Hawaii, in terms of the geography of the Pacific Ocean is by itself. Measured in thousands of miles, east is California, north is Alaska, west are some small island atolls, and south is the South Pacific. For this ship, it takes a couple of sea-days to get to, or go somewhere else away from Hawaii. It took us over a week to go from California stop-over in Hawaii, then turn south and go on to Pago Pago, aka American Samoa, aka Eastern Samoa.
American Samoans pride themselves on being American. I've always thought that you can live any kind of a life that you want to in America, but I didn't fully realize that to this extent: you can live in an extremely lush, mountainous, crashing surf, white sand beach, waterfall laden, true South Pacific tropical paradise, AND 'get fries with that'. In the relatively civilized part of this 18 mile long island, there is one each of the following: Ace Hardware, True Value Hardware, McDs, KFC, and Carl's Jr. Better yet, they export fish. I had the best piece of swordfish that I have ever, ever had - as an $11 fish sandwich lunch. For immediate security purposes, like in the event that the container ship with the Guinness becomes overdue; fear not, as they have their own brewery. Most sovereign brews, such as Sapporo, Chin Tao, Red Strip, Foster's, etc., taste like Pabst, and the Samoan beer is in that space - good beer. The downside of this American paradise in the South Pacific is that it is at least a $3,000 plane ride when you want to visit or be visited. Of note for us is that we've been on the ship for a long time, and we are now actually, finally, leaving America.
A squall, in 3-D, on the big, big screen: We were told by the ship's Navigator that we passed through the “doldrums”, which is the space between the trade-winds. Recall that the trades blow east-to-west near the equator, and west-to-east near the poles. In between those areas of predictable breeze there is not much wind, hence the doldrums. However, while there is less wind, the doldrums have more weather. It's in the form of cells and squalls that build quickly, move around, rain-out, and then disappear. While held captive, exercising on the Precor elliptical machine, and looking forward over the starboard bow from 10 floors up, I was able to observe one of these events. 4 - 5 miles away the sky began to darken. The low contrast, light-blue water quickly became high contrast blue-black with white-caps, and short chop, on top of 8' swells. The squall was about a mile across, fully visible. It came directly at the ship, which might give the impression of peril. The sky became more dark, it blew stink, poured buckets, and provided quite a sight while viewing essentially from up at the bottom of these not-very-tall clouds. But the critical mass of this monster ship is such that there simply was no report whatsoever. Put another way, not one beat was missed on the elliptical machine. It was over in 20 minutes. The sun came out, contrast/colors went back to pastel blues everywhere, and there was still time left to do on the machine. Seemingly a non-event in this venue, however a unique experience none-the-less.
Where is Al Einstein when you need him? We are crossing the International Date Line, coincidentally as this is being written. Assuming that it's an experience that is different from entering the Bermuda Triangle, this message will make it onto the Blog. Anyway, on the calendar that we have been issued, Monday, February 11th, has been “Omitted”. You will go to bed later on, on Sunday evening, and when you wake up tomorrow, it will be Monday morning. Not us. We will go to bed same way, but tomorrow will be Tuesday. It's one of those things that when you fly, you get so full of jet lag that you pretty much go with the groggy flow, and viola, it's a different day. But when you do it in real time, at 22 kts instead of 500 kts, crossing that spot in the middle of the Pacific, where there is actually a day yanked out of the calendar, your calendar, it's a different deal altogether. No explanation is making me want to concede that that day is just gone. However, since I didn't do well in physics, it is Sunday today, and tomorrow I will wake-up and, duh-yup, it will be Tuesday. Okay, some good does come out of this, which is also a clue to the whole process. Every few days or so, we “gain an hour”. So right about when we start to get tired from always being up too late - hey, no problem we're adding another hour tonight.
Crossing the equator one day, then the International Date Line the next day, we've officially entered the area of South Pacific island paradises. Once down here, they are not far from one another. Fiji tomorrow, (Tuesday ;-). We've been told of an interesting cultural thing there. The Fijians, being more interested in a paradise type of lifestyle than that of making the contribution of sugar to the rest of the world, allowed Indians to migrate for the labor required to harvest the sugar cane. 20 years later the Indians outnumbered the Fijians, and, duh, tried to take over. The Fijians fought back, dispensing with any serious thought leading towards a meritocracy, relying instead on the argument of divine providence. The Indians are slowly leaving. Presently, the Fijians are back on top in population and government. Japanese made machines are now harvesting the sugar cane fields.
Auckland is a major metropolitan city of 1.4 million people. New Zealand has 4 million people total. The waterfront area of the previous America's Cup spectacle was of interest to me. From the competitor compounds out to the Huraki Gulf is about 6 miles. Those were good times for this city and country. The country used 5 years of 'temporary' foreign interest well in advancing the already amazingly high standard of living. It is much more civilized and prosperous than I had imagined. We were there on a Friday, and there was a wooden sailboat race consisting of large vintage sailboats in the 30' - 75' range. It was not a holiday, just another day. There were over 50 boats participating. When I asked why these people weren't “at work”, our local Kiwi friend just smiled.
Hawk's Bay: Napier, Hastings, and Havelock North, in the middle of the North Island of NZ were shown to us by our guide, Robert. They are small towns that when the attributes are combined, make for a truly self-sufficient area. Besides dairy, other agriculture, and commercial fishing, they have received a couple of dozen seemingly unjustifiable foreign investments. $5 - $20 million dollar establishments including wineries and world class golf resorts - think Napa, CA next door to Kohler, WI. There is an underground, fresh water aquifer - like in Napa - that feeds the otherwise dry, lime-based soil of the vineyard area. Some of the golf courses are high above the water, like St. Andrews and Whistling Straits. Napier is small time coastal glitz. Hastings is the working city inland. Havelock North is a small residential enclave that looks to be extremely comfortable. The weather here was their summer - nice, warm. Winters get a light dusting of snow once in a while. Robert is a wine lover. The most unfortunate part of the tour was that we didn't have the time for him to expose more fully that part of the area. Lastly, while docking in Napier, there was a fleet of a dozen or so Opti's racing in protected water near the marina.
Wellington, the capital was a good day of walking and site-seeing. We stayed in the city and walked a botanical gardens, toured a historical residence, the capital, then had a pint.
Greg and Jo showed us a great time in Melbourne, Australia. They were gracious with the usual 20 stupid tourist questions that mostly I threw at them. The harbor is about the size of Lake Winnebago/Lake Okeechobee. It is this huge body of water contiguous to Melbourne. Great for boating. There were sailing lessons for high schoolers going on out of the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron. A 92 story apartment building near the middle of the city is the tallest residential building in the world, and the tallest building in the southern Hemisphere. It seemed about 30 stories taller than the next tallest building. Living up there must be a wild experience. Greg made a special effort to drive us on the Melbourne Formula One circuit. It is mostly a road through a park during the rest of the year. They were in the process of getting the course set for the race, which runs about any time now.
We got up at 5:30am for the sunrise entrance to Sydney Harbor. It is yet one more phenomenon that cannot be overstated. There were over 100 private boats that greeted us and escorted us 5 - 8 miles to our downtown Sydney dock. Those people got up at 4am to be out there with us for the spectacle. Sydney has 4 million people, a big city. The harbor is huge, made up of miles and miles of points and bays. There must be more than 200,000 residences with good water views. We saw the Australian 18s finish racing while on our way to a restaurant by ferry. Surprise, surprise, the RC was like any RC - marks too big for the mark boats, stuff all over the Signal Boat.
Liz and Tim's friends Tanya and Joel showed us around. It was great to spend time with them. Joel is an excellent driver. I hope that they get their 5 acres, and that we can come back and visit them again sometime.
Joel dropped us off at the Sydney airport and we were on our way away from the ship. Jeanne and Liz planned out a terrific trip. First stop was at Sandra's, our friend from a previous cruise. We toured downtown Brisbane, where she lives. There is a small river that winds through downtown Brisbane, and therefore ferries are running everywhere as well. Similar to Melbourne and Sydney, Brisbane was a spectacularly clean, nice, prosperous city.
One thing to see in Australia is wildlife. Sandra took us to the quintessential place for that, the Lone Pine Preserve. On the wall of the shop were photos of US Presidents, rock stars, celebrities and the like, so it must have been the right place. Anyway, marsupial mammals and birds are the order, and we saw lots of every specie. It was the first time I ever saw a koalas that weren't sleeping. We were in a 3 acre pen with a herd of kangaroos. They run fast, sort of like the back half of a deer - pretty funny to watch.
Sandra dropped us off at the Brisbane airport, and we went on to Cairns, which is the main city for the Great Barrier Reef. Besides the diving and plane ride, we also did a private tour of the rainforest. Our guide, David is a bit older than we are. He has watched the area grow over the decades. It was good to get a local perspective on the local environment. What I thought from the view during the airplane ride was corn turned out to be sugar cane. There is a belt of sugar cane that is planted between the rainforest mountains and the sea. Similar, if not identical to the Everglades snafu: if scientists were hired to destroy the downstream reefs, they would advocate planting sugar cane upstream from both of these locations; upstream from Florida's reef and upstream from the Great Barrier Reef. The “perfect” part of this “storm” is that there is no economic reason for the sugar cane plantations to remain in either location. There are other, appropriate, much more efficient places where it is being produced. In both locations, irreplaceable reefs are being traded for their destruction for no gain whatsoever. To “The Onion” writers: you have a future!
In the “trip is the journey” department, we've been “at sea” for 4 days. At sea means we came north along the inside of the Great Barrier Reef, turned left/east, then more north, crossing the equator, south to north. We've been cutting through many large and small islands on our way to the north side of Borneo. We stay almost out of sight of land. All of this is to say that we have been experiencing almost no ship's movement whatsoever. It's a solid feeling. Even looking down at the water seems solid, as going 22kts looks to be slow when viewed from 100 ft up in the air. So we have this sort of false sedentary feeling, just hanging out waiting for the next port to appear at the side of the ship.
An Oxford University entomologist, Dr. George McGavin is doing a lecture series on biodiversity. You can google his credentials, but what you can't google is his sense of humor. His speaking style is comedy improv. Think Robin Williams as the top scientist in a field, with passion for teaching that subject. Each line is new, very funny, with no reason to ever repeat, because the next set of circumstances won't warrant it. Brilliant guy.
McGavin just completed a series for the BBC and the US's Discovery Channel on Guyana's rainforest. Guyana is the only country left that hasn't begun to replace rainforest with agriculture. The rest of the world is trying to essentially buy the country in order to preserve it - something that might happen. As a footnote to the difference between the BBC and the Americans - of which there are roughly equal numbers aboard - he described, sort of tongue-in-cheek the differences in the final productions.
The BBC production will be three solid hours, on message, no commercials, with an introduction that goes something like, “Some scientists explore the diverse plant and animal life in one of the world's remaining tropical rain forests.” The Discovery Channel version will be one hour, except subtract the requisite 12 minutes for interrupting whatever attention you might have been able to give it in order to view the distracting commercials. Each commercial break is preceded by a faux drama that could-but-never-really-comes
Another new lecturer is retired astronaut Walter Cunningham. His most poignant statement so far has been that 500 years from now the only historical event that will be recalled is that a man went to the moon. While attempting to be not as pointed as I would have been, he spoke of how Clinton came close to destroying the entire US space program. He forced a politically based move to assist in the perpetuation of the Russian space station. It was a dangerous piece of junk. When the scientific problems forecasted began to be manifested, on camera, they were all lucky to get out alive. The Russians picked up $2 billion worth of transferred technology from the US for free as a result of Clinton's “joint effort”. When the USSR collapsed, their budget went down to $142 million/yr. At that time they began taking on 'space tourists' at $20 million per ride. There were 6 of them, including some Americans. They got sick as hell, but put $120 million net into the Russian program. The Russians are back up to $800 million/yr funding. China is getting into it big-time. After the shuttle program ends, the US doesn't have much of a plan, nor funds for a budget. The anecdotes of the hay-days of the Apollo Moon Landing Program are excellent.
Keep On Keepin' On ---
Jeff
1 comment:
Jeff
I had no idea that you could write so well I enjoyed your blogging.
Tom H
Post a Comment