DAY 25---RANGIROA, FRENCH POLYNESIA

 THIS IS TUESDAY'S (JANUARY 31ST) POST AS WE HAD NO INTERNET AGAIN YESTERDAY

We are anchored today off Rangiroa atoll.  Mostly sunny skies and 82 degrees already at 7am.

Historical/Background Info:

        Rangiroa is the largest atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of which there are 78 coral atolls scattered over several hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean.  It is also one of the largest atolls in the world.  Tahiti is 220 miles to the southwest.  An atoll is a “ring shaped reef, island, or chain of islands formed by coral”.  The Rangiroa atoll is a flattened elliptical ring of land 50 miles long and a width ranging from 3 to 20 miles with a big lagoon in the middle.  The lagoon has a maximum depth of 115 feet.  The population is over 2500.

        The economy is based on black pearl farming.  In the lagoon, black pearls are produced from marine cultured black lip pearl oysters.  Tourism is also important as scuba diving is world class here.  Fishing is also done mainly for local consumption but they do export some to Tahiti.  Believe it or not, some wine is produced here in two grape harvests per year.  There is no water here so the people living here have to collect and store rainwater in tanks.

        We visited the island when on our 2017 world cruise.

YESTERDAY EVENING (MONDAY, JANUARY 30TH 

 L to R:  Buddy, Karen, Eddie, Exec chef John, Lyn, then us.  The two other couples live in the Ft Lauderdale area.

                                                         Executive Chef John Pugh

          Chef with Eddie & Lyn Zito.  We've cruised with Eddie and Lyn several times before.

They gave the chef a recipe for this crab stuffed lobster.  Chef John personally made it for us last night.  I can't tell you how delicious it was.  Rebecca and I could only eat half of it however.  Fried calamari was our appetizer.  Again delicious.  Great evening!!

They called this "Grandma's Lemon Meringue Pie".  Certainly not like the grandma you and I know.

                     We have front row stage right seats for "Blazing Boots" production show.

Orchestra's drummer, acoustic guitar, and bass guitar were on raised part of the stage next to us.  They accompanies the sound track recorded for the show.  Great job!

This is our favorite show and have seen it on several other cruises several times per cruise.  The cast was great.  One of the singer/dances, Page, was a cast member on our 2022 world cruise.

TODAY

 

This is the Aranui 5 half cargo/half passenger ship.  It came out end of 2015 and can carry 256 passengers with a crew of 64.  It's home port is Papeete and sails around the Marquesas Islands.

                            Today's tender gangway is set up forward of our balcony.

                                              This is where we spend most mornings.

             I just got off the tender and heading to meet my tour, "Discover the World of Pearls".  

                                    Head on look at Mariner anchored in the lagoon.

                                                    Usual little shops on the tender pier.

                  Beautiful colors of aqua and blue of the lagoon waters near the shore line.

                                     Here is another tour available today.  "Glass Bottom Boat".

    Shore line here is mostly volcanic rock but there are some nice beaches on the atoll.

                                                          My unair-conditioned tour bus.

              Philip gave us a very good explanation on how the black pearls are cultured.

This man was implanting a very small pearl seed and then a small part of the shell in the pearl sac of each oyster.  A very delicate procedure.

They are then hung in these wire cages and placed on a long wire in the lagoon.  It takes 18 months for the pearl to mature and be harvested.  The wire cages are taken out of the lagoon every two months and cleaned before replaced back in the lagoon.

                                              This shows the oysters in the wire racks.

LAST EVENING (TUESDAY}

        At 6pm there was a Krew Kappers show in the theater.  This is where some of our talented crew members do a show of singing and dancing.  We did not go to this one but will go to the future shows as there is one at the end of every segment of the world cruise.  Our first segment ends in Papeete, Tahiti, on February 2nd.  Anyway, Rebecca had to go at 6pm down to the doctor to get some more cough medicine.  She was only one there so that did not take long.  We then had cocktails at the Mariner Lounge bar.

                        We both started with this cream of cauliflower and potato soup.

          Here is our special order veal parmesan that we split and still could not eat all of it.

                                                    I loved this pecan pie cheesecake. 

        There was no show.  They had a "Beatles Night" dance party in the Horizon Lounge which we never go to.