Rotoava

I am living a dream here. Yesterday I boarded the Aranui 5. I stay at a room in a bunk bed with 3 other person, there is a French couple from Grasse and a lady from Paris. Friendly people, I am sure we will have a good time together. I already made friends with the Pointer crew, they are in charge with all the selling and the money. They provide me with Bananas and Pineapple and I will invite those four men for a beer at one of the evening. I had lunch with Lynn and Mike, two guys from NZ and Roland, a Swiss. You meet people very easily, I am already known as the cheerful one. How can you not be cheerful on this wonderful boat, a mistery to me. It was biult in 2015, suceeding Aranui 3, a ship that had less passenger 140 instead of 250 today and was simpler. The new one has eleven desk, I am staying at the forth. Every day we have a reunion with lectures about the Marquases Island and informations for the day to come. I signed up for diving in Fakarava, an atoll we reached today. I am already very busy here, yesterday at 4pm I took some Tahitien class and an hour later we were trying to dance tahitien. I think I look like a brick next to Hui who dances so sensually and beautifully. We will do a spectacle in the end with the men doing the haka and we girls trying to impress men. The song is lovely and we dance a story about love and the beauty of the sea etc., actually trying to get a man to marry us. At 8pm we had diner, delicious, with a entrée, main dish and a dessert as it is the case for lunch. It is an exception on a cruise that there is food 'only' at a given time. I read a review before boarding where this fact was especially mentioned: The lady said to be careful to respect these hours otherwise you won't get food. She wrote that with all the activities and so 'little' food you could even loose weight on this cruise.
Anyway the day ended with a movie of the Marquase Island which I didn't get to see entirely because I fell asleep. The sea was rough so I slept like a baby. Today waking up was at 5:30 to watch the passage of the ship into the atoll. It is the second widest passage in the world with 1.6km. We were six divers going off the ship at first and we had a wonderful dive with baby sharks, barracudas and hundreds of fishes. At the pier were people selling pearls from a farm nearby and I helped translating and hoped they would do a good sell. When I left they offered me a pearl as a thank you. So kind, I was so touched. Now we are heading off for 1.5 days on the sea before arriving on Nuku Hiva.
As expected I am putting the avarage age a bit down. There are English speaking, some German and a lot of French on the ship. We aren't fully booked and there are 201 guests and a crew of 104, the ones working at the cargo part included.Read more