Today’s Chronicle can be found here.
We were absolutely wrecked after our day on Pitcairn, but not so wrecked that we weren’t up bright and early for the ship’s cruise of Henderson Island – our bonus prize for managing a sooner-than-expected landing at Pitcairn Island.
Henderson is an uninhabited island that’s part of the Pitcairn Island Group. It’s 104 nautical miles away from Pitcairn, and roughly 40 square kilometers in size. It’s the home of several endemic species including the Henderson Crake, Henderson Fruit-Dove, Stephen’s Lorikeet, and Henderson Reed-Warbler. It’s also specifically listed as a destination for future Papeete-Valparaiso sailings on the Cloud.
The scenery was stunning – lush and rugged all at once:
There was also plenty of birdlife circling the ship:
And then – humpback whales! Not just one or two but at least five, including two sets of mothers and calves:
It was a lovely surprise:
We continued to cruise around Henderson, and the scenery and wildlife continued vying for our attention:
A red-tailed tropicbird in flight – perhaps one of my favourite photos of the trip
We even spotted another “dogfight” as a frigate bird attempted to harrass a tern into dropping its fish:
Catch me if you can…
The tern did eventually escape. Not sure what happened to the fish.
It was then time to bid farewell to Henderson Island, but this ship’s cruise was one for the books:
Off to Astronomy 101 with Nick:
He covered everything including: a.) why we aren’t obliterated by the asteroid belt (Jupiter’s gravitational field pulls the asteroids towards it and away from Earth – although some do escape); b.) the fact that every atom on our planet was formed in the heart of another Sun; and c.) how the Aurora Borealis can be considered a force field that protects Earth since it is a visual representation of our magnetosphere protecting Earth’s atmosphere from the Sun’s energy. The lecture was so good that my son missed the opening of trivia to stay to the end.
Speaking of trivia – we scored an abysmal 8 out of 16, but that was still good enough for third! I correctly answered that it was Captain Flint who buried the treasure on Treasure Island, while my son knew that the human body can survive 3 days without water. We also learned that the most-translated English authors are Agatha Christie and Shakespeare (and not JK Rowling – who is Scottish – or Dickens).
Off to lunch at La Terrazza, where we had the sticky toffee pudding for dessert:
No raisins, either! Delicious.
Off to Malcolm’s lecture on Rats Vs. Birds:
They had attempted a rat eradication effort on Henderson Island which was ultimately unsuccessful. There will be another attempt, but the lessons learned from this were that you have to check carefully for at least two years after the initial efforts to confirm if you’ve actually been successful. It’s also important to consider underlying reasons why eradication might not work – in the caes of Henderson, it was a bumper year for food on the island which gave the rats more opportunities to avoid the poisoned bait.
In terms of future eradicaiton efforts, New Zealand will be attempting to remove rats from Auckland Island at a cost of $80 million over 10 years – they are planning to remove pigs, cats and rats in that order to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible.
We spent some time up in Panorama after that, and finally took a look at their cocktail menu:
We also played a few rounds of bingo. Usually we are spectacularly unsuccessful – but this time we won the first three games in a row! We were actually getting genuinely concerned that we might win a fourth game, thereby drawing the ire of the other passengers. But thankfully that was it for one day.
Games included elimination bingo (sit down if any of your numbers are called), one horizontal line, any two lines, and blackout bingo with first, second and third place. Big thanks to Soraia for organizing this during the day, as bingo is often in the evening when our children are unable to attend.
Time for briefings and recaps – we have two choices of anchorages at Rapa Nui, so fingers are firmly crossed that we will be able to make one of them work. We’ll be there over two days, and we have two half-day tours planned. We’re also hoping that we can squeeze in some swimming or snorkelling somehow!
We have close to 1,000 nautical miles to cover, which means three and a half more sea days before we arrive.
Time for the recaps – Damon provided a humorous look back on our activities on Pitcairn.
He noted that one of the Expedition Staff had fallen itno the water, at the disembarkation point but suffered no lasting harm. He also noted the cruelty of naming the “actinopyga obesa” sea cucumber and said he would much prefer to go by the name of a different Pitcairn creature – the rippled rockskipper.
Lastly, the half-dozen humpbacks we encountered at Henderson were the most he’s ever seen there. They seem to be increasing from one year to the next.
Nikita examined the impact of plastic waste on Henderson Island. It’s on the outside of a current the delivers a significant amount of plastic to the island. This is impacting the ability of turtles to breed, as the newly hatched turtles will often get trapped in the plastic debris.
A ship known as the Plastic Odyssey eventually cleaned up some 9 tonnes of plastic and was able to recycle it on the vessel – some of the recycled plastic was put to use in Pitcairn for a range of uses, including their giant novelty chair.
We are expecting to have some dark sky viewing opportunities over the next few days, so Bogdan offered some tips for taking night time photos:
I hadn’t realized that it was possible to adjust the exposure for night photos – my iPhone will often automatically use a 3 second exposure but you can set that as high as 10 seconds if you wish to do so. Night mode automatically engages on iPhones but can be manually engaged on Android phones.
Off to La Dame this evening. The kids ordered the caviar:
While we had the foie gras Williams:
This was followed by the lobster bisque:
The lemon sorbet:
And the surf and turf – beef tenderloin with a lobster tail:
The kids then had the chocolate mousse:
And we had the pistachio and dark chocolate souffle:
Finished off with petit fours:
But we were absolutely stuffed at that point, so we took those back to our room instead to have tomorrow. We’ll have to remember that for next time – because it’s way, way too much food otherwise.
Overall, an exceptional meal – and we were so very proud of how well the kids did with six courses of fancy fare. But it was most definitely time for bed.
A full and proper sea day tomorrow! We can all use the break.