Day 35 ~ 4 Sea Days to Singapore

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” ~ Andre Gide

I’m really enjoying cruising the Indian Ocean. It’s been much smoother than the Pacific. I’m on day 5 for my scopolamine patch and I usually need to change it every 3 days to avoid motion sickness. No worries. For the moment, we’ve got fair winds and slight seas.

It is, however, getting hotter as we travel north back toward the equator. As we circumnavigated around Australia, we were treated to days in the high 60’s low 70’s with low humidity. Now the mercury shoots up to the 80’s by early morning with matching humidity. It’ll only get worse as we continue north. If you want to find out where we are on a world map, look northwest of Australia to the islands of Java and Sumatra. We’re heading for the narrow strait between them as our entry point into the Java Sea en route to Singapore.

We’ll have 4 sea days in a row now. Some passengers are starting to whine about them a little. I personally don’t understand it. I love sea days. We can get involved with as many activities as we wish or do nothing at all. And the crew tries to offer new activities all the time.  For example, yesterday in addition to our usual morning Trivia and Harmony Choir, I went to a fashion show put together by the shops on board. My mom would have loved it because they spotlighted lots of jewelry. Then the DH and I went to a movie—Search for the Wildepeople—a very funny, poignant story set in gorgeous New Zealand.  (Note: Kiwi humor is a bit like British humor. You have to be in the right mood for it.)

Then in the evening, we were invited to a pre-supper party at the suite of one of our table mates. Vicky and her husband (whom I’ll refer to as He Who Must Not Be Named, since he jokes about being in witness protection!) are wonderful hosts and our whole table a very congenial lot. Here they are from left to right:

Cathy and Vaughan from Brisbane (think I mistakenly said they were from Melbourne in an earlier post. My bad.) She’s a hairdresser and he’s a retired accountant. They’re such good fun and are avid caravaners (campers). Sadly, they’ll be leaving us in Dubai.

Vicky and He Who Must Not Be Named (AKA Craig) from San Francisco. He’s a retired fire department captain and Vicky is a nurturing grandma. (I know. She doesn’t look old enough, does she?) They only have the Owner’s Suite for this segment and then they’ll move into a mini-suite for the next segment that will take us to Venice. Unfortunately, we’ll be losing them then.

Shirley and Dave from Farmington, MO. They boarded with us in LA. In fact we stayed at the same hotel the night before embarkation and first met on the shuttle on the way to the ship. Then we discovered we were seated together for supper. That first night, Shirley told me she was looking for a blogger she’d been following but she’d lost the blog address. “It’s me!” I told her, and gave her one of my RoundTheWorldWriter cards. Needless to say, we clicked like magnets and will be together until we all disembark in Ft. Lauderdale.   

A world cruise is more than seeing exotic ports. It’s making connections with people from different places and sharing new ideas and being willing to let the journey take you in directions you don’t expect. Sea days are an important part of that journey. I’m sure once we reach the Mediterranean and are hitting a new port every day, I will miss them sorely.