The alarm goes off at 6:30am but I ignore it for 20 minutes. Time to get up, have a light breakfast and prepare to disembark the ship for Fanning Island. Far off the beaten path and almost 1000 miles south of Hawaii, Fanning Island is a remote, beautiful hideaway with just over 1,300 inhabitants. Locals call it "Tabaueran," a Kiribati word meaning "heavenly footprint." The island is an atoll -- a ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a protected lagoon and shaped like...

It's Saturday all over again. This International Date Line makes following the blog difficult. We had no Friday but two Saturday's. Referring to the picture of the International Date Line I posted on October 15 and our cruise schedule to the right, you can see that we pass over it numerous times on our journey. Days disappear, then reappear later. All I know is that when we get home, everything will work out. Tomorrow the clock turns back one more hou...