We had a surprise when entering the lower dining room this morning. Actually yesterday, we noticed that the fellows were shampooing the carpet to the left hand side of the doors. This morning, the entire starboard side of the room had flooded, we assume during the night. All of the covered chairs were up in the center section, and several workers were doing a clean-up. Hopefully, it get repaired, because the Sunday Brunch was due to begin at 11am. If nothing else, those carpets were clean as a whistle.
There was no doubt in our minds that we had traveled far enough south to leave the humidity and heat far behind us. It was still nice enough to relax at the Seaview Pool, but few people went into the water. The breeze was strong enough to chill you upon getting out of the water. The high clouds came and went, but there was no rain, as the Captain had warned. We have found that the deck crew members have been most attentive with the guests that are back there. Earlier in the cruise, a number of us would have had to wave down one of the bar staff to order a drink. It is a far cry from the days when we sailed other cruise lines, and the fellows were enticing you with drinks of the day every 5 minutes. That does not happen here.
The Maori team wrapped up their ambassador duties with a cultural performance on the Mainstage this afternoon. They sure can sing and dance. Later at dinnertime, they showed up on the stairway of the lower dining room, serenading all of us for 10 minutes. Bet it was a Maori farewell song.
The guest lecturer gave two talks today. In the morning, he spoke about the land birds of Polynesia, and the afternoon lecture was all about marine turtles and humpback whales in this part of the South Pacific. Both fascinating subjects.
In the late afternoon, we usually go for a second or third walk around the promenade deck. The nice part of that is running into friends, and stopping to chat. Most everyone is still wondering about the details of the itinerary changes. And just to clear up some misunderstanding, we thought we better explain the situation with some folks that had booked independent overland tours from some of the cancelled ports. We can only assume that not everyone insured these trips, and stand to lose their money. So some of them figured that they could get off in another port, and fly to Singapore, for instance. It was made perfectly clear that if anyone did that, they would not be allowed to come back to the ship, having gone to a country that was cancelled. Hope that clears up any questions. The other big question everyone is asking is how are those who do not have India visas going to get them? Will the ship be able to swing a blanket visa?
All of us received the Voyage Log for the second segment of Buenos Aires to Auckland. This time the miles traveled were 11,622.7 miles using 369,838 gallons of fuel. And how many eggs were consumed in that period? Try 93,240, which always makes us laugh. That is one heck of a lot of eggs.
Dinnertime had some good selections with a dos frijoles bean soup and a smoked chicken/vegetable soup. One of us had the regular prime rib and baked potato entrée, and the other tried the mustard-coated sole. That plate came with the best breaded onion rings. And both were tasty. Desserts for us were frozen coffee yogurt with a chocolate drizzle, and the other was a mille feuille layer cake. Kind of makes us a little guilty when one of our tablemates orders the healthy fruit plate almost every night. But just a tiny little guilty.
A juggler, Steven Ragatz and multi-instrumentalist, Jim Hodson returned to the stage tonight with all new shows. We have been staying later in the dining room, and miss most of the show time. Sometimes it is much more fun to visit with our tablemates.
All of us are looking forward to our first stop in New Zealand tomorrow.
Bill & Mary Ann
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Report #115 Day at Sea March 1, 2020 Sunday Partly sunny & 78 degrees
