Saturday Nov 17

Well I haven’t written much lately so I need to catch you up.  We did see the eclipse on the 14^th of Nov.  It was questionable however whether we would.  The captain had a preordained spot that he was going to and and disregarded the fact that we had a cloudless sky just moments away.  When he finally decided to speed up and get in the clear we had missed half the the eclipse was already underway and it was just fortunate that we hit a sun size hole along the way.  We did make it to the clearing and were able to see the last phases of the eclipse going out of totality.  The night before the eclipse Judy and I slept on the deck.  The sky was beautiful.  The clouds went in and out but we got a wonderful view of them when they were out of the clouds.  We saw Orion, Southern Cross, Magellanic clouds, Pleides, Faux cross and many more.  We were anxious for the eclipse so could not sleep except for the occasional nod off.  Wish I could send pictures but the ship internet is so slow.

We had two days at sea and then we came to our port in Liffou, Easso. This is a small tropical island with an indigenous population of Melanesians.  We were surprised to have a group of singers come out to do some traditional songs in the square.  I bought a swim cover in the market.  Bob and I went to see two churches on the island, both catholic.  The one was very old and a bit run down but very much in the tradition of European churches.  There was a mix of native and European culture in the church.  The cross was made from logs which had been carved with Polynesian heads on it.  The base of the altar appeared to be a native sculpture.  I will have to include pictures of that also when able to get better internet. 

Today we will be visiting another island in New Caledonia.  It will be a beach day.  The island have a French influence since the early settlers were French prisoners.