You would think by the frequency of my postings that we are off discovering the entire island of Moorea and busy, busy, busy. That we are not. But we are luxuriating in the freedom to do nothing, and once you get into that groove, it’s hard to pull yourself away from it. However, I want to write this blog as much for myself as for my readers because these posts bring back wonderful memories years later.

Right now we are out on our deck waiting for the Polynesian show to begin. As I believe I mentioned, meals here are very expensive and it has felt beyond our budget to have both lunch and dinner in the restaurant. So we have gotten into the habit of having one or the other, and then bringing the leftovers to our room. They serve very good rolls at both meals and if we fill up on rolls, we can have a large part of our meal left over. This afternoon we had pizza, a salad, a dessert and one can of coke for $70. Our meal this evening was leftover pizza, the amazing Tahiti drink I wrote of earlier and a shared pain de chocolate purloined from breakfast. There is no question that we are cheap, but I actually prefer this to having dinner in the restaurant. It’s just so lovely to sit out here and feel the breeze, gaze at the dark, glistening water, and listen to the Polynesian music in the restaurant, as well as the water lapping up against the stilts of our bungalow .

When we booked I made a request for a bungalow in the quieter area and they definitely did not accommodate me. I told Mary that if I had known beforehand that we would hear all music coming from the restaurant, I would have been very anxious and upset. But it turns out I love it – maybe because it’s Polynesian music? I don’t know.

I did mention our stormy lagoon in my title. The last two days we’ve had rain. Yesterday morning I woke to discover a very wet deck and my favorite divan soaking wet. It sprinkled on and off all day. Every time I thought it had stopped and went to my divan, it began again. Such familiar weather, but a warmer, gentler rain than Portland. After the sunrise this morning we decided to go straight to breakfast instead of snorkel, but around 11:30, we put on our snorkel gear and headed out. We have rail steps down to the lagoon, and the top rail, which is normally about two feet above water, was completely submerged. We got in the water and lasted perhaps 5 minutes. We were both being thrashed around and into the stilts of the bungalow, which are covered with coral so I don’t want my body to touch them. And I’m swimming with only my legs, so I felt completely powerless. We swam back to our bungalow and I thought I would just hang in the water right by the ladder but then I was shoved into the steps and I got angry and got out.

We are perfectly content to lie around and read and do crossword puzzles so that’s what we did after lunch, but around 4:30 the water seemed calmer so we got back in. Even though the water was a little murkier than our previous snorkels and the current was still a little strong, I thoroughly enjoyed my snorkel. We saw a spotted manta ray very close up. My favorite was this school of little green/grey fish who gathered around a sponge-like coral. All at once, they swam into the coral and completely hid in the crevices and then emerged en masse. I thought at first I had scared them, but they continued to do this over and over so I guess it‘s just their thing. It reminded me of the swifts at Chapman Elementary in Portland in September. I could have stayed there a long time but Mary pointed out that the current was picking up and we might have a hard time getting back to our bungalow if we didn’t head back.

We‘re both snorkeling in long swim pants and swim shirts and I am close to perfecting changing from my snorkel outfit into a towel wrap while (mostly) not exposing myself. Then I lie in my divan until I am dry. It’s quite divine.Because we’re also snorkeling twice a day now, I’ve discovered that I am fine without a shower in between. My skin feels amazing from the salt water and my hair feels pretty great too.

So that was our day today and will probably be our day tomorrow also. Mary has promised me we can snorkel in my favorite area that is so shallow it scares her. It’s probably about 2 feet deep. I can reach down and touch the sand. But there are tons of fish and I am SO close to them!

I have a very wise and kind friend who sent me an email before we left to remind me that I should relax on my vacation and if I didn’t feel like blogging, I shouldn’t blog. I appreciated that advice so much, as I have not had time to blog before today. So I have lots of adventures to impart, but I won’t try to do it all at once.

We have been here since Monday and today is Thursday. Yesterday we moved from our garden bungalow to our over the water bungalow. That turned out to be a bit stressful and the side of my wife I call La Grumpia emerged. We had to pack all our belongings which a bellman came to get at 11 am and then we had to amuse ourselves until 2 pm when the new room would be ready. For some reason we packed our bathing suits instead of wearing them for the three hours and it was hot and humid and we were tired.

We were already in paradise in our garden bungalow and now we are in Uber-Paradise. It’s a little bit like being on a cruise ship in that we are surrounded by water. The water is such amazing different shades of blue and there is a barrier reef a ways out with crashing waves that we can hear, but under and around the bungalow the water is shallow and mostly calm and there are coral and fish everywhere! We have a window in our floor from which we can view fish and we can also see them when we stand on the deck and look into the water. Last night right after the sun had gone down, Mary spotted a small shark, which was very cool even though it was hard to see in the limited light.

Our deck has two chairs and a table that are covered and protected from the sun and then on a lower level, a sort of divan chair for two, which Mary found uncomfortable and I am in love with. Last night the hotel had a Polynesian show with a buffet dinner that cost something close to $100 per person. The food here is SO expensive! We chose to sit on the patio with our leftover food from lunch as well as a tropical fruit alcoholic beverage we bought on our food tour on Tuesday (more about that later.) After dinner, we went inside and watched a Seattle Storm game on my Ipad mini because I could not ge the tv to work with our Fire Stick. Then we went back out on the patio. It was dark, there were pretty lights on the beach near the restaurant, the water lapped against the support beams of our bungalow and further out waves crashed on the reef. To top it all off, we could hear the music from the Tahitian show and it was very good music, including some amazing drumming. Eventually, Mary went back inside and listened from the bed but I stayed in the cushy chair and listened to the entire show in the dark. It was pretty magical. I think we both had a better time than we would have if we were in the restaurant.

This resort is very secluded and there is no way for us to get anyplace without transportation, but I bought us a bag of fritos and a bag of mixed nuts on the ferry, we’ve been purloining a bit of food at breaskfast every morning, and we bought breadfruit chips (amazingly wonderful) and some pineapple on our food tour on Tuesday. In the mornings we eat a little snack first thing, then snorkel, shower, and go to breakfast, which is a buffet included in our rate.

Though we are on a lagoon, it has quite a current, which I’ve never experienced while snorkeling. On Tuesday, our tour guide recommended that we swim out to some buoys, where he said the best snorkeling is, and then float down to the over the water bungalows. I am currently rehabbng two frozen shoulders and they are not very happy when I use my arms to swim, so, using only my legs, I quickly discovered that it was impossible for me to get very far out in the water at all, due to the current. So we floated towards the bungalows, saw amazing fish and the most beautiful coral I’ve ever seen and then, as we neared the bungalows, Mary asked me if I wanted to go in and I said I would like to swim to the end of the bungalows and then come in. Mary just looked at me and swam away in the opposite direction and I was annoyed and swam anyway to the end of the bungalows, where the tide was very strong and I found there was no way I could get back to shore without employing my arms. I found it very terrifying, though in reality at any moment I could have climbed up a ladder onto someone’s bungalow patio. That would have been very uncool, of course, and I never even considered it. I just panicked, because I have never before felt out of control when snorkeling. Also, I thought that lagoon meant calm waters, but apparently that was an erroneous assumption. I did make it back to shore with some very hard swimming. I was pleasantly surprised the next day when my injured shoulders did not bark at me; instead the backs of my arms were the good kind of sore, when you have worked the muscles hard.

Anyway, I learned my lesson and stuck very close to Mary yesterday morning. We also discussed it. In my view, she had asked me a question, ignored me, and swam away. In her view, because I am swimming with a full-face snorkel, which is amazing but also makes me look like Darth Vadar, she asked me a question, I started at her blankly, so she decided to swim away. When my mask is on she can neither hear anything I say nor see my face. Yesterday I did not attempt to get anywhere. We just floated to the area right before the bungalows, then went into the shore and walked in the water up the beach back to our garden bungalow. With this method, there are great areas of coral and also areas of nothing but sand and no fish at all. Also, we were wearing water shoes rather than flippers, so whenever we came to a really great area, we were powerless to hang out there as the current just dragged us along on the path of its choice.

So yesterday afternoon we went to the dive shop and borrowed some fins. They are free of charge and for that reason I didn’t pack fins, which take up a lot of space. This morning, after our little snack we climbed down the ladder of our bungalow and were immediately in a fish paradise. We didn’t even have to leave the bungalow, but we did. The poles of the bungalows are covered in coral, so there are fish EVERYWHERE. It is also very shallow in places, which scares Mary but I love it because the fish are all around me and I can see them all so clearly. Eventually we swam back to our bungalow, climbed up the ladder, rinsed ourselves with the outdoor sprayer, and then Mary took a shower while I lay in the sun in my new favorite chair, completely covered from head to toe. We had a lovely breakfast. I have had something two days in a row called fromage blanc. It seems exactly like yogurt, but the waitress confirmed it is cheese and not yogurt. They have plain yogurt here, which is often so hard to find in a hotel, but it has a weird consistency and I’m not a fan. I chose half of a funny looking fruit that neither of us had any idea what it was. It was extremely sweet and delicious, and I later learned it was passionfruit. This was my breakfast: sausage, hash browns, tropical juice mixture, croissant (magnifique), baguette with passion fruit and a soft cheese that may have been goat cheese, pineapple, and fromage blanc.

When we got back to the room it was all cleaned up and now we are lounging about with a plan to do NOTHING all day, except write, read, snorkel, eat, doze, watch another Storm game, etc. etc. There is much I haven’t told you yet,so I will possibily do a second, maybe even third entry today.

Ok, so this is creepy. I was rooting through my backpack trying to find my glasses when a heavy metal song with vaguely menacing lyrics began playing somewhere in our hotel room. Upon inspection we discovered it was coming from my ipad, which was lying on the bed, untouched. I picked it up and there was no clue of where the music was coming from. It blared on as I closed every single open application. I turned off the iPad and continued my glasses search. When I eventually returned to the bed, the iPad was on again and nothing would open. Mary says maybe it’s Putin?

Anyway, I turned it off and back on and now it seems to be behaving itself. We are lounging in our room on the 5th floor of the Hyatt Place. Until about noon we were on the 4th flloor, but unfortunately for Mary I did what she calls her “cross to bear.” The room we slept in last night had a really great view of swaying palm tress, which we both loved. I was able to pretend we were already in Tahiti. But soon we discovered that the walls and ceilings here are paper-thin and there was what seemed to be constant stomping up above us, which was driving me insane. I’m trying to be zen on this trip and thought I could bear the stomping, but when I bolted awake this morning the moment the person above us started walking around, I went downstairs and asked them if we could have a room on the 5th floor. Poor Mary was still asleep and had no idea what was about to befall her.

I always tell her – because this is not an uncommon occurence – “I’ll do everything. You won’t have to do a thing.” And I always keep that promise, packing everything up, getting it on the luggage cart, and pulling/pushing the luggage cart through the hallways. But after I crashed the cart iinto a wall and a suitcase and a backpack fell off, Mary let me continue until the elevator, at which point she sighed, “Just give that to me. Here, pull this,” (the aforementioned fallen backpack) and she maneuvered the rest of the way to our new room, which has a view of a parking tower and an office building but, at least so far, is much quieter.

Our flight here yesterday was uneventful with the usual annoyances – a woman‘s bare feet practically in Mary’s face, a woman putting on nail polish – it does astound me how clueless some people are; I could smell the fumes through my mask. We waited quite a while for the shuttle to the hotel but it was nice to be in mostly fresh air. There is a tiny little bar at the Hyatt Place with a very limited food menu. I asked about happy hour and there was indeed a happy hour with $9 cocktails down from $11, so once we got settled in our room, we went back down. There were two women at the bar being served very interesting looking drinks. I asked what they were and opted for the guava lemon drop wich was quite wonderful. We shared a hamburger and fries – a really good hamburger – and then about 9:30 Mary started feeling snacky so we ordered some groceries from DoorDash.

The free breakfast this morning was also pretty good. I had a lot of free breakfast: scrambled eggs, tater tots, turkey sausage, oatmeal with granola and coconut, and a pancake. I brought a bagel and cream cheese and some mixed fruit back to the room and that, along with a carrot, Greek yogurt, and rosemary crackers from the groceries last night made a tasty little lunch.

Whenever we travel I bring along a travel router and a Fire stick. I’m always very happy when I can get those things to work. Then we have our own private network (although I suppose it’s not all that private if Putin can send heavy metal threats to my iPad) and we can watch all our streaming services from the tv just like we’re at home. Cuz isn’t that the point of travel, to get everything set up exactly like it is when you’re at home? I’m being sarcastic, but I’ll admit that there are certain things I love so much about my daily routine that I want them wherever I go: one is my plain Greek yogurt with fruit for breakfast and the other is the ability to watch my Seattle Storm games. It is always a struggle to get my gadgets to interact with the hotel wireless and tv, and it was a struggle both yesterday and then today when we moved rooms, but I’ve got them working and we are happy campers.

Shortly we will venture out for some fresh air and see if we can find something to eat or maybe we’ll just repeat our burger repast from last night. That was a really good burger!

For the last couple weeks Mary has been treated to a countdown: “Exactly two weeks from today we will be in an over-the-water bungalow.” “Exactly one week from today we will be on a plane to Tahiti” And exactly 48 hours from this very moment that I am writing, we will be at the Hyatt Place Hotel LAX/El Segundo, perhaps figuring out what to do for dinner. This trip is a bucket list trip. When I turned 60 I became very tuned into my mortality and Mary and I agreed that I we better get a move on with all the things we’ve always wanted to do. We wanted to take a cruise in French Polynesia on the Paul Gaugin for our 5th anniversary. That was 20 years ago. Couldn’t afford it, planned for our 10th. Couldn’t afford it, the Paul Gaugin was sold to another company, we kind of forgot about it and, in the meantime, read about over the water bungalows, where you can snorkel right off your deck and look at the fish through a window in your floor. This became the dream and last October we committed to making the dream happen.

I love to plan our travel and I spend hours figuring out every detail and how to do things for less money than they normally cost. This trip involved multiple calls to Costco Travel, several re-bookings, and opening three new credit cards (Alaska Airlines, Hyatt, Southwest Airlines) so we could fly Premium Class on Air Tahiti Nui from LAX, get free flights from PDX to LAX, and stay at the Hyatt airport hotel in LAX before the redeye to Tahiti. It was pretty much perfect.

Until last Friday when I got an email from Air Tahiti Nui saying they had canceled our Saturday night flight and moved it to Sunday. This had me up until 2:30 am trying unsuccessfully to figure out how to reconfigure everything. I spent about six hours on it the next morning and it’s pretty much fixed, except for the most messed up thing, which is that the airline split up Mary and me. We were originally in a row of 2 with just each other. Now we are in two separate rows next to people we don’t know. Half of the reason I worked so hard to get us Premium Class was so that we could sit together just the two of us. On Saturday, I called Air Tahiti Nui and was told there was nothing they could do. I called back hoping I would talk to a different person, but I got the same guy with the same answer. I wrote an email talking about our 25th anniversary, bucket-list trip, etc. They promised they would get back within 72 hours but they haven’t and I’m pretty sure they really don’t care why we want to sit together in a row of 2. I’ll see what I can do at the airport. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a bummer.

So here is our new plan:

Friday we fly to LAX where I have booked 3 reward nights at the Hyatt Place. Originally it was 2 but I had to add a third because of the flight change. The 3rd night we won’t actually sleep there but it will allow us to stay in the room until Sunday night when we need to go to the airport for our midnight flight.

We arrive in Papeete at 5 am on Monday morning. I’ve booked 2 nights at a hotel across from the ferry terminal where the rooms are tiny little sleeping pods with no windows. We will sleep there from whatever time we get there from the airport until 1:30 pm or so when we will take the ferry to Moorea. Basically it’s $190 for 6 or 7 hours of sleep, but it’s worth it because we don’t want to arrive at our dream destination and go right to sleep. I had to book Sunday night so we could get in to the hotel first thing on Monday morning, as well as Monday night, so we could stay in our pod past checkout.

At the Sofitel we will stay in a Garden Bungalow for our first 2 nights and an Overwater Bungalow for the last 5. The day after we arrive we will go on a food tour of Moorea. Our only other plans are to snorkel and read and eat and not have to scoop cat poop and clean up cat vomit three to four times a day (Our fosters and our own cats have been suffering from some gastrointestinal problems.)

So could be kind of boring to read about, but I’m sure we’ll have some adventures to report.

We are getting ready for a big trip to Europe, coming up in about a month, and we are VERY excited.  As we were planning this trip I got it into my head that I didn’t want to fly both ways.  I wanted to either go or come back on a cruise ship.  This was definitely possible – in fact we could have gotten there both ways on a ship for less than the cost of Premium Economy air if we could afford to take 2 months off.  But alas, we’re not retired yet.

Most transatlantic flights are more expensive one-way than round-trip and this was one of the first barriers in my planning.  We were quite happy with Virgin Atlantic’s Premium Economy but their one-way pricing was prohibitive.  Eventually I found that Norwegian Air had Premium Economy without prohibitive one-way pricing and I figured we could give them a try and could thus afford to come back to the U.S. on Cunard’s Queen Mary.

At this point, I called our travel agent extraordinaire, Sandra.  I should have called her sooner.  She booked us the inside stateroom we requested at a cost of $1238 per person. Because we were using Sandra and her travel agency, Plaza Travel, we also got $200 cruise credit and prepaid gratuities, things we would not have gotten if we had booked directly through Cunard.  But next Sandra asked if we wanted her to arrange air through Cunard, something I had never even thought of.  I said, “Sure, let’s see what they can do.”  Sandra is very patient and went back and forth with me and Cunard with various pricing options, but what we ultimately settled on was Premium Economy on Virgin Atlantic from New York to Heathrow for $782.61 per person.  This is amazing.  The lowest price for the same flight on Virgin Atlantic’s website was over $2200 per person!  Needless to say we booked it.  Once we had the flight and the cruise booked, the price to fly there Premium Economy and come back on the Queen Mary was only about $400 more total than flying Premium Economy both ways.

Now fast forward four months to February.  We had paid for our cruise and air in full when I saw an ad in the New York Times for Cunard’s 175th anniversary.  The prices they were quoting for our cruise were $999 per person for the lowest category stateroom rather than the $1238 per person we had paid.  I sent Sandra an email to ask if she could get us that price.  Even if they took away the gratuities and cruise credit, we would save money.  Sandra emailed back that she would see what she could do and within an hour she called.  “I’m on the phone with Cunard,” she said.  “They’re saying they can’t give you that price because you’ve paid in full, but I told them that’s not fair and they have to do something for you, so they’re offering to upgrade you to a balcony and throw in an additional $100 per person cruise credit.  Would that be okay?”

Would that be okay????  We LOVE a balcony.  We were trying to save $100 or so and instead Sandra got us upgraded to a room with a view that sells for $1598 per person AND we now have $400 of free play money once we get on board.  And Sandra is ALWAYS doing things like that for us.  That’s why we use a travel agent.

Now I will say we don’t use Sandra for everything.  If we want to get the least expensive room at the Motel 6 we don’t waste Sandra’s time.  For most of the rest of this trip we are using hotel points and airline miles to get us to and from Portland and New York and to stay in hotels in New York and London, and I didn’t involve Sandra in any of this.  But when we want to stay somewhere nice, Sandra never fails to make our trip very very special. Thank you, Sandra!