Today’s Chronicle can be found here.
Who just made five landings in the past three days, and is sorely in need of a sea day?
That’s right – this family right here.
We’ve had an absolutely lovely time in the Marquesas, which has thoroughly exceeded our expectations in terms of the wildlife, snorkelling and scenery. But it’s been a hectic pace – particularly when we are also attending as many lectures as possible, keeping the kids caught up with their schoolwork, and taking part in every single round of trivia.
Champagne problems as they say, but we are thoroughly glad to have not one but three sea days as we sail from the Marquesas to Pitcairn island. (And we try not to consider the notion that three sea days could turn into nine sea days if we fail to make Pitcairn.)
Off for our usual breakfast at La Terrazza where we boringly ordered the very same dishes that we always order – yoghurt, berries, eggs, pancakes, and so on.
Back to the room for – you guessed it, more homework – followed by Damon’s lecture, An Introduction to the Region of Polynesia, The Triangle of Extinction:
I’d never considered the way in which biodiversity would get winnowed down as one got further and further from the original populating sources of Asia and South America – though it makes complete sense when you think about it. As an example, there are hundreds of species of butterfles in French Polynesia but only one species in Pitcairn.
Damon also noted that you are more likely to miss land than hit land if traversing the Pacific without charts – Magellan’s journey failed to hit land, and had reached the point where they were making sawdust biscuits and chewing on shoes before they landed in the Phillipines – a landing that ultimately resulted in Magellan’s death.
Time for wine trivia, to which I contributed about as much as our children did – but thankfully the rest of our team carried us and we were still able to secure third place. I did correctly recall that Chardonnay is the most prevalent grape varietal, but I always forget that sauternes are made by blending sauvignon blanc and semillon. (It came up last time on the Wind, too.)
Off to lunch at La Terrazza, where it was mostly familiar favourites – though they did also have a delicious chocolate cake:
It was then time to attempt a swim. Remarkably, the seas have been calm enough to keep the pool open this entire journey – though it is a little on the sloshy side:
This has simply added to our children’s enjoyment of the pool, and indeed they were quite disappointed when it was time to leave.
But we needed to sign up for… boat building!
Not sure if anyone has done this on a Silversea ship before, but it looks like tremendous fun. We’re already starting to horde empty champagne bottles and other sundries – and before anyone considers just how many bottles we have set aside, please think of the children.
We then went to Alex’s lecture on the peopling of Oceania:
I had no idea that the original name of Rapa Nui has been lost to time because it remained uncontacted for so long. Also fascinating to see the various aspects of Polynesian culture and technology that transferred from one region to the next. For instance, their use of ceramics faded out roughly 2,500 years ago in Tonga while the hieroglyphs and statues used in both Rapa Nui and Pitcairn are remarkably similar.
I was also completely unaware of the extent to which the Polynesian people may have reached north and south America – with evidence of people of Polynesian ancestry in around Ecuador, and fishhooks and Polynesian chickens with a specific genetic mutation causing them to lay blue eggs found in Chile.
We wrapped soon enough to get a spot of tea (demolished before I could photograph it), though I did get a few snaps of the early golden light from the back of La Terrazza:
I then took a few shots of lesser-seen parts of Cloud itself:
Dinner time! We have a weekly pizza and movie night at home, so we decided to carry that on here too:
We accompanied the meal with an episode of Sailing Yacht Florence‘s visit to Svalbard. We’re heading there with Ponant this coming summer so it’s great to see the region explored in depth.
Our room still needed to be turned down after dinner, so we then we went down to Dolce Vita for a post-dinner drink (and some reading time for the kids). Igor was playing, and we thoroughly enjoyed listening to him – as indeed we had during much of today, as he was also playing poolside and during tea.
We noticed a distinctly nautical theme to his songs, with Sting’s “Englishman in New York” occasionally substituted with “Brazilian out at sea” (Igor himself). Our daughter also clocked that “Sweet Dreams” by Eurythmics includes the lyrics, “I’ve travelled the world and the seven seas”.
My wife and I each ordered a Coral Reef:
Very tasty, but quite strong!
Igor took his dinner break at around 8 pm, at which point our room had been cleaned – so it was most definitely time for bed.