It’s Day 5 of our cruise and it’s Thursday. Yesterday was also Thursday. Strange thing, that International Dateline. Also strange is the realization that there is nothing but water for as far as the eye can see in every direction. We won’t reach our first destination, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, until Saturday. That’s the drawback to these repositioning cruises: you spend a lot of days at sea. We do our best to fill the time. We eat, walk laps around the deck, sit somewhere to read, hopefully in the sun, exercise, eat some more, sit somewhere else to read, go to a lecture, sit in the hot tub, eat some more, walk some more, go to a show. We nearly always take the stairs, even though we are on Deck 3 and usually end up hanging out on Decks 9 or 10, in a desperate attempt to burn off all those extra calories. Yes, the food is great, and ever abundant.
The ship is beautiful, albeit in a Disneyfied fashion. Our inside cabin, though windowless, is quite comfortable, and larger than I expected. It’s pitch black when the lights are out though. At night we leave the bathroom light on but the bathroom door closed so that a sliver of light escapes around the edges, just enough for navigation purposes when nature calls. Getting up in the morning is a challenge with the absence of natural light (or kookaburras) to announce the dawn. We find we need a wake up call.
The weather so far has gradually improved from our rainy departure in Sydney to sunny days on our two consecutive Thursdays. Temperatures have been in the 70s to low 80s (F). Until today it has been quite blustery though, with winds of 25-30 knots, enough to make those laps around the upper deck even better calorie burners. And of course those strong winds make for rough seas, the worst of which we felt last night. Fortunately those rough seas are supposed to be easing, otherwise we’ll be losing our extra calories a different way.
_
Just a bit windy.
Pool deck.
Proverbial Caribbean band.
Hopefully won't need this.
The Solarium (covered pool area).
Our little room on the seas.