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Wanderung 16

Holts Hawaiian Hula Holiday.

January 2008

Wednesday, January 16, 2008: Fanning Island, Kiribati.

Bob:

We took a tender, a lifeboat pressed into ferry duty, from the ship over to Fanning Island, a coral atoll surrounding a rather large lagoon. The island's two cash crops are coconut and seaweed, neither of which brings in bags of money, so the folks seemed quite poor. They sold handicrafts to the cruise ship passengers, but despite the poverty they really did seem quite happy to see all of us land and inundate their island for the day. Most of us stayed at the main village area that had the elementary school, jail, and buildings used for cooking and serving drinks and stuff, plus bathrooms. Other folks took island tours or went to a more pristine but rather isolated beach run by NCI that had absolutely nothing but water sports like kayaks and Hobie Cats to play with.

Monika:

Today we were as far south as we had ever been (near the Equator) on a little atoll, Fanning Island, that belonged to the island nation of Kiribati. Norwegian Cruise Line had built a recreation area on a little beach, similar to Princess Key for Princess Lines or Half Moon Key for Holland America. There were a couple of beaches, barbecue pits, bars of course, and bathrooms. But there were a few differences between Fanning and the Caribbean islands: beaches are inside the lagoon, nice sand but not very deep and no fish to watch while snorkeling. Also, on Fanning Island you are actually in a foreign country: so one of the island policeman was designated to stamp anyone's passport.

Bob:

We were more interested in the people and the arts and crafts than watersports, so we stayed in the main village area. After disembarking and being serenaded by choirs from the local churches singing welcome songs, we visited the area which I would describe as roughly like an outdoor flea market just beside the pier. There really were an astonishing number of well made craft items for sale, almost all constructed of shells, carved from local wood, or fabricated from parts of fish and stuff. We bought with an eye to being able to pack it for our trip back, but we were sorry not to be able to buy some of the beautiful but fragile baskets, outrigger canoe models, and other larger items.

Monika:

At the dock, we were greeted by the singing of one of the chorus groups. The kids, of course, had a holiday to sing and dance for the tourists. There was a pail for donations. The money went to the local churches but there was no pressure to contribute.

We first turned to the market square with lots of local crafts, made from wood and seashells. Since we got to the island on the second tender, the market was not very crowded and we got a good look at all the items before we made our purchases. Of course, I got a shell necklace and a trivet made from shells. We also got a small carved tiki that was designed to hang around our necks, but I thought it would fit nicely into our display case by our front door.


 

Bob:

From the flea market we wandered about the small village. Dogs and small pigs ran around loose. The pigs were shy but the dogs were friendly although not one did any begging for food despite the fact that several looked quite thin. I had also half expected the people to beg also, but not one person did that at all. There were folks dressed in Polynesian warrior regalia who charged $2 to pose for a picture, but nobody else asked us to pay for photos and absolutely no one was begging despite the obvious signs of poverty in the village houses (no electricity, running water, appliances, or pretty much anything else we take for granted). I also got the feeling that there was no casual thieving going on although I was still careful to keep an eye on our cameras and stuff.

Monika:

One of the main attractions was, that it had been used as a parting shot in the long running TV series of the 60s "Gilligan's Island" about a group of people marooned on an island. And as we approached the pier in our tender, there was the very photogenic wreck of a ship in the water, which Bob, of course, immediately christened it the "Minnow" after the wrecked ship of "Gilligan's Island".

There were another group of kids and adults singing and dancing. The singing and dancing was really good, and they kept it up for the three hours that we were on the island. The kids seemed to be enjoying themselves. When I started clapping in rhythm to one of the songs, one little boy looked over at me with a wide grin.

Other kids were just running at the outskirts or helping their mothers at the market. Market duty seemed to be mainly females, while some men sat in a tree and watched. We walked around a little, while it was still cool. There were a lot of dogs around, but none of them bothered anyone. Even when food was being served, we did not see any dog begging. Besides dogs, there were little, very cute piglets running around. They offered an island tour in an old truck, but, unfortunately, we did not bring enough money, since we had been told, we needed only some money in small denominations, and by now our $20 in small denominations was gone between our purchases and donating to the singers.


 

Bob:

Monika was, of course, the first to decide to take the plunge into the very shallow beach leading into the lagoon, but I finally decided to follow her in. For being near the equator the water was a bit cool, but not unpleasantly so, and the bottom was sandy so walking around was quite easy, which was a good thing because the beach shelved so gradually that we could only get out to about chest-high water and swimming was almost impossible. We could have snorkeled, I guess, but there was really nothing but sandy bottom to look at, so we just paddled around a bit and then got out and dried off.

While we were drying off I suddenly saw two young men sailing across the broad lagoon in a small outrigger with a woven mat sail, which was exactly the same construction that their ancient Polynesian forebears had used to cross the Pacific Ocean. Seeing those two adventurous young men in an boat whose roots went back almost 1,000 years made me feel like I was glimpsing the ancient past a bit, and I struggled to get a decent picture before they were lost to sight in the waves of the lagoon.

Monika:

We walked to the end of the island, were the opening to the lagoon was. Here we got an excellent view of our ship at anchor in the blue waters of the pacific. It is very seldom, that you can get such a great picture of a ship, since at a pier, you never can get far enough away without getting clutter in the foreground. In contrast to the modern steamer that had to stay outside of the lagoon, a local outrigger with sail, enjoyed the breeze inside the lagoon.

After taking pictures to our hearts content, we sat down in one of the beachchairs NCL had provided and I went swimming. The water was cool, but easy to get used to. It was not very high even the end of the swimming area and hardly any surf. So it was very relaxing. I even convinced Bob to get wet, and he came in reluctantly and slowly but did enjoy himself.


 

Bob:

Returning to the ship for lunch, we rested a bit before another session of hula dancing with Ambassador June, which I enjoyed tremendously. This time I carefully kept my knees bent while doing the hip circles (umis?) and that avoided pulling a back muscle like I had done the day before. The music and the motions really fit together and made sense to me, unlike country line dancing where many of the actions seem to be pretty arbitrary. I also spent an hour or two making another Kukui nut lei for Monika, and we both wore those to dinner in the most formal restaurant on the ship, the Palace Main Dining Room.

The evening's entertainment was a comedian cum magician. I thought he rated an "A" as a comedian and a "B" as a magician, so I had a good time. Some bits were pure comedy such as his spoof on PowerPoint presentations. That was such a good send up of those terribly boring, tedious PowerPoint presentations that I had attended over the years that I was just rolling in the aisles. He had the same essentially meaningless information presented as line graphs, bar charts, and pie charts with vivid, primary colors, and his extravagant use of abbreviations in the summary and interpretation slides made exactly the kind of incomprehensible goobledygook I read for years in government and scientific reports. I'm sure the folks in front of me wondered why I thought the slide show was that funny, but I guess it was all those countless hours of being bored silly by pointless PowerPoint presentations that made his spoof so hilarious. Afterwards I caught up on my journal and turned in for the night.

Monika:

By 12, we decided to head back to the ship, after all, we were rather close to the equator and really did not want to get a sunburn. Besides we pretty much had done all there was to be done on the island. The tender took us back, again giving us great views of the ship and the island.

After lunch, we rested before we went to Hula lesson and then to dinner. We had decided to go to one of the restaurants, and even agreed to be seated with others. NCL prides itself in the freedom of choice for dinner; what this seems to add up to is that you either reserve a table even in the two regular restaurants or get there early if you want to sit just with your spouse, and even then, they let it be known that they would prefer, if you agreed to share a table. What this also means is that every evening, there is a line to get a table. It seems that this type of dining requires more waiting in line, then the regular table assignments on the other cruise lines, where we had to wait only the first night and after that could immediately proceed to your table. In the three meals we had so far, we had one very good waitress, one ok, and one rather poor. It seemed that there was not the same interest the part of the waitstaff than on the other cruise lines, where you have the same waitstaff for a week and they get to know you and your preferences. This night we agreed to share a table and were seated with a group of five who were all related. We did have a good chatter about todays activites, one guy had taken the island tour and told about it, but another was a complete boor and had not even gone to the island. His view was, after all why bother if in a few years its going to be swallowed by water anyway. Service was slow and not very good, so we barely made it in time for the evening show.

The evening show was a magician/comedian (or better comedian/magician). When we came, there was a pre-show slide show which was hilarious and I was just sorry that we had missed some of it. The guy himself was a great comedian. He started out with a power point presentation about card tricks which was so hilarious that Bob and I rolled in the aisle. We both had seen enough bad presentations, to enjoy the spoof of information presented in different graphs (the more card tricks, the worse the magician), and abbreviations: Magic card trick (MCG) fall into two categories: Pick a card (PAC) or Think of a card (TOAC); and so on. It really mimicked every bad power point presentation you have ever sat through. The magic itself was not all that great; but again all the comedy around it was first class. We went to bed still laughing.

Copyright 2008 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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