A Transpacific Cruise from Vancouver to Auckland, part 1.

A 4-week peregrination from Canada to New Zealand.

Part 1: Vancouver to Honolulu.

It’s hard to say why, but long ship voyages have always been something I dreamed of. I remember getting a book about traveling on cargo ships across the world for Christmas one year, and reading it as if my life depended on it.

The streets in the neighborhood I grew up in, in France, were named after famous French seafarers, from Dumont d’Urville to Surcouf to Amiral de Tourville. I remember looking up their names in the encyclopedia (Internet didn’t exist back then) and dreaming about their lives at sea. It seemed like I was primed for exploration at a young age.

The one name that really caught my eye was Samuel Champlain. On the street plate at each end of the small suburban street bearing his name was written what I assumed to be his most famous achievement: fondateur de Québec (“founded Quebec City”). It was incredible for me, as a kid, to imagine this intrepid sailor crossing the Atlantic several times and establishing a French outpost that would end up being part of Canada. I am pretty sure these memories shaped my longing for travel, especially at sea.

 I felt a weird, almost childish joy as I got onboard.

Fast forward a few decades, on a cruise from Boston to Montréal: as we were docked in Quebec City, a thought formed in my head that perhaps more ambitious cruise itineraries were needed. The ghost of Samuel Champlain might have been trying to send me a message. In any case, I stumbled upon a reasonably priced 4-week cruise crossing the Pacific, from Vancouver to Auckland, which I booked a few days later.

Long cruises like these are not typical. In the industry, they are known as “repositioning voyages”. In other words, this specific ship was based on Alaska for the Northern hemisphere summer, Alaska’s high season, and would reposition to Australia for the Southern hemisphere summer. These trips aren’t always top of mind for travelers, and many can’t really take that much vacation at once. As a result, they end up being much cheaper on a per-day basis than your average 7-day Caribbean cruise.

This was great for me, because I looked at it as the trip of a lifetime. Think about it. From Vancouver, we’d head down the Pacific coast all the way to San Diego, then head straight to Hawaii, stopping on the Big Island and Oahu, then south to Tahiti, west to Fiji and then finally south again to New Zealand. It would amount to about ten thousand miles at sea and it sounded so exciting. I would get on another repositioning cruise the next year, in 2023, sailing from Miami to Barcelona on Virgin Voyages.

I learned after the fact that the initial itinerary included a stop in Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, which was canceled because the island hadn’t updated its Covid protocols to welcome back cruise ships yet. It would have been a chance to work on that other challenge of mine: visiting all the US National Parks. The American Samoa National Park is one of the hardest to get to among the 63 official ones.

People were definitely not stressed about being stressed.

 A couple of months later, here I was, in Vancouver, ready to board a cruise ship for what would be a first in many ways: my longest cruise, my first time in French Polynesia, Fiji and New Zealand and the first time crossing the international date line on a ship. It would also be the first time I would be so far isolated from the rest of the world for so long.

Looking at the ship moored along the pier, I remembered my youth, and how I had dreamed of one day, traveling the seven seas to the most remote locations. Granted, this trip would be far more luxurious than what the Surcoufs of the world would have endured a few centuries ago, and my goals were completely pacific, but the spirit was there, and I felt a weird, almost childish joy as I got onboard.

My ship, the Grand Princess, had been built in 1998 and wasn’t one of the most recent vessels from the line, but was still in very good shape, thanks to a full-on refurb in 2019. My first ever cruise, to Alaska a few months before, had been on a slightly bigger and newer ship, the Royal Princess, out of the same port of Vancouver. Thus, the surroundings felt familiar and the check-in process smooth. Princess Cruises market themselves as a premium cruise line, along the likes of Celebrity Cruises, a step above the more mainstream Carnival or Royal Caribbean lines. In fairness to them, the Grand did feel premium, in a slightly outdated, Sheraton hotel kind of way (think neutral hues, beige on beige sort of color palette, and thick wood furniture).

I was a little apprehensive about the crowd. As a premium line, the Princess clientele would skew older than others and I feared the only people able to take four weeks off to get on such a trip would be way past retirement age. As a walked the top decks before our departure, I did note the average age was indeed higher than my previous cruises, but with it came a sense of quiet happiness.

I had some of the quietest nights of my life in my little inside cabin.

I realized people were here to relax, were happy or even joyful about it. It’s one thing to go on a 7-day cruise to Mexico and try to cram as much as possible to make the most of one’s vacation. Here, however, the vibe was somewhat different. We would be on this ship for four weeks, sailing nonstop for days (five days straight between Los Angeles and Hawaii, six days between Hawaii and Tahiti, and five again between Tahiti and Fiji). There would be time to rest, read, do nothing. People were definitely not stressed about being stressed.

It was obvious that our ship wasn’t full, and I quickly wondered if that would be the case for the entire voyage. Upon speaking to some of my ship mates, I realized many had booked the first part of the trip, a 7-day itinerary down the Pacific coast from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and would leave us before we would start crossing the ocean towards Hawaii. I remembered this cruise was marketed as several different trips. One could get on in Vancouver and get off in Auckland, as I was doing, others could get on in LA and get off in Sydney, etc. I had picked my itinerary because it was the cheapest combination, but people looking for a pure Pacific crossing could achieve the same thing from LA. I wondered how much fuller the ship would leave the City of Angels.

The first few days of the cruise were uneventful. The weather wasn’t top-deck friendly to start with. Fall starts early in the upper Pacific Northwest, and coat and scarf were de rigueur during our first three days at sea. Our first stop was Astoria, Oregon. Two days later, we crossed the Golden Gate bridge and arrived in the San Francisco bay as the sun was peeking over the horizon. It was quite a sight to see the bridge from afar, and silently glide under it as the city was waking up. I had flown and driven into San Francisco a few times, but it was my first time coming in by sea, and seeing the city skyline come to life after passing the bridge was magical.

I almost lived these first few days at sea as a rehearsal. This week along the West coast was enjoyable, and the stops in Astoria, San Francisco, San Diego and LA were nice enough, but for me the real voyage would start in Los Angeles. There was magic to this idea of crossing Earth’s biggest body of water and traveling to some of the most remote places in the world, imagining how the first European explorers did the same thing (for historical accuracy let’s remember they weren’t the first to explore the waters of the Pacific in search of new land, as Pacific islanders had done the same a few centuries before them).

 I was initially worried about not seeing land for five entire days.

I had brought along about twenty books. I am an avid reader, and although I had purchased the ship’s pricey internet package to stay connected, I feared it might let me down in the middle of the Pacific. I started with a few crime novels to get into vacation mode, enjoying the promenade deck when the wind was cooperating.

For this trip, I had picked an inside cabin because it was the cheapest cabin, and by far. I never really considered a balcony cabin, although I had chosen one for my Alaska cruise. While I enjoyed the view from my cabin then, I realized I could definitely have done without it. Having no view gave me an incentive to get out of my space more and take in the 360° views from the upper decks. After one night in my inside cabin on the Transpacific voyage, I realized how amazing it was to sleep in a pitch-black cabin, without sunlight coming through to wake me up early. I had some of the best nights of my life in that little inside cabin of mine!

We docked in Los Angeles (or technically, in San Pedro), on October 3. I stepped out of the ship and had a nice walk all the way to the beach and back. I could have rented a car to drive around, maybe even get to LA proper, but I knew the city, and I loved the idea of wandering around, past the port, to check out an area I wasn’t really familiar with.

When I got back on the ship, I realized the voyage would be starting now. The boat was actually full of people, and the atmosphere was very different. While some of the guests from the first week had stayed on, my wild guess is that more than three-quarters of the ship’s population was brand new. You could feel the electricity in the air and see the excitement on people’s faces. A transpacific crossing! 4 weeks on the ocean!

 When I got back on the ship in LA, I realized the voyage would be starting now.

Upon further research, it turned out that the majority of cruisers on the Grand Princess had indeed booked the 4-week trip from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. I would be one of the few passengers to actually leave the boat in Auckland, a week before everyone got off in Sydney. As a result, the departure from San Pedro really felt like the beginning of a grand voyage. The sail away party (a tradition in the cruise world) happened as we were leaving port, sailing towards Hawaii, and therefore right into the sunset. We did have a sail away party back in Vancouver a week before, but the temperatures were chilly… and the crowd not as into it as this one. It was really fun to watch.

While the guests were new, the vibe was definitely similar. I was surrounded by retired couples, who were avid cruisers and mostly American. There were still a few people around my age on board, and about a dozen of younger folks, either traveling with family, or just experiencing the trip of a lifetime.

This was my third cruise, and I was initially worried about not seeing land for 5 entire days. We sailed from Los Angeles on Monday night, and we were due to arrive in Hilo, Hawaii on Saturday morning. Once on the ship, seeing the sunset ahead of me, that fear went away. I didn’t miss the idea of a 6-hour flight to get to Hawaii. I was very happy to be stuck at sea.

I quickly realized there was a rhythm to the ship’s life. People would get up relatively early and head to the top decks to claim a seat near the pool. By 10am, the lido deck was bustling with activity and it could be hard to find a place to lie down and relax. In the morning, it was mainly chill, with people reading books or just lounging. After lunch, the decks were livelier and my fellow travelers would be drinking or chatting. The music was a little louder. Come 4pm and the top decks would empty little by little. The ship’s social life would move to other floors: a lot of people enjoy dining early, and the ship’s dining rooms would start service at 5pm. After that, the crowd would enjoy the bars, or the entertainment in some of the ship’s biggest venues. By 9pm, it was eerily quiet, and very few cruisers would be around.

 Cruise ship time elapses very differently.

This worked very well for me. I was happy to live slightly off schedule. I would wake up late, grab a nice breakfast from the buffet, get some steps by walking around the ship on the promenade deck (one of the only decks that allows walking around the ship from stern to bow), enjoy a hot chocolate with a book on a lounge chair on that same deck, with very few other people around, and then retreat back to my cabin to read more or watch a TV show on my computer, from the comfort of my bed. After a late buffet lunch, I would walk to the upper decks around 3pm, when space was no longer at a premium, and enjoy them until sunset as I watched them empty. By 6pm, when everyone was at dinner or being entertained on the lower decks, I would hit the gym, now much quieter than in the morning, and grab dinner right after, around 8pm, in a semi-deserted buffet lounge that was so quiet you could hear the people playing cards ten tables away.

Cruise ship time elapses very differently than regular time. There is no schedule to follow if you don’t want to, when you’re sailing day after day, with no planned stop in a port. The buffet, where I would end up eating most of the time, whether breakfast, lunch or dinner, was open from 6am to 10pm, so there was no need to plan around meals. My interior cabin was pitch black whenever I turned the lights off, so I could sleep whenever I wanted. If I ever got bored, I sure could join a table tennis tournament, watch a show in the ship’s theater, or go to the gym, but there was no pressure, and the hours just came and went as we slowly sailed west to the Hawaiian Islands. I felt incredibly relaxed.

I make it sound as if I was living my cruise life as a recluse. That’s not actually true. I met a few people along the way, mostly because cruise passengers are creatures of habit, and over such a long voyage, I would often see the same people on the promenade deck in the morning or at the gym at night. I never felt like I was missing human interaction – it was nice to know I could have dinner or attend a show with people. I simply enjoyed being with myself in the middle of nowhere. It was an incredible feeling.

It's really fun to wake up and check the ship’s position on your phone. After two days at sea, you notice you haven’t even reached the midpoint of the first leg, and you realize that’s really what slow travel is. I was happy with my books, the somewhat-OK internet and whatever routine I felt like following on the day.

I was very happy to be stuck at sea.

Arriving on the Big Island was a little anti-climactic. If you have ever flown into Kona, the island’s main airport, you’ll know that before aligning with the runway, aircraft make a sharp left turn above the northern part of the island and the view from above is breathtaking. The ship docked on the other side of the island, near Hilo, far away from the town. The mountains, which you overfly going to Kona, felt far away and slightly underwhelming. I have to admit I didn’t wake up early enough to watch our arrival into Hilo bay, which probably didn’t help.

I had never been to this part of the Big Island, and I was excited about getting off the ship to discover it. What I enjoyed about Hilo, beyond the obvious wonders of nature all-around town, was how relatively untouristy the town was. Yes, there were tourist shops here and there, but this part of the island is wetter and the beaches are more rocky than sandy, so most tourists prefer to stay over on Kohala bay, or drive to visit the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. As a result, Hilo felt much more authentically Hawaiian and less of a fancy resort town. Obviously, with three thousand travelers getting off the ship, I am not saying it felt remote and isolated. Nevertheless, the area looked more lived in than passed by, and I really enjoyed that.

Our second stop on the actual transpacific crossing was in Honolulu, on Oahu island. This time, I did get up early to enjoy an incredible arrival into port. The sun was barely getting up over the horizon when we glided into the port of Honolulu next to a Royal Caribbean ship. It felt like another world, and reminded me a little bit of a small Hong Kong, with tall mountains right in front of us, towering over gleaming high-rises to the east, and suburban sprawl, going up the mountains, to the west.

I had been to Oahu before so I didn’t feel like doing any of the classic touristy things (visiting Pearl Harbor or strolling down Kalākaua avenue in Waikiki). Instead, I rented a car and drove around the island, stopping at any beach or viewpoint that felt worthy (and there were many). I was exhausted by the time I got back on the ship.

The next leg of the cruise would bring us from Hawaii down to French Polynesia. Follow the story here.

Images: the Grand Princess docked in Vancouver on the day of departure, the Grand Princess’ aft pool right after sunset, Alcatraz island in the San Francisco bay at dawn, the Grand Princess docked in San Francisco from Fort Mason hill, Pacific sunset from the promenade deck, another Pacific sunset, arriving into Honolulu at dawn, Waikiki and Diamond head as seen from the Tantalus lookout on Oahu.

All images are mine.