Day 83 - If we can't go to an island, can an island come to the ship?

A slightly different day in prospect.  If you have ever seen any of the various versions of the film, ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’, you may be familiar with Pitcairn Island.  Our schedule was for scenic cruising (ie. a lap of the island) but a stop first thing to allow Pitcairn Islanders on board to set up a market.  It appears that the ship also traded some of its stock of toilet paper for fresh fruit.

Anyway, all seemed to go to plan.  A fine enough day so a traditional breakfast then we caught up with Darryl & Sue for a coffee in the atrium, ready to see how 1900 passengers would cram into the deck 5 dining room eager to purchase souvenirs.

Anyway, Paula and I legged it to trivia but joined Mike & Sue’s team of three and we were then joined by Sam, who often sits with us.  Much to our surprise, we made the playoff for first place, with a modest 15/20, but lost out as we didn’t get the correct year for the commencement of Wimbledon.

We wandered the open decks for a while before giving the lunchtime ‘International Buffet’ a whirl and we sat outside on deck 14 for a change.  We can’t remember the last time we were able to sit outside and enjoy the ambience.

Back down to deck 5 to check out the merchandise and I am not going here into the history of the island (past or present), but suffice to say that most inhabitants are 7^th Day Adventists and as the population is tiny (and I do mean tiny – like 40…), most also appear to be related.  Tourism provides 80% of their income, so many items for sale seemed to carry the name ‘Christian’ – from Fletcher Christian.  It is still a British outpost, but is administered from NZ.

We left the area about 2pm to carry on towards Papeete after two more days at sea.

After another losing trivia, we had a fair dinner but elected to skip Bayne Bacon’s second show, on the assumption that as his first show was the same for all previous cruises, there was no reason to believe his second show wouldn’t be any different from his previous second shows either.  So we went up to the open deck to check out Maggie Scott’s show, but it was a bit nippy, so we didn’t stay.  We (D & S too) opted for an early night and a bit of reading, rather than a late hot chocolate.  A bit of a throat creeping in.  I thought I was doing well, but now the trip is almost over, I am not too concerned…

I did manage to read a couple of emails from NZ.  Yes guys, we are indeed back WEDNESDAY August 27^th .  Our first yoga will be the Thursday.