Saturday, July 18, 2009

US city afloat - a tour of the navy ship

Today all of us Peace Corps volunteers here had the opportunity to tour the US navy ship that's floating about 3 miles off our coast here in Ha'apai, it's here on the pacific partnership tour giving aid to different countries in the south pacific. It's considered US territory once you're on the ship, so for just a little while today we were back home! It's basically a floating city, I think about 3 square miles, with lots of different decks, 6 or 8 I think. And 2 helicopters on board, lots of eating areas, dorm type rooms, and a store where we stocked up on tons of really good american food - cheddar and feta cheese, ranch dressing, corn chips and salsa, beef jerky, little debbie cakes and more. It's funny we actually had some American cash here, just in case an American store happened to float up to our little island! We also got to tour the main control room and engine room which was really cool to see, it was a huge ship!! They even had drinking fountains on board, which we took advantage of, we haven't seen that in a long time here. They also had American beer, stored in their special weapons room since it wasn't being used on this tour. It was a great day, we're really happy the navy let us take a tour of the ship.

1 comment:

Allotment Widow said...

Again memories of doing something similar on a british ship.....although technically cheddar is English and feta is Greek.....................Fab blog!