Ship Food on the National Geographic Orion

Breakfast and lunch buffets on the Orion were always served on the deck, so you could enjoy the beautiful views while eating.

Every morning there were different custom-cooked options like waffles, French toast, pancakes, or eggs Benedict.
Or you could have any kind of eggs you requested. A buffet included cereal, fruit, casseroles, and many other choices.
Always bacon! In the entire week, I was able to try only a few of the appealing options. The lunch buffet was in
the same location, and was just as tempting, with different themes each day.

Most mornings before breakfast was served, I had a cappuccino in the
library on the top deck of the ship, while watching the ship take its
final position for the morning's activities. There was always coffee up there.

During the 6 PM cocktail hour, small hors-d'oeuvres were offered along
with any drink you could think of. This was also the time when the
expedition team and naturalists would wrap up the day's activities.

The 7 PM dinners were in the ship's dining room. As sunset was around 6:00,
there wouldn't have been much of a view from the deck.

Dinners were served in a very formal way -- waiters showed us the printed menu and then brought each course, elaborately arranged on a plate. We could choose an appetizer (such as the lobster below), a salad, a pasta dish, and a main course. The main-course choices included fish, meat, and sometimes game. I tried venison, veal, beef cheeks, Indonesian-flavored pasta, and others. For dessert there was usually an elaborately arranged cake with sorbet or ice cream or a fruit salad or a choice of one or two ice cream flavors. The one exception was a Polynesian buffet on deck one night, with a whole roast piglet, barbecued fish and steak, and a variety of salads, side dishes, and desserts.

Author of all content is Mae's food blog: Maefood dot blogspot.com. 

If you are reading this somewhere else, it's been stolen!

Note copyright on photos.

Volcanic Islands, Blue Lagoons, and Coral Reefs

The French Polynesian islands that we visited last week are all very new, compared to the solid continents where most humans live. Like the Hawaiian islands, these islands are a chain that formed one by one, passing over a deep volcanic hotspot. Thus each island began as a shield volcano in a very deep part of the Pacific Ocean.

Everything about the islands reflects their recent volcanic formation: their shape, their rugged peaks, the sandy beaches with coral reefs and lagoons surrounding them, and the contrasting colors of deep blue water or shallower pale blue water where white sand is beneath the sea. For example, the silhouette of the island of Moorea, seen from Tahiti, is very rugged.

A white sand sea floor causes the water above to look bright turquoise.
The white sand is made from coral, which grows on reefs surrounding
the new volcanic islands. Tropical fish bite off bits of coral and grind it
in their digestive system, slowly creating the coral sand.

Somewhat older islands have a very different form: that of an atoll where the original volcanic peak has sunk into the sea, and ultimately the fringing reef forms a chain of islands around a blue lagoon.

Entering a lagoon -- a risky passage because the water is flowing quickly and
kicking up turbulent waves.

Atolls appear to be chains of small islands, which can often go on for miles.

Rarely, a sunken atoll is uplifted from the sea floor by geological conditions.
We visited the island of Makatea, which was formed this way.

Below the ocean's surface off shore are coral reefs. These include an incredible variety of undersea life, including fish, sharks, coral of all shapes, sponges, invertebrates like worms, clams with colorful mantles, and much much more. Polynesian islands are fantastic locations for snorkeling or diving. We snorkeled every day of our trip on the National Geographic Orion last week; on the last day of the trip, we skipped a trip to see the cultivation of the very famous black pearls in favor of a second time snorkeling.

Here are a few of Len's photos of our snorkeling experiences:

As I swam from the snorkeling platform, shoals of fish greeted me. An amazing experience!

It's always fun to see a shark!

The mantle of each clam (that is, the soft part that you see in its wavy shell opening) varies in color because of algae that
live symbiotically with the clam. I loved seeing them, half-buried in the coral heads.

The very colorful worms poke their lacy feeding structures out of the coral. When frightened, they pull back into their holes.

Islanders in Polynesia

"In 200 years, we have come from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age." -- Heimau, an elder of Ra'iatea.

Our guides to the island of Ra'iatea on May 12 were a local elder named Heimau (in the photo at left) and Tua Pittman, the cultural specialist on the National Geographic Orion for our week-long cruise (in the photo at right). Our destination on the island was a central sacred site called the Marae Taputapuatea, a gathering place for traditional island navigators to meet and connect to the sacredness they feel here. Tua, himself a master navigator, participated in one of these gatherings a few years ago, coming in a canoe from his home in the Cook Islands.

From the time he joined us on our "Le Truck," Heimau began to tell us about his long life: he is 80 years old. He said to us:

"I have never had a job: working for pay would be slavery. Getting a job would be completely stupid. Sometimes I need a little money to buy a beer, but mostly I don't need money. I can build my house; raise breadfruit, coconuts, and other fruit; catch fish, and raise chickens. No, I don't feed my chickens, they find their own food. Feeding them would be completely stupid. 

"My father said I didn't need to go to school; I could write my name and count to 1000, and that was enough. So when I was 13 years old, I left home and I had my first partner. Now my oldest child is 66 years old, and my youngest is 18. In between I have 10 sons and 10 daughters. I have never left this island: that would be completely stupid."

Heimau and Tua preparing us to respectfully enter the Marae.
First they chanted to invoke the spirits and make us welcome there.

In this area of the Marae, navigators from many islands -- Hawaii to New Zealand -- leave stones from their homes.
Heimau sounded a number of bursts on his conch shell, as well as chanting.

Tua and Heimau approached this sacred stone at the Marae, and then encouraged
all of us to line up and place hands on it, sensing the spiritual nature of this place.

Len touching the sacred stone.

As we traveled, we saw a many other local people engaged in a number of activities. We visited two working vanilla farms, one very simple with the vanilla vines growing on small palms underneath larger trees, another very modern in a greenhouse protected by nets. We visited textile workers who had an outdoor studio tie-dyeing pareos (and also selling them). We saw a fisherman who had tamed sharks by sharing the trimmings from his catch, and allowed the tourists to stroke their backs. Almost every time we landed, small groups of musicians were singing and playing ukuleles, drums, and other instruments. We saw farmers working on their lands. Here are just a few of the photos representing these people:

On the island of Fakarava, we saw lots of kids on bikes.

On the island of Makatea, musicians greeted us
as we waited for transportation.

On Bora Bora: a newly dyed pareo.

The fisherman with his tame sharks on the island of Fakarava.

Author of this content is Mae's food blog: Maefood dot blogspot.com. 

If you are reading it somewhere else, it's been stolen!

Note copyright on photos.

A Morning in Bora Bora

First light after our first night on the National Geographic Orion: sighting Bora Bora in the misty dawn. To me, Bora Bora was more mythical than real. I loved our visit there on the morning of May 11, the first day of our cruise through French Polynesia. As a beginning post about this one-week trip, I'm going to post a fairly large number of photos, and describe some of the things we saw.

In the morning mist: Bora Bora's Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu.

Every trip from the Orion begins with a crossing on these Zodiac boats.

At the dock, I was a bit surprised to find several murals painted on the walls of nearby buildings.

Also painted with local designs: a sightseeing boat.

We boarded our tour vehicles: large Mercedes trucks re-purposed to serve as a bus. These are the traditional public
transport throughout the islands, and are called "Le Truck." This one was unusually comfortable because it was fitted with
actual seats -- with cushions -- rather than long benches.

This bunker is one of the last traces of the major American presence on Bora Bora during World War II. The island was a supply base with an oil depot, airstrip, gun emplacements, and defense fortifications. There was never combat here. Our
tour guide remarked that all that was left by the 16,000 American troops was blue-eyed babies!

We stopped to see a display and demonstration of dyeing textiles.

The waters here are very calm because Bora Bora is a volcanic island with
a protective fringing reef, thus being inside a very calm lagoon. The storage
of boats is on hanging frames, which defeat the ship worms that eat wood.

Our bus was decorated with a variety of flowers, especially hibiscus.
We stopped at an open area full of holes in which little land crabs live.
If you throw down the flowers, the crabs come and drag them into their holes.

We stopped a number of times to take in the incredible views. In this photo: one of the local guides, and our shipboard
cultural specialist, Tua Pittman. I will write much more about him in later posts: he is a master navigator, and extremely knowledgeable about all Polynesian traditions.

As we bounced around the island in "Le Truck" we saw many homes, shops, and churches such as this schoolyard
next to a a church.

After our beautiful morning touring in Bora Bora, we returned to the Orion for lunch. The afternoon was our first opportunity to go snorkeling on a small private island in the lagoon. We had a very rich and fascinating experience, which I'll be documenting more in additional blog posts.