Day at Sea the Puerto Princesa Palawan

 We had a good day at sea as we did well in trivia and got a couple of double point answers.

We had booked a trip to go to Honda Bay.The coach ride was 30 minutes then we went on a very old boat only 14 of us to Luli Island where we swam for an hour and then to Cowrie Island where i swam and keith had a ten dollar massage. Not a brilliant trip but nice enough.

In the evening had dinner with the Staff Captain Ivo from Bulgaria 

Two days at sea no and then we fly home from Hong Kong. I will report about trivia though

Udjund Padang Sulawesi

 Today we were docked in Makassar and we assuemd it was a small town but it was quite a large town. it was so hot we decided walking everywhere was not sensible so we hired a taxi.

Unfortunately we did not have a good taxi driver like in Bali; this one couldnt drive properly we had no air conditioning so were absolutely sweltering!

we first went to Fort Rotterdam as the indonesian islands were owned by the Dutch until the early 1940's. We walked around the grounds not much to see excpet the buildings. From there we went to Paotere Harbour which was suposed to be a picturesque harbour...in a word NO! Firstky driver went to wrong part of Paotere which was really third world. I showed him a picture from the internet so we got to the harbour but it was nothing like the picturesque harbour we had been told about.

We then showed him the mosque of 99 towers we wanted to see but the traffic was so so bad we gave up and said back to the ship. Luckily the road he then went down took us to a view of the mosque from the other side of the water. So tick all places done!

We now have three days at sea and not much time left on the ship.

Komodo Island

 Next stop was Komodo Island and we were going on a 'hike' to see the Komodo Dragons

The 'hike' was defintely a very slow walk which took an hour and a half and we had walked just over a mile! we did see the Komodo Dragons but they felt domesticated and not wild as we had been led to believe. A tick from the bucket list but disappointing. There were two many in our group and what they charged for the tour was in fact daylight robbery!! It was very hot on the walk and we drank plenty of water. The dragons can live up to 60 years of age and they kill things by biting them and leaving their bacteria in them. They eat everything including the bones.

We came back on board at lunchtime and sat in the sun and read. 

Bali

Today was Bali and we had decided we would go into the city of Denpaser as we had never been there. The idea was to walk around the city after we had taken a taxi there. However luckily for us we had a lovely taxi driver who realised we could not really walk around the town so he drove us to the sites we wanted to see let us wander from there.

The traffic was horrendous and trying to cross the road was very dangerous. We went to a couple of temples and a park; he also took us to the market where he would buy his produce.

I think if we come again we would go to the beach or stay on board!

 

Day at Sea and Lombok

To be completely honest when we knew it was 45 minutes into the town in a taxi we decided to stay on board and enjoy an empty ship.

In the evening we had a lovely dinner with Natalie, Aisha and Sean from the Soul Waves and another couple from Canada we had a really lovely evening. The entertainment tonight was an Emily Genilou who was a violinist, piano player and vocalist and she was very good.

Three days at sea through the Kimberleys and then Darwin

We had three days at sea, however a lot of the time was spent sailing through The kimberleys as scenic cruising. As they had had so much rain recently everything was incredibly green.

Trivia obviously but doing badly this leg! Paella served on deck was delicious!

The most amzing sunsets ever the whol sky becomes involved and pictures do not do it justice.

We reached Darwin and got off for a walk. We then went to some WW2 tunnels and began to learn how Darwin was bombed in the second world war.

We wandered around the town and bicentennial park which was nice and then went to the Royal Flying Doctors Museum where we learnt even more about 19th February 1942 from virtual reality screening and holograms.

We felt we had leanrt a lot about how Australia had suffered in this region in the hands of the Japanese.

There were lots of homeless aborigines in Darwin which I found sad.

Day at Sea then Broome

 Nothing to report regarding our day at sea.

Got to Broome and they have a new floating dock which is amazing in itself. We had decided after the Exmouth issue that we would go on tour. We went on an adventure tour on a boat across Roebuck Bay to see some fossilised dinosaur footprints.

Miles explained about the footprints and they have found so much evidence of different dinosaurs in this area 22 different species currently. The closest to that is 4.

Roebuck bay has the most amazing tides. We got on the boat by walking a couple of feet from the beach in knee high water. By the time we returned we had to walk over 300 metres to get to the beach. The crew were fabulous full of knowledge and it was a really interesting trip.

We then decided to go into Broome on the shuttle and to be honest there is not a lot there, Keith went to a bar to have a drink i did not wish to go inside...that says it all really! We did go to the lookout and look at the tide when is was all the way out and could see the creek we had gone down earlier that day that now had NO water. 

St Patricks Day Deck Party which was fun.