We discovered that the elevator carpets had been restored to the correct day of the week, which is Wednesday. Each and every elevator we used during the day said something different. Honestly that's not nice to do to the older folks.
Anyway, here we are on day five, sailing off of the coast of Monrovia. When we woke up, it was raining with lightning strikes on the horizon. We knew it was in the forecast, but we have seen little of this during the daytime. What we did see this morning was a big surprise. While we were eating breakfast, we spotted at least 50 tuna jumping in a line straight away from the ship about 100 yards away. They must have been feeding in a school, and the ship spooked them. Naturally, we watched for more sightings, but that was it. They were gone in a flash.
As we are sailing basically northwest, the Zuiderdam is following the west coast of Africa, we will pass by Ghana, The Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Tomorrow we will pass by The Gambia and Senegal….places we have stopped on the last two world voyages. We are glad not to stop at some of these countries this year. Here are three reasons why we are glad. First of all, they are 3rd world countries, they can be dangerous, and it's way too hot there. Need we say more? Well yes a little bit more regarding dangerous places in the world. Take Ghana for instance. While there, we took the shuttle to town, where some of the local vendor ladies threw fish at us. This is not your typical tourist town, so they don't take kindly to visitors, specifically American visitors. Banjul, The Gambia was interesting, but also off the beaten track. One sweep through their massive maze of the produce market and everything else under the sun will never leave your memory. A place to have lunch? Not on your life. Senegal had to be the most intimidating. Taking the shuttle in Dakar, we were surrounded with local thugs within minutes of getting off in a central park area of downtown. Even the crew got attacked by these thugs. It took us fifteen minutes before we got back on the next bus and went back to the ship. By the way, the shuttle service was stopped later that day. Another time, while at a stop in Dakar, no one was allowed off of the ship and containers of food and supplies were not released to us. Eventually, the captain said pull the ropes….we are leaving this port. And we did. Remember when we were on the safari? Our ranger driver said many foreign visitors get kidnapped for ransom in these undeveloped countries in West Africa. Most of these incidents never make the news. Yep, glad we are bypassing the lot of them.
Captain Frank said we had 840 nautical miles to get to Cape Verde. At the moment, we were sailing 179 nautical miles off of the West Coast of Africa at a speed of 20.2 knots. The sea depths are 50,000 feet, while the temperature were 83 degrees. The sea temps were 89 degrees – about the hottest it will get. The sea state was 5.5 feet and the stabilizers are out. The skies were cloudy with a breeze of 14 knots, which will increase as the day progresses. The Captain expects the temperature to drop in a few days to 79 degrees. We will welcome that and far less humidity will be nice as well.
Finally, we have caught up with the reports and photos. And today was a lazy one for us, with the exception of a couple of good walks on the promenade deck. The late afternoon walk found only about five people outside. It's still warm and humid, and we think many people have chosen to participate inside the ship with the usual activities.
We did have an invitation to an early cocktail party at 4pm with or travel group in the Gallery Bar. That is way too early for us, so we passed on the invite. We think that so many of our group has early dining at 5pm, this party was targeted to that group. The last gathering they had was at 6:30pm, where the early diners come for after dinner drinks.
This evening, we had a dinner date with friends Ginni and Rich, who we have known since 2007. They recently joined the ship in Cape Town and will stay to the end in Ft. Lauderdale. We moved to a larger table for four and their waiter, Yoga, took care of us. Our waiter Kadek pitched in when he could, since there were few diners here tonight. That made it nice for us to discuss so many things with them, including sharing recent personal stories and the hot topic of politics, that we stayed until almost 9:30pm. Our meals included a Caesar salad, a bowl of excellent udon soup, one beef Thai appetizer, and a shrimp taco, Mexican-style. Our entrees were halibut, a bit on the dry side, and one chicken scallopini – moist and tender. One scoop of mango sorbet was just right for one of us.
There was another what we consider a bizarre activity called "Once Upon a Time Party" held in the Billboard Onboard from 8:15 to 9:30pm. Get this….the guests were invited to attend this story time dressed in pajamas or fairy tale attire. What's that we asked? With a background of music, there would be a story told "Adventures Of Zuidy". Sure sounds like being transported back to kindergarten to us. Geez, too bad we missed it because we were having a fine time on the dining room instead. We also missed the entertainment of the ballroom dance team Alex and Magdalena – world class dance champions. No doubt they were good.
Better yet – the clocks went back one more hour tonight. One more sea day, and we will be in Cape Verde.
Bill & Mary Ann
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