The Joy of Planning a French Polynesia Cruise in Which More than 3/4 of Tours are Sold Out

THE VILLAGES, Florida – My blog is two weeks old, so I figure it’s time for my first rant – a part of lucas.travel I’m calling “Cranky Nomad.”

These type of posts will be meant to illustrate the tribulations of life exploring the world without a fixed home – a place for me to vent; to share the less-glamorous aspects of my quest to visit all 234 countries, inhabited territories, and de-facto nations; and hopefully to do so in a semi-satirical way that makes me remember what I’m upset about is pretty small potatoes (i.e. #firstworldproblems).

Today I’m infuriated at Oceania Cruises and annoyed at the difficulties of finding an affordable rental car on a remote tropical island.

Being a global nomad sounds to most like a wonderful lifestyle. Most of the time, it is: new places, adventures, people, cultures, food, scenery, etc. It’s why I’m doing it for a couple years (currently 1 year 12 days in since moving out of my Washington apartment in January 2018).

But there’s also a lot of aggravations, annoyances, hard work, and exhaustion – just like in “normal” life. As I document my experiences, I want to highlight not just the wonderful but also the horrendous and the irritating.

Today I hit my first breaking point getting ready for the first foreign trip of 2019: Mom and I depart Feb. 4 – the day before my 42nd birthday — for three weeks in French Polynesia, United Airlines’ newest foreign destination and a territory I have yet to visit. I’m super excited about the trip. We are going to spend four full days on Tahiti Island, then take a 12-night cruise to seven other islands in the enormous expanse of the South Pacific Ocean that makes up French Polynesia. We’ll have two more days on Tahiti before returning to the United States.

With departure six days away, I’m now into the always-stressful zone of One Week Before Blast Off. I’ve spent the majority of my time the last 10 days since returning to Florida from my first domestic trip of the year (to Philadelphia and Washington) slowly working through my Trip Planning Checklist. Over the course of traveling the world for my soon-to-be 24 years of adulthood, I have created and constantly revised this checklist, which is broken down into numerous tasks to be done each week within two months of a trip to plan and prepare.

Being constantly on the go and a natural procrastinator, however, most times the majority of these chores don’t get accomplished until a week or two before departure – and sometimes not until I am actually on the trip. Winging it is fine sometimes. But I am innately a planner, preferring more times than not to have things arranged before I fly away.

77% of Excursions Not Available!

And this brings us to what literally had me stepping outside to scream into the dark night a few hours ago: After spending countless hours during the last few weeks reading about all the shore excursions offered on our Oceania Marina 12-night French Polynesia cruise; highlighting ones of interest to Mom and I; creating a spreadsheet listing these tours, times offered, duration, and costs; and then narrowing down these options to a short list, I went to Ocean’s website to check that they’re still on offer. And I was absolutely dismayed to find the majority of excursion times listed as “This excursion is closed or sold out.”

It felt like crashing into a brick wall. Are you kidding me?! I’ve been on 19 cruises with 11 cruiselines. I have never seen anything like this. How in the hell are most of the tours booked full two weeks prior to our voyage?

This bad news came a couple hours after the first aggravation today: Yesterday I researched Tahiti car rentals for the four days Mom and I have before our cruise leaves Feb. 12. There’s only three big chains there: Hertz, Avis, and Europcar. Their prices are exorbitant. (And I have a massive problem with Hertz that I will leave for a future “Cranky Nomad” post.)

So then I looked at local rental agencies. Their prices are also sky-high. I found the best rate with Tahiti Easy Car, but stopped short of booking because the form’s drop-down menu for pick-up time at PPT airport went from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Our United flight doesn’t arrive until 8:40, so we need to get our vehicle about 9:30. I e-mailed Tahiti Easy Car and got a reply today that they can have a vehicle waiting for us at the time, but they don’t have any automatic sedans left, only SUVs – and the price for an SUV is more than $100 per day. Hell no! Now I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out which agency to deal with next.

Running into these major headaches trying to set up the rental car and shore excursions, I fired off an angry e-mail (three actually) to my travel agent/friend, Mike, asking him to find out from Oceania what the situation is. One does not book a cruise to find out very few of the excursions offered in the beautiful brochure we were mailed aren’t actually available. It almost makes me want to demand a refund and cancel the whole trip. Who wants to go on a cruise to all these exotic islands only to have no tours arranged to explore them?! (Traveling with Mom makes taking ship excursions more important than when I travel solo or with friends who are more adventuresome in self-exploring or lining up independent guides.)

Of the 62 excursion times on my current spreadsheet, I found online that 48 aren’t available. That’s 77%. Many cruises I have not booked any excursions in advance, leaving that task to once I’m aboard the ship. I certainly have never encountered anything like this when trying to reserve tours ahead of time.

Heading outside to let out a big scream – after throwing my pen against the wall – I then took a short walk. After coming back inside, I had to set aside the Trip Planning Checklist for a couple hours to watch some videos and eat a snack. I fully expected I’d have all these excursions booked today. This was my #1 priority for this day; and I’ve smashed into this brick wall. Now I have to wait for Mike to contact Oceania and find out what is happening, and try to refocus on other planning tasks I need to take care of in the meantime.

Ranting in this first “Cranky Nomad” post has helped calm me down – and I am going to head out for a jog soon to further reduce the temperature of my boiling blood. With only six days until departure, I want to get these big planning tasks completed so I can deal with other crap that needs to be taken care of before I leave the country. And then, of course, start figuring out what to pack for another three weeks on the move.

Ah, the pains of preparing for pleasure…

UPDATE 2-1-19: I called Oceania Cruises and was able to waitlist for four of the 10 excursions Mom and I want to do that are sold out. But we could not waitlist for the other six tours we desire.

The agent couldn’t really explain why that’s the case, but said to touch base with the Destination Services desk once we get on board to let them know all the tours we want to do and couldn’t be waitlisted for. He said they will clear people from the waitlist if they are able to add another group and/or if prebooked guests cancel.

Doesn’t make any sense to me why they would take a waitlist for some tours but not others. Mystifying. But anyway that’s done. We’ll see what happens.