Day 31 - Downunder 2016 - Thu - 10/27/16 - At Sea to Darwin 1

Today was the first of 3 sea days on our way to Darwin. After breakfast and our devotional time with Rev. Barry, we went outside on deck 6 to watch the beautiful green water slip by along with many atolls and barren islands. We also had scenic commentary by a reef pilot, but he was hard to understand because of over modulation. The morning lecture was given by the astronomer, Dr.Alan Wright on the top c of contact with other worlds. Afterwards he held a cosmic chat in the piano bar that was well attended. The afternoon lecture by Philip Creaser on the gemstone Amber was really good. It was followed by a lesson by Louis Burns on playing the didgeridoo. He had about 30 pieces of white PVC pipe which has a tonal quality similar to a wood based instrument. It actually was fun watching mostly old people blowing on white pieces of pipe. Hyperventilation was in play! Afterwards I walked laps on deck 6 to get my 5 miles in and watch the world go by at 16 miles per hour. Early tomorrow morning we should be in the Bass Straits.  

It was Gala night again and we had a couple from Sydney and one from Alaska. It was a good discussion. The evening's main stage entertainment was Vox Furtura in a reprise show. They were once again VERY good. I'd say they are in the top 5 of all the entertainment we've enjoyed on cruise ships. The evening movie was 'Dead Calm' which was a thriller starring Nicole Kidman set on a sailboat and filmed near Hamilton Island which we visited a week ago.

Remember while the destination is important, savor the journey.

Day 32 - Downunder 2016 - Fri - 10/28/16 - At Sea to Darwin 2

It was another lazy day at sea. The water color changed from a greenish blue to a deeper blue as we crossed the Arafura Sea. And the temperature continued to climb although walking around on deck 6 was quite comfortable especially since we are near the equator and the sun is overhead due to our westward course.  

The morning lectures were good. Kelly and Melanie presented on the shore excursions on the next part of this segment. Dr. Write spoke on the topic of the Sun. In the afternoon Philip Creaser spoke about mammal fossils and Kelly returned to give location information for the next three ports of call. Again both were quite good. Now I had to pay the price for attending the lectures: I finished walking my 5 miles for today (it's 4 laps on Deck 6 to a mile).

Dinner this evening was in the Canaletto and it was wonderful. We had an ocean view seat and our waiter was the same waiter who typically serves us in the morning and remembered our tea preferences. For a those unaccustomed to the Canaletto, it's one of two specialty extra charge restaurants onboard, and its theme is Italian cuisine. The seafood soup and baby romaine lettuce salad was excellent as was the grilled shrimp and cod.  

The evening's entertainment was Louis Finkel, a very accomplished pianist. He was quite good and his closing medley of a salute to New York City was magical. The movie was a documentary about the women's pursuit cycling team in the London Olympics. This team was a definite underdog with a minimal budget competing with Australian and British teams with $40,000,0000 budgets. But they earned the silver medal!

Afterwards we took a short walk on the deck, and it was extremely warm for 11pm as we are approaching the equator.

Day 33 - Downunder 2016 - Sat - 10/29/16 - At Sea to Darwin 3

One starts to appreciate the size of the Australian continent when it's now the third day of crossing a bay on our way to Darwin!

This morning after a really interesting devotional during which Rev. Barry interviewed an 89 year old retired pastor who had a very full and long ministry in Australia, we walked a mile on a very warm deck. For days and days we've not seen any wildlife in the water, and the water is now a deep blue color. The reef pilot, Gerrit-Jan Hulsebos gave a lecture on reef piloting. He's Dutch and his first ship was the Maasdam. Now he works for Australian Reef Pilots (one of two companies providing Great Barrier Reef pilotage services).  

Alan Wright presented a lecture on where we came from and following a quick lunch Philip Creaser presented a session on the Riversleigh Wirld Heritage Fossil Site that he dug at. It was the least attended of his sessions but still interesting. I then spent the rest of the afternoon walking the deck to get my 5 miles in. Along the way I finally saw a number of flying fish and 3 dolphins or porpoises. It's been several weeks since I've seen any wildlife from the ship, so that was my excitement for the day.

After dinner in the Rotterdam Dining Room, the entertainment tonight was a variety show of Francis Diatschenenko and Tommy Proulx (guitarist and saxophonist) followed by a documentary, The Infiltrant, about taking down a Colombian drug lord.

Day 30 - Downunder 2016 - Wed - 10/26/16 - Cairns

It wax a smooth overnight sail from Hamilton Island. With a scheduled 10am arrival, we awakened leisurely and took our breakfast in the Lido. We skipped the 9am devotional time as we wanted to watch the sail in. It's a very narrow channel with lots of markers which indicated we were at high tide. We had really nice seats up in the Crow's Nest and the city slowly came into view in the brilliant green water darkened in numerous spots by reefs. After making one last left hand 90° turn we headed for the cruise terminal dock. Upon reaching the dock the ship did a 180° clockwise rotation to be lined up to do a straight departure later in the day.

We met in the Ocean Bar the other two couples who we were taking the Eco Safari tour with and waited for the clearance announcement. It never came so we joined the line to disembark the ship. After a brief wait, suddenly the line began moving; and we were off the ship on a very steep gangway. Our driver and guide, Kevin, owner of Wilderness Eco Tours met us and we all paid him $358AU per couple before getting in his pristine Toyota Land Cruiser.  

As he drove us out of the city, he began to orient us to the area. Without going into a blow by blow description of the tour I would summarize it by saying that we spent much of the day on very narrow and twisty mountain roads crossing from the flood plain through the tropical rain forest into the outback and back again. We had great stops at the Copperlode Dam, another high waterfall along Davies Creek that Angela and I scampered down the rocks to look at more closely, the Barron Falls Lookout and Railway platform, as well as an ice cream stop at Emerald Creek Ice Cream where the products are all made there! While I couldn't partake in the ice cream, they had scrumptious jerky! Also during the day we had a splendid homemade picnic in the rain forest along a little creek. Many of the roads and numerous water crossings would have been wonderful to ride on a motorcycle. Back in town, Kevin took us to a place next to the city hall where there were lots of fruit bats hanging in a tree. They were quite noisy and moving around a bit but wouldn't be flying until dark.

Since we were only a few blocks from the ship Angela and I elected to walk back to the ship which we did in a meandering way along the sea wall and downtown streets. It's worth noting that there is NO swimming in the beach areas adjoining the city as it it built on reclaimed mangrove swampy areas and home to saltwater crocodiles! By crikey, I'm not tempting fate.

We ate dinner in the Lido and it was dark by 7pm so we elected to watch the movie, Sapphire Girls, at its 8pm showing in the Showtime at Sea. We had seen it previously on another cruise and it's quite good. The rest of the evening was pretty low key since there wasn't much going on around the ship.  

About a week ago, a pipe burst in the aft end of the ship on deck 6 and a number of passengers needed to be moved and many fans were installed to draw away the moisture. Tonight those were all gone.

We now have three sea days before reaching Darwin.  

While the destination is important, remember to savor our the journey.

Day 29 - Downunder 2016 - Tue - 10/25/16 - Hamilton Island

Waking up early to the rumble of the propellers and turning on the bow TV channel we could see that we were once again in paradise only this time at Hamilton Island. From the Lido we could see the greenish tint to the water. Because the harbor is relatively shallow, today would be a tender port with a combination of ship based and shore based tenders.

With our 4 star Mariner status we got out on one of the earlier tenders. Upon reaching shore we obtained a free boarding ticket for the 20 minute island shuttle tour which gave us a feel for the island. Essentially the island is a water playground for Australians. There are residences and condos and hotels, and in general I'd venture a guess that they are expensive. A later visit to a local real estate office confirmed this!

After the shuttle tour we walked back over to the Catseye Beach area and snorkeled a bit in the morning seeing only a few fish. We decided to wait for the 1:30pm low tide and ate some lunch and did our online US Election voting in the Wildlife Park cafe. We then headed back to the beach at one o'clock and snorkeled quite a bit farther out. There we saw quite a few more fish and my wife saw a sting ray. Another guest reported seeing a turtle. A cool thing was that the beach hut provided full body suits called stingers which served as protection against jellyfish and the sun! After snorkeling we walked back to the marina and strolled up and down the Main Street. One of the cooler things we saw were a bunch of beautiful white Cockatoo birds that were begging for food from some people eating outside along the harbor.

Departing the harbor area we got on the last tender (one of the large shore based ones) which departed at 3:30pm and we were the last 2 passengers to scan on to the vessel (a new first for us!).  

The sailaway was one of the prettiest we've experienced. The Maasdam rotated 180 degrees and steered a zigzag course in between the numerous small islands and reefs through very green water and warm air temperatures. After showering we enjoyed a very pleasant dinner in the main dining room with another Cruise Critic couple from Ontario, Canada.  

The evening's main stage entertainment was another saxophonist from California (Pete) following which I watched one of the Terminator movies (not a favorite genre for me) before heading for bed. Tomorrow we are not due to dock in Cairns until 10am, and we have an exciting day planned.

While the destination is important, savor the journey.

Day 28 - Downunder 2016 - Mon - 10/24/16 - At sea to Hamilton Island

On this sea day we left the room this morning to a stronger smell of sewage and spoke with our cabin attendants who had reported the issue two days ago.

Fortunately up in the Lido for breakfast, it was a pleasant and sunny day to eat breakfast before the morning devotional time with Reverand Barry. Afterwards I went to the Windows 10 class and realized it's no longer sponsored by Microsoft. A HAL employee teaches them. These classes are very popular but for me a bit too basic. And they avoid all issues of connectivity with Apple or Android products which is sad as MANY guests have questions along those lines. I'd love to teach or share that sort of information.

As the Seattle Seahawks were playing on Sunday night football (shown here on Monday morning), we watched the game until 11:30am and went to a special Indonesian Luncheon for the guests doing the two segments of the cruise. The food was the most flavorful of the cruise so far. We adjourned back to the Crow's Nest to watch the remainder of the game which resulted in a 3-3 tie.

During the Captain's noon navigational and meteorological update, he reminded us about protecting ourselves from the Zika virus by covering up in the Indonesian ports and using bug spray (which we have!).

We then joined the afternoon speaker (Philip Creaser) presentation on Volcanoes and Limestone formations around the world many of which are World Heritage sites. He's a great speaker who doesn't read from notes! He was followed by Louis Green, an Aboriginal artist, who gave a digeridoo presentation that was quite good. He answered a number of questions about aboriginal culture and digi's.

From there we headed out to deck 6 to walk off the big lunch (20 laps or about 5 miles). The seas were calm and with a following breeze, there was no apparent wind. The temperature was quite comfortable as we are sailing north to the equator.

We took a very light dinner in the Lido as the lunch was so filling. The evening's entertainment was Vox Furtura, a men's quartet and talent finalists in Britain's Got Talent TV show. They were superb! We also took in the movie, Jane Got a Gun, before watching the end of the second Vox Furtura show.

Day 27 - Downunder 2016 - Sun - 10/23/16 - Brisbane

Talk about a quickie! We arrived in Brisbane around 7am and docked at the cruise terminal located on the river that meanders through town. Since we didn't need to disembark until 9am, we had a leisurely breakfast and I uploaded a large number of my daily blogs. We met with our little group of 6 and proceeded off the ship where we met our guide for today, Charlie. Charlie is a volunteer for Brisbane Greeters which is an arm of the local government which promotes tourism. The tour is free and no tips are accepted, although contributions can be sent to the Brisbane Greeters.  

Charlie led us to the high speed ferry which would be our method of transportation from the ship to the downtown area. These ferries called Watercats are catamarans and they are a major way of getting around and are pretty cool to travel on. The ferry made multiple stops on both sides of the river before reaching our stop in downtown about an hour later. We then strolled our way to the lovely botanical gardens where the flowers and trees were beautiful, the birds prolific, and an excellent example of repurposed ground. Upon entering the garden, we spotted this unique looking vehicle which seemed to be used for hauling person's in wheel chairs. The driver parked the vehicle and exited it in his wheelchair. He was quiteapproachable and I learned that he designed the vehicle and it was constructed from the front of a wrecked vehicle and a custom rear chassis. It was VERY professionally built. I'll have pictures in my photo album which will be posted at the completion of the cruise. Leaving the garden, we walked by the technology university and towards downtown. Along with the way we saw many historical buildings including the original government office, post office, print shop, and the treasury building and many more. The latter building is now a casino. On the main shopping street, the TI office uses the very ornate lobby of a former theater. It's drop dead gorgeous!

Following a visit to the ANZAC Memorial we made our way back to the ferry for our hour ride back to the ship.

Onboard the ship we enjoyed a small snack to ride us over until dinner before watching the sailaway until the Sunday church service at 4pm. Dinner this night was back in the Main Dining Room where all three couples had RV's in addition to cruising. This led to a very energetic table discussion.

The evening's entertainment was Francis Diatschenko, a very good classical pianist from Darwin. Given that we had previously seen the movie, we adjourned to our room to watch the World Series of Poker and get to bed a little earlier. On the way back in our hallway, we detected a sewer smell. Hopefully that's not a bad sign of things to come!

While the destination is important, savor the journey.