Monday, October 27

The “elevator carillon” continues today. Those of you who have been on cruises probably know what I mean. For those who are non-cruisers, I am referring to motion of the ship that causes the elevators to clank against the sides of their shafts. It doesn’t take a whole lot of motion to make this happen, but we have enough out here on the Indian Ocean. The water is a deep deep blue with only a very few whitecaps. The clouds look like cotton balls or white cotton candy and almost close enough to touch. Out on deck in the open, the wind is enough to blow your hair to Madagascar! The air temperature is noticeably cooler than it has been, and the humidity is a lot lower.

Indian Ocean
stretches away...no whitecaps
only one ship...ours.

I forgot to mention that on the tender dock in Bali coming back to the ship I met a couple from Charlottesville! I need to find out their names again, but they live at Westminster Canterbury! The world of long cruises grows even smaller!

Tuesday, October 28

All the way from Seattle to Thailand we gained an hour every so often to where we were about 12 hours ahead of the eastern US. Now we’re headed back the other way and are beginning to lose an hour every few nights. We now bid each other goodnight by saying “Sleep fast.”

We are sailing off the west coast of Australia at present, but pretty far out. The Indian Ocean is still giving us quite a ride today. It’s bouncy even down here on Deck 3, and more so on the upper decks. Well, a nap during the day does help make up for the short nights. This evening things were even bouncier...in addition to pitch and roll, we got the occasional “hula” movement which was quite disconcerting.

Tomorrow we reach Freemantle, Australia which is the port for Perth. I leave the ship there for a five day/four night overland trip to Ayers Rock (Uluru) and Alice Springs, eventually rejoining the ship in Melbourne on November 2. So I won’t be posting on this blog until at least November 3 or 4. Meanwhile, Happy Halloween!