As the weather was getting incredibly hot, we decided to try starting the day with a swim this morning instead of our usual walk. The pool was still in the shade at 7.45 so there was no danger to my still sunburnt shoulders! Unfortunately lots of other people had the same plan, so the pool (which is only about 10m by 5m in size) was a little crowded, but it was still very nice and I did 40 'lengths'! We even had time to walk a lap after we'd got changed, and then I went to stretch class while JL continued walking.
After breakfast I went to line dancing as normal and JL went to the Crows Nest to watch for the arrival of Pitcairn Island, which we were due to sail past at around 11.00. Sure enough when I came out of line dancing we were just approaching it, so I grabbed my camera and lots of sun lotion and went to meet JL up on deck. We spent the next hour or so doing two complete circles of the island (one in each direction so everyone could see it!), and taking lots of photos. The sun got too hot for me after a while so I went back to the cabin and watched from the balcony instead. To appreciate what we saw you need to know the story of the Mutiny of the Bounty (which I didn't at the star of this cruise!) so I will attempt to summarise here for those of you like me!
In 1789, Captain William Bligh was taking his crew to Tahiti on the HMS Bounty to gather breadfruit trees to take back to the West Indies to supply the slave trade. When the crew arrived on Tahiti, they discovered that they rather liked it (especially the women) and didn't want to leave. The captain obviously made them leave, and from then on relationships between him and the crew were fraught with difficulties. One sailor, called Fletcher Christian, got so fed up with the Captain and his behaviour that he organised a mutiny, and set the captain and 18 of his loyal crew afloat in a 7 metre long boat. The mutineers then sailed the Bounty back to Tahiti where some of them settled, and the rest of them went in search of a place where they would not be found, and decided on Pitcairn Island, as they had discovered it had been plotted in the wrong place on navigational maps, and therefore would be near impossible to find. They burned the Bounty off the island and settled there.
Meanwhile, Captain Bligh had managed to navigate the small boat to Timor in the Dutch East Indies where he caught another ship back to England and reported the mutiny to the authorities. The British government sent the ship HMS Pandora to capture the mutineers, and it succeeded in arresting 14 of them from Tahiti. The ship then ran aground on its way home and 4 prisoners and 31 of the crew died. The remaining crew managed to continue the journey and bring the 10 living prisoners back to England where they were tried and punished.
Not all of the mutineers were captured however, and those who settled on Pitcairn Island continued to live there with their Tahitian wives, and their descendants still live there. The current population of the island is 48 people, but having sailed round the island (which is just 18 square miles in size), this is not likely to increase! The island's hills have incredibly steep sides, plunging down into the choppy waters, with no beaches or obvious landing points, and rocks all around. There is one shed which houses the island's few longboats - these are the only boats which can land on the island. The only 'town' (Adamstown) is on one side of the island, a scattering of houses up and down the hillside. There are a few dirt tracks and the only transport is by quad bike. The remaining land is vegetation or rock.
[JL: I knew what to expect with Easter Island: a few trees and some vegetation near the main settlement, but a barren, hostile land elsewhere, not a pretty Island at all. But it has hundreds of statues on the coast line and by the quarry. And its mystery... But Pitcairn couldn't be more different. It's a strikingly beautiful place, with peaks and deep valleys and trees and plants everywhere. Paradise? Maybe not when you get 4 hours of electricity a day and one supply ship from New Zealand supplies you and the other 47 "prisoners" twice a year with enough food etc to last you six months, and to get on and off the island, you need to be part acrobat, part stuntman... See the photos on Facebook... ]
We went to lunch and had a table by the window so we could watch the second fascinating sail around the island, and then waved goodbye to it as we set off towards our next destination - Tahiti. :-)
I spent the first part of the afternoon chilling out in the room, and then went along to the theatre where they were doing an interview with the Headliners Theatre Company singers and dancers. It was very interesting hearing about their different experiences and some behind the scenes stories about the shows. I then did a circuit training class.
Meanwhile JL went to see Ed Derbyshire talking about comets and asteroids, spent some time by the pool, and then went to table tennis where he got to the final!
We had an early dinner and then went to see the evening's passenger talent show (much to JL's horror!) where we saw lots of brave people singing, dancing, and reciting poems. The best bit was the tap dancing group (you may remember I went to one of the classes but gave up as I had the wrong shoes!) who performed a group dance. After this we went to see the multi-instrumentalist Michael Grant playing a range of pieces on the saxophone, clarinet, and piano, including one song where he literally played his sax and clarinet at the same time for part of it! A great show.
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