Well, it's my birthday, and here I am in Tahiti. It is hot and humid, and the captain says there is a 50% chance of rain, but it wouldn’t dare rain on my birthday, would it?

I will miss Sit and Be Fit because David and I have a tour that starts at 8:00 am, the same time as Sit and Be Fit . It’s kind of funny, because I always thought Sit and Be Fit was for really old, creaky people who can only wave their hands around. Maybe on some ships, but here on the Amsterdam, it’s a real workout, just not as intense as, say, boot camp. Jenna and Austin rotate leading it; Austin is certainly a harder taskmaster than Jenna. There may be no pushups or sit-ups, but there are exercises that come close (like standing up and sitting down 20 times without using your arms – try it). After shadow boxing and marching while sitting in a chair, your biceps and thighs both tell you they are there and being worked.

There were two bands on the pier welcoming us, and several people managed to hand us maps and invitations to various black pearl shops while we went to our bus. Our tour leader was a Tahitian woman who lived in the US for 25 years: 18 years in San Francisco, 3 years somewhere I didn’t hear, and 4 years in Miami. She married an American and had 2 children, a boy and a girl . She came back to Tahiti about 5 years ago with her children; I don’t know if her husband also came or what happened there. It was a nice tour around the island.

Our first stop was at a beach where the surfers on the western side of the island practice. The western side is safer than the eastern side because there is a reef there protecting the shore and lagoon. We all took pictures of the surfers and enjoyed the black sand beach, hot though it was.

Our next stop was at the restaurant for the Paul Gauguin Museum, where they gave us a refreshing drink (choice of orange juice, guava juice, or the local Tahitian beer brand Hanino). I chose the guava juice and David tried the beer. He said it was very good. The museum was on the seashore, and had several pens containing fish; presumably the fish is very fresh for dinner there. The water is so clear you could see the fish easily. There were two kinds: big black ones, and smaller blue, green and yellow ones . The grounds of the restaurant were beautiful, with palm trees and flowers and a pool with one large koi and a lot of smaller gray fish with black specks on them. I don’t know what kind any of the fish but the koi was.

After the restaurant, back into the bus to continue around the island (there is basically one road around Tahiti, with smaller secondary roads that go into the hills and require 4-wheel drive). Our next stop was at a site with several water gardens in addition to a waterfall and regular flower gardens. I got some rather nice flower pictures there – there were several kinds of flowers that were new to me. I would have liked to spend longer, but there is a lot of traffic on Tahiti, and our tour was only a half day tour, so we had to move on.

The next stop was really pretty interesting. It was to view a waterfall that the guide referred to as her grandmother’s. All the land leading to it belonged to various members of her family, and she showed us her house . The actual waterfall seemed to be in a public park, so we are not sure whether the grandmother actually owned the waterfall, or just owned all the land leading up to it. The guide kept saying that if you owned land on the inland side of the highway, you owned it all the way to the other side of the mountain. I’m not sure how that would work out if two different families owned land directly opposite each other, but she did not explain. She did say that if the land was not used (either for a house or for commercial crops) for 50 years, the state would take it and there was no way to get it back. Apparently this can happen if the family gets in a big fight over division of the land so that no one can use it.

But I digress. The waterfall, whoever it belongs to, is certainly one of the most spectacular waterfalls I have ever seen. Look at the picture and see if you agree. It does not beat Niagara Falls or Victoria Falls, but it is very beautiful. Well worth the walk to get there .

After the waterfall, we stopped at a blowhole. It was nice, but I agree with David that it did not live up to its advance billing. If it was a Billy Goat Gruff, it would be the middle brother. Still, it was fun trying to time when it would blow to get an effective picture; after a while I realized that it made a noise just before the water rushed back out and up into the air, and managed to get two fairly nice pictures.

After we got back to Papeete, we went back on the ship and had lunch and a beer. I left David on the Lido Deck finishing his beer and went back into town. I visited the Open Market and bought some pareos, then found a store where I bought a couple of Tahitian shirts for David. I walked around until I found and bought some postcards, and returned to the ship.

We decided to finesse the birthday fuss at dinner by having my birthday dinner in the Pinnacle Grill . It worked – no mention of birthdays was made. We were looking at the large picture beside our table, and trying to figure out what it was supposed to be – it was full of anachronisms and impossibilities. David said something (I forget what) and I replied that it reminded me of Malta. David was trying to read the plate that gave its name and other details, but couldn’t. One of the girls serving us noticed this, and started talking to us about it. She said it was called "Tango", but she couldn’t understand why, because although there were two couples doing the tango, they were not the most prominent objects in the painting – an artist who was dressed in Renaissance style was. We started discussing the painting, and she said her supervisor had told her the artist painted all the pictures in the Pinnacle Grill for the ship and said he made them surreal. The more we looked around, the more obvious it was that they were all surreal – not obviously surreal, like Dali, but subtly. One of the pictures was of a castle garden with a bull in the middle of it . Another had fish swimming through the air about two feet off the ground (it was called “Flying Fish”). In the picture next to us, there was also a dog listening at a Victrola (remember “His Master’s Voice”?). It was really entertaining trying to explain that to a young (20-something) Indonesian girl. We had to get into the concept of music before iPods or even tapes or CDs, recorded on cylinders, then discs. I think she thought we were pulling her leg at first when we told her that thing with the horn was for playing music, but then she decided to believe us and started asking questions to get more details. She came back later and asked me to write it down for her so she wouldn’t forget.

We had a wonderful meal, and went back to the cabin to wait for the show, but decided we didn’t really care whether we saw the show or not; we were completely tired and went to bed (after I took a few pictures of our sail away from Tahiti with the lights of Papeete in the background).