My Fitbit thinks Toronto time, six hours behind where I am, and I have no idea how to change it. I was hoping my app would talk to Fitbit and get it straightened out but that hasn’t happened.  So in addition to my body’s jet lag I   have to cope with Fitbit’s laggard ways. 

I slept, crashed actually, but I don’t know when, on Monday night after a 30-hur day, 16 spent I flying.  The ship sailed at 5 to position us for the first excursion. We left a wake-up call but it didn’t happen   My first awareness of time and my body arrived with June’s gentle announcement:

“It’s 5 to 7, Bettyjane.”

I haven’t introduced you to my travel buddy for this trip, June, whom I met on the Big Trip last year. When she found out that I had booked a cruise as a single to Easter Island she asked if she could join me. Yes, indeed! We have a balcony and a butler, thanks to being a twosome. She’s not a sight-unseen roommate. won in a lottery.  We had time to get to know each other on board the Insignia and we have corresponded since we parted and I have benefitted by her (American) travel agent.  She is younger than I but we share the same mobility issues, for different reasons, so our capacity and strength for excursions are limited and our tolerance of each other’s weaknesses very sympathetic.

I began tired and June was too, not quite as jet-lagged (about 3 hours) but equally wiped.  We had to skip breakfast so as not to miss the tender going ashore in time to catch a boat. We couldn’t take food with us, except inside us.  I grabbed a banana and tossed the skin into a bin as I flashed my key-card, the passport to everything on and off the ship. Weariness and hunger, jet lag and disorientation – all, all fell away as I experienced one of the most magical boat-rides in my life.  We went dolphin- gazing.

Also gawping and gawking.   Spinner dolphins,.  We watched groups of them swimming in formation for fun (synchronized swimming was inspired by them); doing back flips and somersaults and spinning: straight up out of the water and literally spinning, up to 7 or 8 twists in the air, like a ballet dancer doing jetés but without a leg in the air.  Poetry in motion.  I f I were a poet like Gerard Manley Hopkins, I could describe what I saw and what I felt.  Awe. Joy. Glee. Gratitude.

About the size and weight of an adult male human, playful and promiscuous, a spinner dolphin is among the smallest of the dolphin family. Everything I know bout dolphins I learned on Tuesday from Dr. Michael Poole, our laid-back, barefoot guide who has spent over 30 years.

an attempt

I'm trying to send this from the ship. 

First we had to get an account and then get online and then...lots to figure out.  So it's the day after the day after and 5d Fitbit still doesn't know what time it is. The clock by my bed says 5 (a.m.)  so it's Wednesday, April 13 and seconds are ticking.  I'll send this catchup piece and then Ill write about dolphins.  They kept the appointment and it was dazzling.

Here I am, here you are, far away.  Yesterday was travel day, Moving-Through-Time-and-Space Day, and it was a doozy.  I keep thinking of our ancestors, just one or two generations before us, the latest of them, who left their homeland for a new world they knew almost nothing about and with the certain knowledge that they would never be reunited with their family or friends.  It must have been an emotional assault, not to mention the relentless physical assault of weeks and months of sea travel.  Yesterday was (seemingly) endless, also relentless, but it was also luxurious and we had attendants who did their best to look after us, supplying food and drink, blankets and pillows, plus trivial entertainment to take our minds off the …not suffering but boredom.  And totally disorienting.  Even my Fitbit is out of sync so imagine how my body is. The two of us don’t know what time it is.

Hey, but we are happy. I had a wheelchair at every launching or landing pad so I was driven past the line-ups to special checkpoints. My wounded leg, is almost healed, still scabbed and swollen but seldom painful, provided I don’t walk or stand too much. My Community Care nurse recommended compressions stockings and they made the hours sitting   in the plane quite bearable, plus I did a few stretching things, enough to fool my Fitbit into thinking I had climbed some stairs.  So my meals were a bi out of sync and my hours were longer with more of them, but I was okay. This is what travel is these days.  When you look down at the Pacific Ocean beneath the plane, and the vastness of it, you wonder at our arrogance in thinking we can span it in a few hors instead of several months. Not only think but also do. 

The arrangements made for transferring a planeload of us from the terminal at Pape'ete to the ship (the Marina) in the harbour were  handled smoothly by the cruise people, as were the check-in arrangements.  Finally, I was in the cabin, my home for the next 18 days and re-united with the friend I made on the last cruise and with whom I signed up for this one.  We had wine and talked and when I fell into bed without unpacking or blogging, I was OUT of it.  Till now.

We are at sea. I think we sailed about 5 a.m. and we are due to arrive at Moorea  Island (pronounced Moe-oh-ray,) in French Polynesia, by 8a.m.  We have a date with dolphins though the dolphins don’t know it and may not show up. The weather is warm: high of 85 Fahrenheit (29C) and damp (thunderstorm coming).  When I left Toronto the snow of the night before had given way first to freezing rain and then by the time I was on my way to the airport to rain and a temperature above freezing.  It was 30C when we landed in Tahiti.  Wow. the wonders of modern travel!

Speaking of which, I am hungry. Time and weather may change but my body knows when it wants food. I wish I knew what time it is here and now.