Day 19: 20231011 Wednesday, October 11, 2023- At Sea Papéete to Pago Pago
One thing I didn’t mention yesterday is that we learned that Pago Pago is actually pronounced Pongo Pongo because the Samoans pronounce “ag” as “ong”. They also prefer Samoa to be pronounced Sawmoa. While I’m at it, Papéete is pronounced Paw-Pee-ett-tah locally.
It was nice to get an hour’s extra sleep, and even nicer that the air conditioning really seems to have been fixed so we can actually enjoy the views out of our balcony and sleep comfortably at night. The weather has been fair with winds of 15-20kts and scattered clouds in the sky. The humidity is 90% so that is quite noticeable outside, with a temperature in the lower 80’s˚F.
The crew was out on our balcony hosing off salt spray again today. It's funny that on all the cruises we have done so far, this is the first where we have had crews on the balconies on a regular basis.
We did manage to win our morning Trivia session, so we have more tickets to trade in on the last day of the cruise for prizes. There was a “Where in the World” trivia later in the morning that we lost by just 1 point. Before that Trivia started in the Vista Lounge, they were doing Tai-Chi in a way we haven’t seen before on a cruise ship. There was actually a video of a Tai Chi instructor playing on the screen in the front of the lounge with people scattered along the rows in the theatre copying the instructors’ moves.
In the afternoon progressive Trivia, we are tied for 3rd place behind 3 other teams after the first round. There was a bit of drama during the progressive. There was some bad blood when she asked what the world’s most expensive coffee was, and although the answer was Kopi Luwak, which is made from coffee beans that have been pooped out by Civit cats, she said she’d give points to a team that claimed it came from Monkey poop. Although we didn’t come up with the Kopi Luwak name, we did write out coffee pooped out by Civit cats. She also got a lot of grief when she asked True of False: There is a male animal that lays eggs. Her Answer was True- the Seahorse. Of course, this is wrong because although the male seahorse incubates and hatches the eggs, giving live birth to the baby seahorses, the eggs are laid by female seahorses into the male seahorse’s gestational pouch. And finally, there was a lot of controversy because she asked for the deepest point in the ocean, and most teams answered “Marianas Trench”, while her answer was the “Challenger Deep”, which is actually a point in the southern part of the Marianas Trench. She refused to allow credit for Marianas trench. Well, it’s just a game, she says. That’s not going over very well with the mob in the Explorer’s Lounge. It’s hard to get upset over prize tickets at the end of a long cruise, but the bragging rights are certainly more valuable currency on board.
There was a Captain’s Circle reception for us after dinner. There are so many Platinum and Elite members on board these long cruises that they break up the reception into multiple sessions over a couple of days so that they can serve everyone drinks and canapés in a timely fashion. The longest cruises have over 1500 days at sea with Princess. We’ll have 247 days when we arrive in Sydney, so we have a long way to catch up to these people. But we really do appreciate the free laundry service.
The Princess Theater featured a vocalist who did a Johnny Cash tribute, which Janet enjoyed.
We also watched the latest Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny movie in our stateroom. It’s easy to see the concern Hollywood actors have when they were able to recreate a much younger AI Indiana Jones for the first part of the movie, while the tired old Harrison Ford had to slog it out with the Nazi’s in the last half of the movie. The action in the first half was decent, but you just have to get tire of the Nazis up the same old tricks all through the last half of the movie.
