Australia - half way around the world

  Day 15 – Still cruising Tomorrow October 30 th here down under, will be our 11 th day at sea. We had 3 days in French Polynesia to put our feet on dry land. Many cruises have 1 or 2 days at sea, but this one is crossing an ocean and we are still loving it! So what do we do? There are many seminars and we have sat in to hear the history of World War II battles over the Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Another historian on board has made presentations about Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor, the history of Rock N Roll, indigenous cultures of New Zealand and Australia and even information about the Sydney Opera House. We have tried some of the many trivia games at various locations on board. Spending time in pools, reading books in the sun, or when the weather is bad, we sit in the solarium which also has a pool and hot tubs. Food is everywhere and so are the bars, we truly don’t drink too much and we try to keep our food consumption reasonable, ( we will sti...

  We went to bed on Thursday October 26 and woke up on Saturday October 28 th . We have crossed the international dateline overnight and it is now tomorrow as you read this. We were 7 hours behind the Eastern Time Zone back home, but now we are 23 hours ahead. We have also had a change to our cruise plans. You will remember the 15 foot waves and the video of our pool?  Well, t here is a tropical storm in our area and because of this we can no longer go to Auckland or the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. The storm and high winds would be too dangerous and make a huge ship like the one, nearly impossible to  get through the channel to dock in Auckland. So we have been informed that we are heading to Wellington, New Zealand.   Wellington is the capital of this country. Barb and I are very disappointed as we were going to meet Sue and Jeffries, a couple we travelled with on our European Tour 8 years ago. They were going to show us around Auckland close to where they ...

I mentioned yesterday that we were in 15 foot waves cruising through the Pacific Ocean. For safety, the upper deck outdoor pool was closed. It was a challenge walking around and only once for a short time did we feel a bit queasy when we went to the back of the ship in the two 70 lounge,. They have 30 foot tall windows around the back, a full 270 degrees around, so you can see everything back there. The world was rising and falling so fast looking out there that both Barb and I headed for the side of the room to view the horizon to the side of the ship. It was a much calmer view and things settled down quickly for us. Seas are much calmer today, the sun is out again but we have been warned by the captain that potential storms may happen again in the next day or two. We will not post again until we get back on dry land either in New Zealand on Oct 30 or 31, or if we cannot get connected there, we will post from Sydney Australia Nov 3rd. Stay safe everyone!

We have not had internet connections on our cruise as it is too expensive and who wants to sit on a computer when we are on vacation, but I have written about our days at sea so far and share it here.  We got internet access for the day just to check our bills back home to be sure we are keeping everything back home paid.  Today, October 25th, we have moved to a new time zone and are now 7 hours behind home. In a couple of days we will cross the International Date Line, and instead of being behind the time back home we will jump ahead to tomorrow!! October 27th will not exist for us.  Also today as we share our first 10 days of this cruise we are in 15 foot seas. The ship is rocking, but again not to a point that we feel ill. It's just that you feel one step is going up hill, while the next step goes downhill. Side to side is fairly stable, but front to back is a bit of  ride. Day 1 Boarding We boarded the ship around 3 pm. This ship is a monster, larger than any o...

We spent our final full day here taking a walk to and sitting on the beach for a couple of hours. The temperature has been hot, it's humid and we were careful knowing that a little time in the sun down here is enough to get burnt.  The view from the beach is wonderful with Diamond Head standing out. We have taken 4 tours since we arrived last Tuesday, I think there must be a bus driver training somewhere here, not on how to drive the bus, but how to entertain the riders.  Other than Mo who we talked about previously, all of our other drivers start with the same things.  First off they teach you local words, for example "How do you say hello / goodbye in Hawaiian?  ALLLOOOOHHHAAA! Can everyone say Aloha, the riders say the word, which is never loud enough for the driver the first time, so we have to do it again louder.  This goes on for a while with other words.  Then we celebrate, birthdays, anniversaries etc.   We always hear the story of how the...

Yesterday, we spent the day on the north shore of Oahu, visiting the Polynesian Cultural Centre. This was recommended to us by a friend, and on their advice, we bought the supreme ticket, which gave us our own private tour guide and premium reserved seats to all of the shows during the day. The centre is on 42 acres so we did a lot of walking and it was quite hot.   We found out that the staff at this centre are all students of Brigham Young University - Hawaii. Students here study in the mornings, they work at the cultural centre acting as servers, tour guides, and all of the entertainment.  Many students in the pacific and French Polynesia, 1300 in total making up 70 percent of the staff.  Funds and tips raised assist the students financially through their studies. Students work 20 hours per week during school terms and up to 40 hours on school breaks.   Let me tell you these are very skilled and talented young people and the shows in all of the 5 island ...

Today was a visit to Historical Pearl Harbor, which is still an active Naval Base here in Waikiki.  I won't go into details, you can look up the history of Pearl Harbor and what happened here on December 7, 1941. The Arizona Memorial was a place we wanted to visit, which is build over the huge American Battleship which sunk on Dec 7, 1941 with 1177 soles on board. They are still entombed here which makes this site worthy of the many people who come here to pay their respects. At this location was the Missouri Battleship which is the ship where the Japanese surrendered to the US on board this ship which ended the War between the US and Japan.  We also saw the Bowfin Submarine, which sank 34 large ships during World War II after Pearl Harbor was attacked. We also had a tour of downtown Honolulu and Waikiki visiting Punchbowl Cemetery, a National Cemetery where many of the fallen military from the Pearl Harbor attack are laid to rest. We were not allowed to leave our bus but we d...

So updating this story daily will probably not happen. Apparently we are having too much fun. Our itinerary is jammed packed which was our choice. Ultimately, Australia is our main goal, but why not have some fun along the way. Our flights to Hawai'i were on time, it is a long way to get here, we left our home at 7 am eastern time. With two flights, the first to Vancouver with a 4 hour layover, we were able to find a restaurant for a sit down meal.  Next flight was a 6 hour trip and at the 4 1/2 hour mark we hit some pretty strong turbulence. After close to 23 hours we got in to our room for the night. Not the room we ordered but we didn't care, we needed a bed and some sleep. We sorted out the room issues the next morning and all is well. The long travel time and time change are still hard to adjust to but each day gets a bit better, I woke up at 4 am this morning instead of 2:30 am and Barb slept through until around 6 am. What did we do yesterday? Well, we started our visit ...