We had docked before we were awake this morning. Today our port times were from 7:00 am until 4:00 pm and this meant the clock was already running before we were up and about. Strange considering we didn’t need to travel far from Suva and we then follow it with 3 sea days so why not give us the 8:00 to 5:00 spot which would be a little more user friendly? I know it’s only an hour but it did sort of impact on what we eventually did as we were not prepared to get up early for a tour of little interest.
Research prior to leaving again showed little here which we regarded as worth seeing and after hearing some of the stories from our fellow passengers experiences yesterday we made the decision not to leave the ship. It’s not really a tourist port and when you factor in the requirement to take a shuttle into a town very similar to yesterday then the ship certainly looked the more inviting option to us.
There were some nice looking island trips available but we would have needed to have been up a lot earlier to have done them.
So with the decision made to stay onboard we followed our usual routine for breakfast and I had to laugh this morning when Ana who is one of the waiting staff asked me if I’d come for my medication, so from now on that is how I am going to refer to it.
Breakfast was followed by 5 laps of the ship where the temperature was showing as 30°C with 75% humidity. A was a good workout and something to ease the conscience a little, from there we allowed ourselves a relaxing lie down up on the Solstice Deck periodically moving the beds in and out of the shade while taking a shower to cool off in between.
We did observe a man overboard safety drill this morning and it was interesting to watch the device they use to lift the body out of the water. It’s a sort of flexible bed which they floated underneath the dummy which had two ropes on the end and when pulled on these it just rolled the body out of the water into the boat. A clever way of getting a dead weight out of the sea.
The ship was again very quiet and we have come to the conclusion the Aussie first time cruisers prefer to stay inside with the air conditioning on full pelt. It’s only the mad British and American passengers who are daft enough to be outside in the heat.
Lunch was taken in the Oceanview Café where I have taken to the curry’s in a big way, we have an Indian head chef and his curry’s are the best I have ever had on a ship. Absolutely delicious!
We were discussing this particular itinerary over lunch and both agreed that we would have been disappointed had it been just this cruise on its own, yes there have been some nice beaches early on but it hasn’t really had the impact of the first one in New Zealand. It was always going to be our kickback cruise but I had hoped it would maybe conjure up some surprises.
So with the hunger pangs sorted it was back to some more R&R until sailaway which was at 4:00. Three sea days now before we return to Sydney and the the start of cruise number three.