Another day, another island in the Pacific. Or maybe the Coral Sea. I need an atlas.

This one had a hill, which isn’t very big. By 9am I’d been over the top of it, photographed a man with a pig lying asleep on him and see the world’s biggest spider web.

Fortunately it didn’t contain the world’s biggest spider. It did have four spiders in it, two of which looked very dead. The other two looked likely culprits, evil menacing beasts. The one nearest to me was a couple of inches long, the sort of spider you take care around. Its friend was larger, much larger, the sort you take care to not be around.

I have photographs. They look evil in the photographs too.

The island has only 4000 inhabitants and they’d all turned up to say hi. I found myself walking behind the line of stalls selling local crafts, women and children relaxing and playing while others tried to make the sales. The children were again fascinated by me, and I exchanged many ‘hello’s.

Almost every path off the beach was labelled. £2 to see the meteorite (which did look meteorish, but I only saw it from a distance), £2 to enter each of three different orchid gardens (i.e. a fence around a naturally growing orchid), £2 to view the grave of king someone unimportant, a lookout over the beach, £2 to see the skulls of the last cavemen.

I saw those. There were skulls but it was a cleft in the cliff, barely large enough for the skulls, a cave only in the imagination. I managed to skip the visitor fee by approaching from behind, by accident, having gone up to the lookout by a different route. The lookout itself was fenced off, £2 to view, payment in the local currency. I had none and wasn’t going to pay anyway; I could get the same view from slightly higher up by going onto the ship’s top deck.

Instead I circled around, found the path I was following led to a tiny fenced off yam garden, cut through an unfenced yam plantation (i.e. around 40 yards of yams instead of random growth) and reached the cliff face with the path going down past the supposed cave. That’s where I saw the spider web, and on it the spiders.

Coming up the other way were other people from the ship. They were interested in the cave, so I helped prepare their expectations, then told them how to find the spiders. “Don’t touch the hand rail” as the web was fastened to it.

I’ll probably find out they’ve been bitten.

The island gets a payment from the cruise line for the visit but each individual inhabitant seems hell bent on earning their own additional money from the passengers. It makes sense, the cost of a coffee in a national chain in the UK would feed a family here for a couple of days, one cruise ship a month can keep the whole island well fed. They have plenty of natural resources but yearn for luxuries like apples. (At dinner last night someone related naughtily taking a couple of apples from the Lido on shore and becoming the personal hero of a family to whom he gave them).

I wasn’t in the mood for constant selling though so by 9am I was back on the ship, 4km already walked, scratches on my legs from the undergrowth. The tender back to the ship had to detour, someone swimming from the beach had reached quite deep water and was crossing the route used by the tenders. The ship’s security team on the pier yelled to her, a local boat stopped to offer her a lift but she just kept going, so everybody changed their routes.

I left them to it, took a shower, had breakfast for the first time all cruise. Back in my cabin I was interrupted by a crew member coming to raid the room’s minibar. I hadn’t used it myself and he retrieved the bottle of Heineken that was in it. Apparently they’ve run out.

In case you’re wondering what’s on a lifeboat:

Heading out to lunch (beef with cabbage) the tall slim attractive officer was in the doorway of the cabin opposite. I’m not sure what she was up to but as I turned the corner to the lifts she entered my cabin. No signs of what she did there and sadly she was gone when I returned.

I spent the afternoon on the deck, a towel covered recliner overlooking the sea, book in one hand and coffee in the other. I wasn’t feeling sociable to called room service for dinner, quesadillas and chilli.

I did force myself to go to the evening’s entertainment, a (different) show from the comedian I’d enjoyed seeing the other night. I’m glad I did, he was better tonight, a succession of one-liners. Some of them were fifty years old but they were delivered well and he kept them coming.

The ship’s travelling faster than planned to tomorrow’s destination so that they can sell more glass bottomed boat tours, getting there earlier and starting them at breakfast time. The first tender ashore is at 6.30am so I’m not expecting to be on it. I do want to get ashore quite early though, before it gets too warm, so my alarm is set for a quarter to six. We’ll be at sea the following day so I could just stay in bed all that day, and might.