We crossed the International Date Line last night, putting our clocks and watches forward 24 hours and Monday, the 29th January didn’t to exist for us; going to bed on a Sunday night and waking up on a Tuesday morning.  Confusing????  😯   

We spent our Sunday off the island of Niue and the ‘city’ of Alofi.  It has the distinction of being the 2^nd smallest national capital city in terms of population; (the smallest being Ngerulmud, the capital of Palau). 

The first Europeans to sight the island sailed under Captain James Cook in 1774.  Cook made 3 attempts to land, however the inhabitants refused grant permission to do so.  He named the island “Savage Island” because, as legend has it, the natives who “greeted” him were painted in what appeared to be blood. It was in fact colour from a red banana, native to the island.

Alofi lies on the west side of the island and early morning found us rounding the northern coast and then turning towards a small ‘indentation’ towards the tender pier. 

Yes, yet another (and thankfully, only 2 more during our voyage, Port Arthur, Tasmania and Kangaroo Island, Australia).  The ‘bay’ on which Alofi lies affords little protection from the elements, particularly sea-state; once again, we had to adjust to find our ‘sweet spot’ and avoid the swell for the Tender platform.  Not only this, but the swell was affecting our tender-landing area ashore and, soon after arriving, we had to move slightly in an effort to negate that with our hull.

Being a Sunday and the population being very religious, almost everything was closed; no market stalls to greet us and only a few inhabitants willing to drive guests around the island, (for a fee).  Almost all the others were in church.  I wandered ashore, camera in hand, as did K1 and Hazel.  My remit was to get photos of the tender arrangements at the pier; we keep a port file and we also have a Group website to which contributing ships can post their photos, these being used by others for familiarisation.  Alofi is remote and seldom visited by Cruise ships, any information is sort after.

Obviously, being so close to the town, I had to walk up the hill from the pier to the ‘main’ road.  Apart from guests there were few about; the sound of singing from within the church being the only indication anyone lived here. 

At 11:30, the service finished and everyone appeared.

Some enterprising youngsters were out selling coconut milk and lemonade…..

Wildlife consisted of snakes, (apparently near the pier, although I missed them) and ‘Coconut’ crabs, a delicacy and, I’m told, delicious.  One of Karen’s photos…

I write as we head south-west towards New Zealand.  We are in a gale, the first ‘weather’ we have had for almost a month.  We are ‘sandwiched’ between Tropical storm ‘Fehi’ over to our west and another which formed near Rarotonga.  Both are quite a distance away and will not directly affect us, however their influence stretches for hundreds of miles and we are feeling the effects.  We should be out of it by tomorrow evening though.