It was kind of a rough morning for me. We get off the ship tomorrow, and there are so many things to say goodbye to: goodbye to my routine of getting up and running on the track; goodbye to my plate of crispy bacon for breakfast; goodbye to trivia; goodbye to our stateroom; goodbye to the food and drink; goodbye to all the good people we've met (Pam, Di, Allen, Peter, Joanne, Bob, Brenda, Paul, Helen, Julie, Peter, Tim, Sylvia, Dennis, Ken, Steph, Jacinta, Michael, Patty, and more than a few others I'm neglecting to mention); goodbye to the evening hot tubbing; goodbye to the friendly staff we've made connections with; goodbye to the supper table that made us feel like part of a family these last 11-or-so days. But most of all, goodbye to the late nights on the upper decks, where it was just me, my thoughts, and this tiny speck of a ship in the incomprehensible inky vastness of an uncaring ocean stretching out in every direction everywhere forever. The water this morning w...
"How do you market a cruise to people? That seems kinda hard. Do you know what I mean? Like, 'Hey, do you like hotels?' 'Yeah.' 'How about one that could sink?'" -- Demetri Martin So, obviously, we made it onto the ship. And here I am, late at night and all alone, window howling around me, finally providing an update. On the ship there are port days and sea days. As you might guess, the port days are spent in port, and the sea days are spent SEAsoning french fries with many different and exotic salts. No, wait-- the days are spent literally at sea. This is a repositioning cruise, going from Hawai'i to Australia, to take advantage of the southern hemisphere's warm weather (or maybe to avoid the northern hemisphere's cold weather). And as such, there are A LOT of sea days. Of the 19 days we're on the ship, something like 13 of them are just us at sea, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and not a whole lot else. The point I'm trying to g...
On or about Oct. 22, the good ship Quantum of the Seas dropped anchor off the island of Raiatea. Raiatea is the second largest of the "Society Islands" of Polynesia, behind Tahiti, and is thought to be where organized migrations of Polynesians to Hawai'i, New Zealand, and the eastern Polynesian islands began. To put things in some perspective, it's about 4000km to both Hawai'i and New Zealand from Raiatea, and these people made the trip in tribal canoes, using the stars, ocean currents, and migratory birds as their guides. We're in a 170,000 ton ocean liner and we're still being tossed around like a piece of cork. I can't begin to imagine what their trip might have been like. The harbour is not deep enough for the ship to dock, so the ship arranged to take tenders ashore. Apparently, this was the first time Royal Caribbean has visited Raiatea, and there was a small ceremony for the captain and some of the crew to mark the occasion. I guess they normall...
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