LUGANVILLE, VANUATU
We haven't had CNN for 3 days, and miraculously they were able to get the Super Bowl signal.. ! We're a day ahead of you since we crossed the International Date Line, and the tailgate party started at 10:00 a.m. Monday morning -- weird!
We just completed our 8th ‘at sea’ day -- the longest stretch of cruising on the entire trip. The scenery doesn’t change much, but surprisingly we saw a very large white bird in the middle of nowhere -- with a wingspan about the size of an eagle’s -- that was circling the ship, and we saw it dive for a fish! We couldn’t tell if it was successful or not, but as far as we knew, we were miles from land …
They cancelled the stop in Funatuvi and added another one in Vanuatu instead. We're somewhere in the South Pacific, and landed in Luganville in the republic of Vanuatu this morning. I'd never even heard of this group of islands, which were formerly the Hebrides Islands, before we booked this tour, let alone found it on the map!! I now know that it’s approximately the same latitude and west of Suva, Fiji. The lecturers are pretty good about giving us historical and political information on the countries that we'll be visiting.
The town/village is barely pushing a population of 2,000! We only stayed out for about an hour because we woke up to 84 degree temperature, and 100% humidity -- a raging tropical rainstorm and got soaked right through. The main street is about 2 blocks long, and their stores are "multi function" i.e. dept. store clothing, hardware store, groceries, toiletries, fresh br
ead, sacks of flour, beer, etc. all in one stop shopping! It hasn't been discovered by tourists yet, so it's very quaint and charming -- which I'm sure we would have appreciated more if we weren't soaked to the skin! This is the rainy season, and it’s officially classified as a rainforest, getting its rain from November to April. There’s a little mining of manganese, and they fish and grow kava root which they pound into a fine powder and make into a drink. They also grow some cacao. It was a supply station during WW II, and at the end of the war they pushed all the remaining armament off of Million Dollar Pointe into the ocean, where tourists explore it on dives.
Tomorrow we go on to the other stop in Vanuatu -- Port Vila, which is a larger city of about 230,000 people. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative ….
We haven't had CNN for 3 days, and miraculously they were able to get the Super Bowl signal.. ! We're a day ahead of you since we crossed the International Date Line, and the tailgate party started at 10:00 a.m. Monday morning -- weird!
We just completed our 8th ‘at sea’ day -- the longest stretch of cruising on the entire trip. The scenery doesn’t change much, but surprisingly we saw a very large white bird in the middle of nowhere -- with a wingspan about the size of an eagle’s -- that was circling the ship, and we saw it dive for a fish! We couldn’t tell if it was successful or not, but as far as we knew, we were miles from land …
They cancelled the stop in Funatuvi and added another one in Vanuatu instead. We're somewhere in the South Pacific, and landed in Luganville in the republic of Vanuatu this morning. I'd never even heard of this group of islands, which were formerly the Hebrides Islands, before we booked this tour, let alone found it on the map!! I now know that it’s approximately the same latitude and west of Suva, Fiji. The lecturers are pretty good about giving us historical and political information on the countries that we'll be visiting.
The town/village is barely pushing a population of 2,000! We only stayed out for about an hour because we woke up to 84 degree temperature, and 100% humidity -- a raging tropical rainstorm and got soaked right through. The main street is about 2 blocks long, and their stores are "multi function" i.e. dept. store clothing, hardware store, groceries, toiletries, fresh br
ead, sacks of flour, beer, etc. all in one stop shopping! It hasn't been discovered by tourists yet, so it's very quaint and charming -- which I'm sure we would have appreciated more if we weren't soaked to the skin! This is the rainy season, and it’s officially classified as a rainforest, getting its rain from November to April. There’s a little mining of manganese, and they fish and grow kava root which they pound into a fine powder and make into a drink. They also grow some cacao. It was a supply station during WW II, and at the end of the war they pushed all the remaining armament off of Million Dollar Pointe into the ocean, where tourists explore it on dives.Tomorrow we go on to the other stop in Vanuatu -- Port Vila, which is a larger city of about 230,000 people. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative ….
We are booked on the Rotterdam right after you finish your cruise. How do you like the ship?
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