The Kan Family: July 2010

Friday, July 30, 2010

Video of Eclipse totality

This is a 38-second video taken by Kay soon after totality commenced. It was a few minutes after 8.30am local Tahitian time, the sun was well up but blocked by the moon.

Total Solar Eclipse on July 11, 2010 from Kin-Mun Kan on Vimeo.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Papeete, last day

On our last day, after disembarking, we did the usual tourist thing, like shopping for souvenirs . . .

. . . photograhing the "Hotel de Ville" (Town Hall)

. . . shopping for Tahitian pearls . . .

and watching the local buskers.

We visited the "le roulottes", the open-air food market, had a Chinese meal with baguettes . . .

. . . and watched sadly as the Paul Gauguin sailed off on its next journey without us !

Early the following morning, we were on our way home.

More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/kinmun.kan/PapeeteLastDay#

The eclipse over, the cruise seemed to have lost its zing. There was only one more island to visit before returning to Papeete, that of Moorea.

We got off Paul Gauguin, and visited a small village near the landing pier, but there was not much to see apart from an interesting mural. The rest of the town was some distance away.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the parts of the ship that we had still not visited, like the ship's marina . . . .

. . . enjoyed the view of Moorea, perhaps the prettiest of the islands we had visited . . . .

and of the sunset .

And with the Tahitian cultural show on the last night, our cruise was essentially completed.

Eclipse Day

From Bora Bora, the Paul Gauguin sailed south and travelled all night towards a predetermine location south of Tahiti, on the path of the total solar eclipse to take place the following day, July 11th 2010, 8.30am local date and time.

The following was my description of the event -

“This morning we woke up to some clouds in the sky. We watched nervously as clumps of cloud gathered above us, but with the expert manoeuvring by the ship’s captain, we managed to dodge most of them. At the precise moment an hour and a half before totality, someone yelled out “First contact!” Sure enough, through a variety of filters we saw that a small part of the sun (I carefully chose the word “part” after Arthur Tan’s objection to my usage in my description of last year’s eclipse) had been blocked. The blocked part gradually increased and the intensity of the mid morning sun dropped away. Soon planets appeared; I saw Jupiter, which was otherwise not visible at this time, and others observed Mercury, which I regrettably missed. There were other stars, and some people even ventured but in vain to look for a faint comet near the sun.

We held our breath but watched on as on as a few wisps of cloud wandered past but the crescent sun reappeared. It gradually disappeared into a pointed light source in a darkened sky. With the moon’s faint outline, the juxtaposition for a moment resembled a diamond ring, with a sparkle brighter than any I had ever seen. A cheer of excitement rang out among the watchers and then the diamond ring was gone; at the precise moment, the sun suddenly became a dark disk in the sky but its corona brightly visible that we could safely watch with our naked eyes. The corona that stretched out several diameters of the dark disc was sufficient to throw faint light into the sky leaving the surrounding a beautiful deep blue,

We marvelled at the dark totality for a full 4 minutes before once again the sun reappeared to display another momentary diamond ring. We returned to our filtered viewing of the sun’s reappearance, but the show was largely over.”

More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/kinmun.kan/EclipseDay#

Bora Bora

We arrived at Bora Bora in the evening and were just in time to view the Heiva festival dances in the town centre.

We joined a half-day tour of the island on "Le Truck", a round trip on the island's only road .

We stopped to view the white sandy beaches and clear blue waters . . .

. . . visited the famous Bloody Mary Bar and Restaurant . . .

. . . and of course had photos of the mountain.

More photos of Bora Bora at http://picasaweb.google.com/kinmun.kan/BoraBora?authkey=Gv1sRgCIbtr6ewyZDBnwE#

Motu at Taha'a

At Taha'a we spent most of a day on a motu.

We were brought there by a tender and the shallowness of the water required a wet landing.

We enjoyed the day in the shade of coconut palms . . .

. . . without much to do but eat and enjoyed the scenery (well, we are not the snorkelling type).

More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/kinmun.kan/TahaA#

Raiatea

Our first stop on sailing from Papeete was the island of Raiatea. Like the other islands, it has a tall mountain core, a narrow strip of coastal land and a surrounding coral atoll interspersed with small islets or motu.