Friday, March 31, 2006:

A sea day….a chance to sleep in a little later, to relax, to enjoy some of the cultural aspects of a cruise….like the bingo and the casino. But, no; not for us….due to a scheduling error in planning this trip we find ourselves with a full day tour tomorrow which is the last full day of the cruise. Since our luggage needs to be set out tomorrow before dinner….and we won’t be back from the tour until dinner time (we have early seating), we need to do the bulk of our packing for disembarkation today. This is always a traumatic experience for we find that not only have we expanded during the cruise, but our bags have shrunk….the stuff that fit in them on the way over won’t fit for the trip back.

I did go to the casino briefly this afternoon to throw away my last few “Princess tokens” into the little pushy-scrapey  machine that has eaten so many of my quarters on this trip. I sat down and had tossed only 3 coins into the machine when I once again had some British groupies. This time it was two elderly couples who appeared to be fascinated by how the machine worked. They were giving me a loud chorus of “Ahhs” when I won and a quieter chorus of “Ohhs” when I lost. This went on for several minutes until I, inevitably, lost the last of the dozen or so tokens that started with. As I got up from the machine, seeing how interested they all were in the game, I said to one of the ladies “Why don’t you give it a try?” To which, she replied…..in a lovely British accent: “I don’t think so….it seems to have taking you for a proper cleaning and gotten all your money now, didn’t it?”   In fact, the lady was right and I couldn’t argue the point. The machine had taken me for a right proper cleaning. The Brits are not stupid.

Opportunities Missed: A whale was sighted this morning by some people eating breakfast in the Horizon Court on deck 14. But, by the time we heard about it, the whale was long gone…..maybe tomorrow.

Observations: Yesterday at breakfast we sat near a group of Chinese people who were occupying two adjacent tables…..I suspect that they were a group of friends or an extended family traveling together. They were a pretty loud and rowdy bunch….for 7am in the breakfast area. But, the thing that really caught our attention was a little elderly woman….she couldn’t have been 5 feet tall if she stood on her toes….who would regularly and with great enthusiasm produce these loud, rumbling, roaring belches. These were belches on steroids….performance art. How such a small person could produce such loud eruptions is beyond me, but produce them she did one after another after another. This morning we started to take our seats for breakfast when I noticed the same lady at the next table……we decided to move on to a more remote, and presumably, quieter seating area.

Tonight is another Formal Night. With the casino closed in the evening….we are going back inside the New Zealand 12-mile limit….we probably will just go to dinner in our formalwear and then come back to the room. The “Champagne Waterfall” is at midnight, but for those of us who have to be up by 5:30am to get ready to go on a tour it is just a little too late.  So…..

…..As I write this, we are now in our cabin….it is a little after 4:30pm ship’s time….the shadows are starting to lengthen, the sky is beginning to take on a pastel hue and a cool breeze is playing through our open balcony door…..we are listening to quiet, restful music, sipping champagne and watching the gentle swells move passed us as they make a low, irregular rushing sound. A small ship is within view off our starboard side cabin and it is shining bright white in the soft sunlight. I suppose someone, somewhere may be feeling more contented than me at the moment, but I can’t imagine who it would be. I’ll have to watch the clock, or I might just day-dream through dinner time. 

…..later……

Just before dinner we had a chance to watch dolphins running in the waves next to the ship. We actually had two separate encounters with the dolphin, but although both were brief, they were enough for us to blow-off the Captain’s Circle Party prior to dinner so we could spend more time watching the waves near the ship. Not many things are higher in my priority list than free drinks, but, for me, dolphins do come before free liquor.

Right now we are rounding the East Cape of the North Island of New Zealand heading towards the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga….the sea is calm, the forecast is for rain and we have sailed 3071 miles from Sydney and have 137 miles to go until Tauranga. The voyage is starting to wind down even though our disembarkation point doesn’t come until Auckland. We’ve been at sea for only 10 days so far and we really would like to stay far longer…..maybe next time.

But, we still have a day in Tauranga touring Rotorua and the Wai-O-Tapu Valley head of us and then two days in Auckland……so more later.