COUNTRIES WE VISITED

AUSTRALIA                                    Sydney Melbourne Adelaide Fremantle

MAURITIUS                                     Port Louis

SOUTH AFRICA                              Durban Port Elizabeth Cape Town

NAMIBIA                                          Walvis Bay

CANARY ISLES (SPAIN)               Gran Canaria

MADEIRA (PORTUGAL)               Funchal

ENGLAND                                       Southampton Cambridge Oxford York Liverpool Isle of Man              
                                                           Bath Guernsey Herm Dover

FRANCE                                           Saint Malo Dinan Rennes Paris Thollon-les-Memises Yvoire
                                                           Mont Saint Michel

GERMANY                                      Frankfurt Regensburg Berlin

AUSTRIA                                         Mayrhofen St Anton Vienna

SWITZERLAND                              Lausanne

ITALY                                               Milan LaSpezia Pisa Genoa Barga Lucca Florence Rome
                                                           Venice

SLOVENIA                                       Ljubljana

CROATIA                                         Zagreb

SERBIA                                             Belgrade Novi Sad Kralevo Sremski Karlovci

HUNGARY                                       Budapest

BULGARIA                                      Sofia

TURKEY                                           Istanbul Ankara Cappodocia Pamukkale Izmir Ephesus
                                                            Canakkale Troy Gallipoli

ROMANIA                                        Bucharest

SLOVAKIA                                      Bratislava

CZECH REPUBLIC                         Prague

CANADA                                          Halifax Quebec Montreal Toronto Winnipeg Edmonton Jasper
                                                            Lake Louise Banff Kamloops Vancouver Victoria

U.S.A.                                                 Juneau Skagway Ketchikan Seattle Honolulu

WESTERN SAMOA                         Pago Pago

FIJI                                                      Suva Lautoka

VANUATU                                        Mystery Island

NEW CALEDONIA                          Lifo Kuto Noumea

We visited 27 countries and 86 cities.

                                                          

DAY 208 MONDAY 0CTOBER 19 - HOME

We both woke up at 4am and looked through the portholes to see lights on land.  Then we dressed and went to the Promenade Deck, where we could see the light from Barrenjoey Lighthouse.  Box Head had been showing on the edge of the Navigation TV Channel but it was too dark to see Killcare.  We watched the lights of Collaroy, Dee Why and Manly before entering the heads and seeing South Head Lighthouse at 5:30am.  Our Canadian friend Gail came on deck as the Pilots climbed on board and we pointed out places to her before she gave us a goodbye hug.

We passed the fast Manly Ferry and then the big one as we  moved slowly towards the harbour bridge.

As the ship came into the Overseas Passenger Terminal we received a phone call from Evelyn who told us she was waiting at Circular Quay to meet us, which was a lovely surprise.  She found her way into the terminal and waved to us as we waited to get the all clear.  At 7:30 we carried our luggage down the gangway and through Border Control and Customs, where we declared wooden souvenirs with no problem.

Our luggage was getting heavier with souvenirs bought in ports since Vancouver, so it was great to have assistance from Evelyn to catch the train to Central and then Woy Woy with no waiting time and be delivered home by 10am.

We saw the remains of the tree that was blown over in the front yard and had been tidied up by Dave and friends.  The house was in good order and we quickly unpacked and set about sorting mail and eating the food Evelyn left for us.  We called in at Telstra Woy Woy, where we bought a dongle for temporary internet and ordered ADSL ready for the NBN in February.  We went to the Dory newly renovated house for a beaut BBQ dinner and a happy time with the family.

Good to be home and sleeping in the right bed.

Next day we walked to Bullimah Spur Lookout, stopping at Marie Byles Lookout on the way to reassure ourselves we lived in the best of all possible spots.

DAY 207 SUNDAY OCTOBER 18 - LAST DAY AT SEA

We went to church at 9am and thought of the Marsden Road people worshipping, as we were now in NSW time zone.  The hymns were accompanied by two ukeleles and sung at half speed so we are looking forward to some happy singing next Sunday.

Sandra Millikin gave her last lecture, which was "Strange Buildings in Australia".  She showed some of the "big" things used to attract customers: banana, pineapple etc..  Malcolm attended the Navigation talk given by the third officer.  He explained why big ships have a "bow bulb" just under the water to break through the waves and allow fuel savings of up to 12% when travelling at cruising speeds.  He also explained that the unannounced  fire drill yesterday was sprung on the crew without warning in order to ensure they would respond as if it was a real fire.  Only the captain and a few inspectors knew it was a drill.

Lyn went to a demonstration of how to make towelling animals.

  Later we both went to the astronomer's talk on stars of the Southern Hemisphere and how stars were used by early navigators. We also listened to Kelly's talk on Australian animals. 

The weather was sunny and warm today and the sea was remarkably smooth.  We packed our bags ready for a disembarkation at 7:15am tomorrow.

We gave a little souvenir to our dinner companions and waiters and to our housekeeper, Dedi.

DAY 206 SATURDAY OCTOBER 17 - SEA DAY

There are two sea days left so our speakers are back.  

Sandra Millikin spoke on Mutiny on the Bounty and the astronomer talked about black holes and the end of our solar system when our sun becomes a red giant then a white giant.  He finished by advising us not to feel small in comparison to the universe because there is only one of us as far as we know.  We are individuals.

In the afternoon we went to Kelly's talk on what to do in Sydney.  It sounds like a wonderful city to visit.

We went to the "Australian tea" at 3pm for a one off and ate lemon meringue tarts and minipavlovas.  They had plenty of lamingtons there.

It was the last Gala Night for dinner with our four friends so we can pack our fancy clothes away.  Our junior waiter Agus was missing and Gede told us he had received news today that his mother died and he was planning to return home from Sydney.

The 9pm show was the Volendam singers and dancers performing "Classique", which included occasional pieces of real music. 

DAY 205 FRIDAY OCTOBER 16 - NOUMEA

Noumea is our last port before Sydney and it is taking us a long time to pass through the Pacific Islands.  The wharf is right in the centre of town and we were told that other ships have had to dock at the container wharf some distance away.

The cafe on the wharf advertised free Wifi and for the price of AUD10 Malcolm bought a fresh orange juice and spent an hour on emails, Facebook and blog.  We were one of the first off the ship so we beat the Wifi rush this time.

We browsed the arts and craft stalls on the wharf and made some interesting purchases.  We walked past the central park and up the hill to the Church of the Protestant Community.  It was closed and looked neglected..

The Catholic Church of St Francis Xavier was grand and well maintained.

A bride and groom were posing inside the church.  It looked like a commercial shoot.

The statue in the grounds was of Joan of Arc. Was she female or male?

The weather was cloudy and mild so we enjoyed strolling past the shops back to the ship at 11:30.

At 4pm we watched the ship leave the port while chatting with Canadian Gail.  Only 63 hours and no time changes to Sydney from here.

Wayne and Linda sat with the smokers tonight so we had dinner with Joanne and Pauline.

The concert tonight was a second helping of Heart of Spades and Ketei told us he was getting married next week but William told us Ketei had actually not yet proposed.  After the marriage would be just as good apparently.

We also had a second helping of Neil Lockwood who was more entertaining as himself.  He talked about his encounters with the Beatles and had us do the lalas for Hey Jude.

DAY 204 THURSDAY OCTOBER 15 - ILE DES PINS, KUTO, NEW CALEDONIA

Another tender trip was required today.  We left the ship at 9:45am and the weather was wet and cold on the island, so we only stayed half an hour.  We were greeted by a small group of islanders performing a welcome dance.

It was a very small community and we just walked around the stalls and a boutique.  The beach was very nice with fine sand but it was not looking inviting as everything was grey.

 In the afternoon the sun came out and the little islands around looked beautiful.

At 1pm we went to the cinema to watch "I'll see you in my dreams", which was about a retired woman who played bridge with friends in the retirement village.

We watched a magician perform all the usual card and mind reading tricks in the Show Room at 8pm.

DAY 203 WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 14 - EASO, LIFOU, NEW CALEDONIA

For a second time we anchored about 500 meters from shore and climbed onto the tender to get to a small pier.  There was a moderate swell and the trip was rough but the swell was behind us so not too bad.  We were amazed how many people who were struggling to walk on the ship managed to get on and off the boat.  There were more souvenir stalls and a nice grassy camping area fronting the beach next to the pier.

There was a carved pole at the end of the pier.

We walked up to the small Catholic church up on the hill on a headland where we got a nice view, but it started to rain and people were taking shelter.  It only had one pew that would seat 6 people.  There were four bibles open, one in French and three in English.

We walked in the other direction to reach the second church.  It was much larger and was dedicated to St Francis Xavier.  It had beautiful stained glass windows and paintings around the walls for stations of the cross.  It was built by the French in 1858 and seemed as though it was visited by Pope John Paul.  We went inside a traditional hut.

There was intermittent rain and while we were queuing for the tender a storm blew in and wet us.  The trip back saw us next to an open door and waves splashed us a couple of times.

The artist tonight was Neil Lockwood who sang in ELO 2 and he did a tribute to Elton John.  He put a lot of energy into it but we both fell asleep for the middle part as we did not know all the songs.

DAY 202 TUESDAY OCTOBER 13 - MYSTERY ISLAND, VANUATU

Another day ashore.  This time we dropped anchors and used the Rescue Boats as tenders to get to the small pier.  

Mystery Island is quite small and has no inhabitants.  There is another large island just across the way and people have set up stalls to use when a cruise ship comes in, so there was a lot of locals there, including a high school group on an excursion.

 It takes 45 minutes to walk around the whole island, which has a continuous sandy beach and coral reefs suitable for snorkelling.  In WW2 the Americans built an airstrip and it is still in use. (When Queen Elisabeth II was coming to Australia from Fiji on Britannia in 1974, she had a picnic on this island and made it famous).

Passengers were issued with tickets as a means of queueing for the tenders.  Each boat was to hold 90 people and five boats tripped back and forth to get people ashore.

We boarded at 10:30am and started walking along the beach.  Malcolm was walking along a rocky part of the shore and did not notice he had stepped on a wet section.  It was like grease and he fell sideways scratching his arm as he tried to break his fall and banging his left hip on the rocks.  He will have a bit of a limp for a day or two.

Half way around we came to the end of the airstrip, so decided to walk its length.  As we got nearly to the end a yellow air taxi came in to land.  We browsed the stalls which had quite a lot for sale and Lyn bought a necklace.

They priced everything in Australian dollars.  Local men were taking people out onto the lagoon in a dugout outrigger sailing boat.

We got back on the tender at 12: 30 and had a quiet afternoon of scrabble, sudoku and reading.

The 8pm concert was given by Colleen Williamson, an excellent American soprano, who sang songs from the musicals of the 50s and 60s, as well as "O mio babbino caro".

Only six more sleeps.

DAY 201 MONDAY OCTOBER 12 - SEA DAY

GREAT NEWS!

We found out today that Levi Malcolm Hobbs had been born safely and well on Saturday.  We are isolated because of expensive and poor Wifi on the ship.

We attended talks on Captain Cook and the next four ports we stop at.  Lyn caught up on the washing and we went to the 10pm concert where "Heart of Spades" entertained.

DAY 200 SUNDAY OCTOBER 11 - LAUTOKA

A short overnight cruise to Lautoka.  The port was a long way from town but there were stalls set up on the wharf, so we browsed through  them and bought a picture for the Fiji room at home.

Back on the ship we watched a film about a dumb professor of poetry at Cambridge University.  After dinner we went to the concert by the Volendam singers and dancers.  As usual the costumes and dancers were excellent but the singers were amplified too much and became distorted.

DAY 199 SATURDAY OCTOBER 10 - SUVA

As the ship docked in Suva the Police Band greeted us with lively music.  Two fearsome warriors said "Bula" to us as we came down the gangway.  We passed many stalls, walked around the town, skirted the food markets and went into a few shops but bought nothing.  Many of the shops and the Post Office were closed as it was Fiji's National Day.

Back on the ship we watched a movie called "Dove" about a 17 year old American boy who sailed around the world in a 23 foot boat.  When he got to Darwin they featured John Meillon as a builder who employed him as a labourer.  The film was more than 20 years old.

We did not depart until 6:30pm and there was no concert.

DAY 198B FRIDAY OCTOBER 9 - ANOTHER QUIET DAY AT SEA

Another quiet day at sea with moderate swell, fresh winds and a few flying fish scattering away from the ship.  A white bird with no webbing on his feet stowed away on the ship.  He remains unidentified after consulting the bird books in the library.

We had a talk on Suva and Lautoka at 9am and another talk from the astronomer at 10am.  He talked about Uranus, Neptune and the dwarf planets.  Then he went on to talk about habitable planets in our galaxy.  There are widely different estimates of how many of these exist; Carl Sagan once said a million but no one else agreed.  New ones are being found all the time and a "Kepler" telescope is about to be launched that will find more.

At 11am we played Scrabble in the Explorer's Lounge and read books the rest of the day.

The 8pm show was shared by Dave the violinist and Heather the singer who we had heard before.

DAY 198A THURSDAY OCTOBER 8 - LOST AT SEA

The ship has chosen today as the day we sacrifice to pay back the 24 hours we have been borrowing as we travelled clockwise around the world.  Having lost a Thursday, our astronomer suggested that traditionally all lost property ends up on the moon.

DAY 197 WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 7 - ON SHORE AT PAGO PAGO

We had an early breakfast and watched the ship dock at the Container Wharf.  The island looked very pretty.

At 8:30 we walked down the main street along the waterfront and found markets and clothing shops.  Many items had no price so we assumed they would be cheaper tomorrow and we were not keen enough to bother bargaining, so bought very little.  

We found the National Park Office which was part of the US Parks Department.  The Parks here are unique, they said, in that they have been leased to the Federal Government for 50 years, so the local chiefs retain ownership.  That sounds like Uluru.  We were able to watch several good videos on Samoan Culture.

The first one showed the traditional dance called "Siva" which was always performed by the princess.

Another one showed in detail how the women made fine mats, by weaving fine strips of dried pandanus leaves into large ceremonial mats.  They decorated them with red feathers taken from the cardinal honeyeater bird (without killing it).  Now they dye chicken feathers to save disturbing the protected birds.

Another video showed how the men make a lure to catch an octopus.  The lure is based on a legend of how an octopus helped a rat to get to shore from an overturned canoe by carrying it on its head.  Since the rat pooped on the octopus's head along the way, all octopuses now chase a rat in the water.  The lure is thus in the shape of a rat.  We saw a young man catching the octopus by grabbing it out of the water and turning its head inside out with his teeth to stop it from sticking to his arm or back with its suckers.

Then we watched how tapa cloth is made from the bark of mulberry trees.  It involved stripping, scraping, beating, soaking, drying, stretching, patching and using moulded patterns to imprint designs.  They used these cloths for dressing and for ceremonies.  Like the mats, they take huge amounts of time (sometimes years) to make and are treasured.

We returned to the ship and at 3pm and had a talk from a local ranger about the Parks and the Culture.

The evening show was another great concert from the Alley Cats Doo Wop quartet.

DAY 196 TUESDAY OCTOBER 6 - ANOTHER SEA DAY

It is a lovely sea day today.  The water is a lot calmer and the temperature is mid twenties.  We saw a flying fish for the first time in a while. This is the last of our five sea days from Hawaii and from now on we have a maximum of two sea days between ports.

We attended the second talk on twentieth century architecture in which Sandra spoke at some length about the Sydney Opera House from an outsider's point of view.  Quite interesting buildings were shown.

Our other lecture was about Samoa and Pago Pago which we will visit tomorrow.

The sunset at dinner time was the best we have seen in a while.

The show tonight was a clever juggler who told a few jokes and interacted with the audience.  He gave us an interesting saying:

"A comedian tells funny jokes while a comic tells jokes funny".  

His name was Benji Hill.

DAY 195 MONDAY OCTOBER 5 - ROCKING AND ROLLING ACROSS THE EQUATOR

We crossed the equator during the night while the seas were still rough.  On the TV news we heard that a freighter had been missing in the Caribbean since Thursday in the hurricane area.  A life raft was found and it was deflated and had "human remains" in it.   No signals have been received since the first distress one.  It sounds like a tragedy.

At 10am King Neptune and his Queen initiated the "pollywogs" among the crew and officers who have not crossed the equator before.  We did not watch but we believe it involved a lot of meringue.

At 11am we heard a talk by Sandra Millikin on architecture in the first half of the twentieth century, with a lot of pictures of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright shown.  It was readily understood by us lay people.

At 1pm Malcolm attended a slide show and talk about the Engine Room on the ship given by the Safety and Environment Officer.  

At 2pm Lyn learned how to make cold fruit soup.  Yummy.  Malcolm went to a talk on Mars.

The seas are not as rough and the wind is dying.

At 8pm the song and dance troop put on another spectacular called "That's Dance".  The costumes are amazing.

We listened to Adagio for an hour then put our watches back an hour as we went to bed.

DAY 194 SUNDAY OCTOBER 4 - ROUGH SEAS

Until now we have had quiet seas on the Volendam, but we had storms overnight and the swell has been increasing and is now hitting the ship sideways, causing banging and making the ship roll in spite of the stabilisers.

We attended two presentations today.  The astronomer gave a talk on the solar system which included the latest about exploration voyages.  The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are of great interest to scientists.

The evening concert was an entertaining session by Heather Sullivan, a pianist and singer who was a fan of Carole King and proved herself to be just as talented.  She paid tribute to many artists but is particularly impressed by Alicia Keyes. 

Half way through the concert water started pouring down on the port side of the theatre and people near us had to move.  Heather had to regain people's attention before she could continue.  At the finish the crew came in with a big vacuum cleaner to sop up the water.  

DAY 193 SATURDAY OCTOBER 3 - SEA DAY 2

The astronomer on board gave a talk on the moon.  It was quite informative but he said nothing about the moon illusions and he could not explain why we get two high tides per day.

The 8pm show was a funny fiddler who made classical pieces fun to listen to.

We have a swell from the starboard side which crashes into the ship but the weather is warm yet comfortable as we approach the equator. 

DAY 192 FRIDAY OCTOBER 2 - QUIET DAY AT SEA

A day of reading, scrabble and Sudoku.  The Navigation Talk covered lifeboats and life rafts.  There are enough places in them for 50% more people than are on the ship, but 150 guests must fit into each boat and the officers and some crew use the rafts.

Wayne and Linda arranged for two former fellow travellers to sit at our table tonight: Joanne from Fort Lauderdale and Pauline from Chicago.  They brightened up the conversation.

At 8pm we heard a male quartet who sing "doo-wop" songs from the 1950s and 60s, such as Shboom and Little Darlin'.  They were called the Alley Cats and were excellent.  Their groups have visited thousands of high schools in US and created interest in singing among many students.  Another great night's entertainment,

DAY 191 THURSDAY OCTOBER 1 - HONOLULU 2

We bought tickets a few days ago for a three hour tour leading us on a climb up Diamond Head.  On the way in our small bus (20 guests), Justin, our guide, pointed out the spot at Waikiki where Gilligan and the Skipper set off on a three hour cruise.  He also told us about the Duke coming to Australia to teach board surfing as we passed his statue.

As we were about to start the climb several busloads of Asian tourists took off in front of us, so it was like climbing Mt Fuji; single file and only a few places to pause for information from our guide.  We started with a concrete path which turned into a rocky one and then we climbed 74 steps, proceeded through a 60 meter tunnel and climbed up some more steps to the top where we found a beautiful rainbow over the town.

We could see the lighthouse and along the coast.

The weather was good with a northwest wind and occasional light showers, so we did not get too hot and the guide supplied us all with a bottle of cold water.

On the way home we passed several historic buildings and a statue of a warrior god.

We were back on board at noon and shipped out at 6pm, ready for another five days at sea on the way to Pango Pango.  

The show tonight was another concert by the ship's singers and dancers.  The staging and costumes were very impressive.