6:30am came early, but we had to meet our tour group of 7 at the gangplank at 8am. With the group assembled, we walked out of this container port and met our contact who took us to our van. There we waited for over 1/2 hour as the tour company tried to put others with our group. We had paid for an exclusive private tour and stuck to our arrangement. Our tour guide eventually became a tour guide for a single person and we were given Michael who could speak a little English but whose father had been a Coast Watcher in WWII.
We visited Bloody Ridge, Alligator Creek, the mouth of Alligator Creek, Red Beach, the American Memorial, Henderson Field (now the international airport), the Memorial Garden next to the Airport, the original control tower built by the Seabees, a former Marine Hospital on the grounds of a Catholic boarding school, and a small museum at Betikama Adventist College. At the Adventist college there was a small outdoor and indoor museum of WWII memorabilia including a partial fuselage including engine of a P-39 Air Cobra plus a dive bomber they didn't know the model # of. Several in our group thought it to be a TBF Avenger, but I knew it wasn't that. Then I realized it was a Dauntless DB5 dive bomber and passed that information on to the docent. In the back of the museum they had an American 6 cylinder bulldozer made in August 1942 with the brand name Cletrac made by the Cleveland Tractor Company. There was another one in the field next to the first. They also had a piece of nose art from a B-24 (Goldie) which is submerged off the island. It was a pleasant little stop.
We drove back to town and 3 of us got off at the Central Market to look around and walk back to the ship. The Central Market was packed with primarily all types of produce with a few handicrafts and clothing. There wasn't much if any meat for sale. The walk back was hot and crossing the crowded streets was an interesting challenge. At the port, there was a building materials business called Bowmans and that required a selfie. There were still local vendors selling their wares alongside the ship and we found a beautiful block print postcard being sold by the artist, so we bought it for our stateroom door collection.
Back on board it was once again shower time to cool off and get rid of the perspiration. Since we didn't have lunch we ordered food from the Dive-In as it was the only thing open. This eliminated the need for dinner! We watched the sail away and the Maasdam steamed away from the port and out into Iron Bottom Sound (so named for all of the ships that were sunk there during the war. A passenger, Dan, organized a small remembrance ceremony on Deck 11. There were more sailors killed in Iron Bottom Sound than soldiers on land in the battle of Guadalcanal.
Our evening entertainment was a variety show with our pianist, Patrick Roberts, and violinist, Stephen Kane. Both were excellent! John Shively, our Battle historian, told a travel story about visiting a Russian/Japanese battle site in Mongolia where the Japanese were decisively defeated. He entertained a number of questions. And we wrapped up our day at the 10:30pm feeding.
Tomorrow is the first of two sea days before we reach New Caledonia. Stay tuned.
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