Pressing On
After beating myself up a bit climbing the “hills” in Tahiti, the ship took me to the next island: Moorea. An even more steeply mountainous island. Swell. Beautiful, but.
I’d planned to go for a bit of a walk, and retrace a bit of my journey with Scott a couple of years ago, leaving off the rainforest trek and keeping the distance to something more reasonable.
Popped on the pack, hopped on the water shuttle and went.
It didn’t take long for me to feel the urge to start running. What an idiot. But, in a surprisingly smart move, I turned early to go up a different path. When I got 20 meters in off the main drag, I was stopped at a gate. Apparently access cost $2. Seeing as I didn’t have any cash, especially in the form of local currency, I asked if they took cards. They did and for $10, I got access and a smoothie that I could get when I got back down.
Paid and started chugging up. The climb was not so long, but steep. My ego was stroked by the comments I got from people I saw along the way. What better fuel does a body need?
Apparently actual fuel. I didn’t do as well as I hoped, but I made it. Nice views from the observation deck. I didn’t take the route seen by the path of the trees. There was a secondary one that was longer hidden away in the back. Of course I took that one.
The smoothie at the end was delicious. The milk they used in it was less kind to my gut. There’s a reason I haven’t had milk in a couple of decades. Yikes.
Despite walking and stopping along the way, I was still disgustingly damp when I reboarded the water shuttle at the pier. I’m confident that was the reason I had a large area aft to myself and everyone else was packed into the fore. Even my shoelaces were dripping when I finally doffed my Hokas. The sweat levels of tropical running for me are off the gross-out charts. I gave everything a shower and hung it all out on my balcony to dry. Turns out the best aspect of paying for a balcony upgrade is a place to hang laundry. Who knew? As a bonus, the length of shock cord I carry makes for a good wraparound to keep said laundry hooked over the back of a deck chair and not flying off the side of the ship in the wind. It also works as a laundry line under calmer circumstances. Double the use.
Typically, everything is nice and dry by the next day. Except when it rains, I suppose. On the positive side, it’s an added rinse, but I’m not sure how much was ocean spray vs. rain spray. I guess I’ll find out when I put it all on and feel if it’s salty or not.
As could have been inferred, overnight and the next sea day were gray and rainy. Looking out, it looked like it would be cold, but it wasn’t particularly. About mid 70s Fahrenheit. Cooler than other days for sure, and some folks were in hoodies and puffies. I did have a long sleeve second layer (Thanks Mama Chang!), but I usually do anyway to hold off the overwhelming AC in the common areas.
After the back-to-back days of hills, I had already decided to take a rest day on that first day back aboard. I only did 70 flights of stairs in my wanderings around the ship. I didn’t run, so I guess it was?
I met up with Paul and Theresa for dinner and we all went to the hypnotist show in the evening. Couple of points here. Theresa reminds me far too much of someone else. Tall. Pretty. Ponytail. Same smile. Same athletic capacity and mindset. Uncool, universe. Uncool.
Second. The hypnotist show was…not good. I left after about 20 minutes. The “hypnotized” guests didn’t hit their cues timely enough to make it realistic. Sometimes too early, sometimes too late. For me it was a cringe and go situation. I had a couple of shows queued up (see what I did there?) to watch on the laptop anyway.
Be kind and take care of yourselves. If you can, care for someone else, too.
Slang, out.
Loved the images and the I-was-here arrow, but I feel like there is a margin of error. Hypnotism. Can’t blame them for trying but they should have hypnotized the audience into remember that the show was fantastic. My eyelids are suddenly getting heavy.