S.A. TO NAMIBIA
2 December 2006- Saturday
Full Day at Sea
Another day of sunshine as we sail up the coast on the west side of South Africa. Most of the passengers must be sleeping in as there is only a small group at the 0700 breakfast. Have decided to do something with the photos I've taken since I usually never get around to it once I get home. HP has got a nice program both for editing and organizing so I decide to give it a try. And that's how I spend the entire morning. I went back to some of the photos I still had on my duo memory stick and it happened to be the Surgical Science museum in Chicago. Not only did I crop, enhance and caption each photo, I organized it into an album. Wish I had brought along some blank CDs so I can back them up- because now that I've put in all the time I'm sure I'll find some way to dump all this work. Anyway, now I know how I'll be spending my five days at sea between St Helena and Rio.
The only activities to break up the morning was the mandatory lifeboat drill for the benefit of the new arrivals, but we all have to participate. Then again I heard that the ship has to do it every couple of weks, but I don't recall more than one drill on the 18 day Antarctic cruise. There was a time you had to leave the assembly lounge and go up to the lifeboat deck but I think we have too many physically challenged (see I can be p.c.) to do that with any degree of efficiency. The other was an enhancement lecture- but it was Sir Jonathan with his slides and music of the great ocean liners which I had seen before.
Tried my wireless connection to the internet and couldn't connect from the Charleston lounge which is one floor below the internet room, but no signal. Find a note in the internet room that says we are having some land connection problems (whatever that means). So no blog download again. I'll probably use all my minutes on the backlog I've accumulated. Tonight is the captain's dinner-(very popular occasion as there are free drinks for 30 minutes- they offer cheap champagne but I held out for a Manhattan) and I find we have a new captain since Capetown. He's also a Scandanavian and said he spent 17 years in the Carribean and would like more adventurous cruises. He was on a cruise that went from Denmark to Iceland the year before (but Marco Polo is not repeating that cruise) and said he'd wish they'd let him take the ship to Greenland. (He's the second person I've heard say the home office doesn't listen to their choices of itinerary). The bad news that he gave us was that the Island of St Helena does not have a barrier reef and he'll have to stop in open water since there is no dock. He said the currents are tricky and the seas unpredictable so we have a 50/50 chance of landings on St Helena (and that's one of the main reasons for signing on to this voyage). To his credit, he gave all the credit for leaving Capetown port in high winds to the tug boats that got us out of there. Everyone all nicely dressed for dinner and we did get steak for a change.
Made it up to the 7:30 show and it was the Marco Polo company doing more Broadway stuff which was actualy pretty good. Looking forward to another episode of Lost and find I'll be through the series before we hit Rio. Meant to ration them, but like a good novel I just have to see what happens in the next chapter.
Full Day at Sea
Another day of sunshine as we sail up the coast on the west side of South Africa. Most of the passengers must be sleeping in as there is only a small group at the 0700 breakfast. Have decided to do something with the photos I've taken since I usually never get around to it once I get home. HP has got a nice program both for editing and organizing so I decide to give it a try. And that's how I spend the entire morning. I went back to some of the photos I still had on my duo memory stick and it happened to be the Surgical Science museum in Chicago. Not only did I crop, enhance and caption each photo, I organized it into an album. Wish I had brought along some blank CDs so I can back them up- because now that I've put in all the time I'm sure I'll find some way to dump all this work. Anyway, now I know how I'll be spending my five days at sea between St Helena and Rio.
The only activities to break up the morning was the mandatory lifeboat drill for the benefit of the new arrivals, but we all have to participate. Then again I heard that the ship has to do it every couple of weks, but I don't recall more than one drill on the 18 day Antarctic cruise. There was a time you had to leave the assembly lounge and go up to the lifeboat deck but I think we have too many physically challenged (see I can be p.c.) to do that with any degree of efficiency. The other was an enhancement lecture- but it was Sir Jonathan with his slides and music of the great ocean liners which I had seen before.
Tried my wireless connection to the internet and couldn't connect from the Charleston lounge which is one floor below the internet room, but no signal. Find a note in the internet room that says we are having some land connection problems (whatever that means). So no blog download again. I'll probably use all my minutes on the backlog I've accumulated. Tonight is the captain's dinner-(very popular occasion as there are free drinks for 30 minutes- they offer cheap champagne but I held out for a Manhattan) and I find we have a new captain since Capetown. He's also a Scandanavian and said he spent 17 years in the Carribean and would like more adventurous cruises. He was on a cruise that went from Denmark to Iceland the year before (but Marco Polo is not repeating that cruise) and said he'd wish they'd let him take the ship to Greenland. (He's the second person I've heard say the home office doesn't listen to their choices of itinerary). The bad news that he gave us was that the Island of St Helena does not have a barrier reef and he'll have to stop in open water since there is no dock. He said the currents are tricky and the seas unpredictable so we have a 50/50 chance of landings on St Helena (and that's one of the main reasons for signing on to this voyage). To his credit, he gave all the credit for leaving Capetown port in high winds to the tug boats that got us out of there. Everyone all nicely dressed for dinner and we did get steak for a change.
Made it up to the 7:30 show and it was the Marco Polo company doing more Broadway stuff which was actualy pretty good. Looking forward to another episode of Lost and find I'll be through the series before we hit Rio. Meant to ration them, but like a good novel I just have to see what happens in the next chapter.
Labels: Nairobi to Rio 2006
posted by DT at 11:46 AM
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