  such a remote part of the world.  In this picture as we approach the island it is easy to see what a dot this place is in the South Pacific.

This picture shows the entire 1x2 mile Pitcairn Island.  It is small, but so beautiful. We were not able to go ashore as there is no place for the ship or the ship tenders to dock.  So the people came to us.

We anchored about 8:00 this morning. As we were setting anchor we could see a long boat coming toward us.  As it was getting closer we counted about thirty people on board. There are only about 50 people who live on Pitcairn so most of the population had come out to sell crafts that they make. Remember, all these people are direct descendants  of the HMS Bounty mutineers.  These people were impressive.  They are friendly, well educated, healthy, and happy.  They don’t have to live on Pitcairn, they chose to.   They are really like most of us, they just happen to live in a very unusual place.

 A couple who came to the ship to sell crafts.

 

This little girl is the only child that lives on the island. The other children are all away in school in New Zealand.  There are no women of child bearing age living on the island. They hope that one day some of the islanders will come back, but they are not sure it will happen.

 

There was a wonderful lecture by a women who has come back to the island to live. Years ago she married an American and moved to the states. She lived in Alaska for 30 years and has been back on the island for the last 5 years to take care of her elderly mother. She told us all about life on Pitcairn.  The island maintains a website, so Google it if you want to read more about Pitcairn. They are building a new dock on the island which will accommodate ship tenders. I’m not sure we will ever see this place again, but it would be such a boon for this dwindling community to develop a tourism business.

After the day on board, all the islanders gathered in the ship piazza and sang a song for us.  The mayor gave a short speech, and then they all loaded onto the long boat and departed the ship.  After reading the history of the HMS Bounty and the mutineers, visiting this island was a wonderful experience.

So, that’s it for Pitcairn.  We are now sailing towards Papeete and then Bora Bora.  We arrive Papeete on Weds.

Bye for now,

Helen

 

 

Easter Island

Note:  This was written on Feb 7 and will be posted when internet is available.

Hi All,

  Jer here.  Well the internet might be cooperating, so I’ll try to finish up our posting about Easter Island. This volcanic rock island is 45 sq miles in area and is 2000 miles from the nearest population center.  The island is called Rapa Nui by the Polynesians.  It was named Easter Island by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeven who discovered the island on Easter Sunday in 1722.  Today the population is about 6000 with 3000 descendants of the Rapa Nui people.  We anchored off the island about 730am.  Unfortunately, the Captain anchored right off the end of the island’s runway (???).  So, he had to raise the anchor and relocate to another anchorage.  This somewhat delayed our getting off the ship.  BTW, the runway on Easter Island was built by NASA as a shuttle alternate landing site (your tax dollars at work).  This was a really good deal for Easter Island, as they now have regularly scheduled airline service from Chile and Tahiti.  This has really helped their tourism industry.  We left the ship via tenders (the ship lifeboats) and met our guide on shore.  Over a year ago, I booked a private tour for eight with a local tour operator.  They were waiting for us, we hopped into a nice van and were on our way.  

Our first stop was the crater of the island’s largest volcano, Rano Kau.  All the views on the island are spectacular as most have magnificent views of the ocean.  The weather was perfect.

  

Next we went to see what we were really here for, the legendary moai.  This first picture is of the largest platform of moai on the island, Ahu Tongariki.  This group of 15 was restored in the 90’s (when restoration began, almost all the island’s moai had fallen over).  Note that the moai second from the right has a “top knot.”  Originally all the moai had these top knots, but they have not been replaced during restoration.

Here are a couple dorky tourists someone photographed :).  Taking a picture with a moai is slimming!

We next went to the quarry where most of the moai were carved, Rano Raraku.  Today there are almost 1000 moai spread around the island.  The quarry contains over 300 completed and semi-completed moai that were never moved.  Many of the moai look like they are just heads.  In fact, they are all full sized, but hundreds of years of landslides and erosion have buried them.  In the background of this picture, it is easy to see where the blocks of stone were carved off the cliff to use for the moai.  How all this was done many hundreds of years ago with only human power is still being debated.

This moai in the quarry is the only one that has been found in a kneeing and praying position.

One last picture.  

So, that is a look at our day on Easter Island.  Helen and I have been around a bit, but this was a very special day.   We are grateful for being able to visit Easter Island, we won’t forget this day.

So now we are at sea heading for Papeete and Bora Bora in the Society Islands.  But tomorrow we are making a stop at another very interesting place, Pitcairn Island.  This dot of an island (1x2 miles) is famous as the landing spot for the mutineers of the HMS Bounty (1789).  Here Fletcher Christian landed with 6 other mutineers, 6 Tahitian men, 11 Tahitian women, and one Tahitian baby.  After they landed, they burned the Bounty (They didn’t want it visible to anyone looking for them).  Today the island is inhabited only by descendants of those who landed on the Bounty.  42 people currently live on the island including only one child, a young girl.  These might be the most remote people in the world.  They have some satellite internet (they pay $100 for 2GB, and we think Verizon is bad!)  Recently they lost their television service.  They have no airport and are resupplied by a ship that comes every three months from New Zealand. We won’t be able to go onto the island as there is no place for the ship to dock and also no place for tenders to land.  Some of the island people will come out to the ship in long boats.  They will give a presentation on island life and also sell some crafts that they make.  Should be a interesting stop.  Google Pitcairn Island to read more about this interesting place.

OK friends, that’s all for now.  Will post every couple of days as we make our way to Tahiti.  The internet is very spotty out here in the South Pacific.

Jer and Helen

 

Easter Island

Hi All,

Jer still here.  My short note posted so its seems the internet is working well, I’ll try to get up a picture or two of the Easter Island moai.

Seeing the moai was a great experience, the highlight of our port stops so far.  We are now sailing towards Papeete and Bora Bora in the Society Islands.  Helen will be posting more about Easter Island when the internet cooperates.

Hello All,
We have not been posting due to spotty internet service on the ship.  We are in such a remote location that we are not always under the satellite footprint.  We were on Easter Island on Thursday.  What an amazing place. Hopefully the internet will cooperate and Helen can get some pictures posted later.
Jer

Lima, Second Day Afternoon

Hi All,

Jer posting again today.  Helen feeling much better, but she asked me to finish up posting about Lima.

Previously I posted about our visit to Lima’s Shanty Town.  I want to add one photo that Helen took.  This woman is an Inca and she traveled from the Andes Mountains to Lima to help care for her grand children.  She talked non stop to us, but since it was in the Inca language, we understood none of it.  Her hat is made of plaster.

After our morning tour we had lunch in a very nice Lima restaurant.  They didn’t have any of that Inca Beer!  We then walked around central Lima seeing a lot of the tourist sights.  The city is big, busy, clean, seemingly safe and quite beautiful.  The architecture is magnificent.  The next picture is of a building that was once a train station, but is now a library.

Plaza Mayor

.  

We came across this wedding party.  The tourists were all taking their picture.

This is a Catholic church.  The pigeons seem to like this place.

Lots of walking and shopping streets like this one.

Finally this plaza, forgot the name.

Needless to say, the contrast between this Lima and Shanty Town is beyond startling.  

So, we are now on our way to Easter Island.  Having some leisurely sea days.  Lots of enrichment speakers including Bob Graham, former Governor and Senator from Florida.  Also on board is Stephen Cole, an expert on Middle Eastern terrorism.  He made a claim today that the Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden by dropping him out of an airplane.   No one took him up on that claim.  After the lecture I privately asked him about it.  He didn’t seem to have much real evidence, just some rumors he had heard.  I don’t believe it.

So long for now.  Might not be much on the blog until after Easter Island, but stay turned.

Jer and Helen

Inca Beer

Hi All,

I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on the subject of drinking beer.  I can order a beer in about 20 languages.  Other important things to be able to say are:  Where is the bathroom?, The bill please., How much is that in dollars ? (best to have some idea what the answer should be).  And to your cab driver, This doesn’t look like the way back to the ship. Are you going to kill us?  (just kidding, maybe)  Anyway, yesterday I drank the most unusual beer I have ever had, Inca beer.

This stuff was brewed in Shanty Town in this bucket.

Would you drink this?  We considered it a bit risky, gastro intestinally speaking, but we didn’t want to turn down the hospitality of the Shanty Town people.  Even the kids were drinking this stuff.   The guide (who was drinking this at age 3) said it was OK, so both Helen and I drank it.  Today we both are having some minor tummy issues.  Related?  Maybe, but we will never know.  BTW, the beer was pretty good.  Tasted a bit like apple cider.  Travel on Garth!

Jer 

 

Lima, Second Day

Hi All,
Jer posting again today.  Miss Helen a bit under the weather, nothing serious.  I think she’ll be back tomorrow.
Yesterday was our second day in Lima, and once again we did a full day tour.  In the afternoon part of the tour, we went to the main tourist attractions in central Lima.  It is a large, busy, clean, and beautiful city.  The architecture is amazing.  But I am not going to post about that now.  That will come later, probably tomorrow.  Now I want to post about our morning tour.  We went to where two million of Lima’s poorest people live, Shanty Town.  The ship’s tours don’t go anywhere near Shanty Town.  Some people were almost horrified when we told them where we were going.  We toured with the same people with whom we did the cooking school the day before, 4 of us.  The tour company is run by Incas and is called Haku Tours.  Haku means “Let’s go” in Inca.  The company is a non profit that puts the money it makes back into Shanty Town projects to help the people who live there.  Helen and I discussed whether or not we should go to Shanty Town.  What would the people who live there think about well off Americans looking at where they live and work, taking pictures, etc?  Would they not want us there?  Well, the opposite was true.  The people were so friendly.  Many wanted to be in pictures with us.  They seemed happy.  It is hard for people like us to imagine being happy living in such squalor, but they seemed happy.  They smiled a lot.  A very interesting thing happened just before our van arrived in Shanty Town.  We stopped to picked up a uniformed policeman.  What was he there for?  To protect us?  No, he was there to protect the people in Shanty Town FROM us.  In the past, less recently, people have come to Shanty Town to steal children while their parents are off at work.  The children are quickly taken out of Peru and sold as slaves, for organ harvest, etc. Our guide said not a single child has been recovered.  So now tour groups travel with a policeman to assure the people that their children are safe.
The children were beautiful.  Very friendly and a bit shy, but they all wanted their picture taken.

Helen took this picture of a pretty little girl.  She looks so sad, but she really wasn’t.  She was shy, but she smiled a lot at us.

This woman was selling corn, and she wanted her picture taken with Helen.

This woman asked us to take her picture.  I think she looks so proud and strong.  She is a survivor.

This is an example of what the people live in.  Some of the houses are made of whatever materials people can scrounge. Others are made of brick.  Almost none of them have electricity, running water, or sanitation.

Most of the town is built on steep cliffs, and the people use steps like these to get around.  There are no cars.

Our guide said these steps are fairly new.  It seems there was a recent election and the government threw some money at Shanty Town to win votes.  Hmmm, sound familiar?  Our guide was Inca, and they believe in reincarnation.  He said he was trying to build good Karma so he wouldn’t come back as a politician :). The guide said we would be perfectly safe in the Inca section of Shanty Town that we visited.  He said the Inca people live by three principles.  They don’t steal, don’t lie, and they are not lazy.  Some other sections of Shanty Town are controlled by the mafia and they are not safe.
I said our tour company builds projects to help Shanty Town people.  Here is a community kitchen (on right) and a day care center they funded.

The “hospital” for the people of Shanty Town is 20 ocean shipping containers joined end to end.  It costs $1 to visit the doctor.  The problem comes when the doctor prescribes medicine that the people can’t afford to buy.  They then turn to a Shaman.  Shaman brew all kinds of remedies to cure almost anything.  This guy can ever cure cancer!  BTW, that is our police escort in the picture.

So, that is a look at Shanty Town.  Visiting a place like this and then returning to our beautiful ship is a sobering experience.  How fortunate and thankful we are.
We are now at sea heading for Easter Island, will arrive there Thursday.  Can’t wait to see the Moai.
Bye for now,
Jer and Helen