World cruise 21

February 16

Day 42, and it began entirely too early. We were up later than usual last night while Margaret recounted her visit to the little blue penguins.

Today we had a tour to the Cleland Animal Park with a stop at Mt. Lofty for a look at the view of the city and other facilities. This time I did get off the bus, although I didn't trek out to see the view of Adelaide. I probably should have as the day was absolutely perfect. It was clear as a bell and in the low 70s all day.

Cleland Animal Park is wonderful. As with most zoos and animal parks, I could easily spend all day, or even several days there. This one was particularly nice with huge old trees, broad lawns, and in some areas, kangaroos, bandicoots, etc. loose for visitors to interact with. We got small bags of wild animal feed and set off for the koala exhibit as it was time for photo ops (which we were just a tad too late for.) En route, we gave a looksee to the Tasmanian Devil and the Goana exhibits.

While waiting in line at the koala photo op, several very greedy little bandicoots were happily cadging handouts from those in line. This first photo is a pair of bandicoot butts. Too cute!

Then a small kangaroo muscled in on the action.

Later Margaret had a conversation with this larger kangaroo, but it must have already had its lunch because it wasn't much interested in the food she offered.

Finally, here is a neat photo that Margaret took of an almost full-grown joey and its mom.

When we got back, the cargo ship that had been unloading Japanese cars all day yesterday was sailing away. I'm sorry I didn't get a photo as they are a very unique shape: twin-hulled at the bottom and a giant slab-sided box above. It left not quite as big a sea of cars as I saw in Ashdod, Israel in 2010, but if you count the ones under the green tent, it's a lot. (I like that they left the Norfolk Island Pines in the middle.)

February 17

There were some pretty high winds as we left Adelaide and headed across theBbight toward Albany which is just about at the southwest corner of the continent. By bedtime last night (which is rather a "moveable feast" due to the on-going process of turning the clocks back ... at present we are 30 minutes off, but I'm not quite sure why), things had gone beyond bouncy to definite rock and roll. That continues today under cloudy skies. At his noonish update, the Captain said that this bouncy business (my words, not his) was due to a monster storm about 800 miles south of us. Sure enough by late afternoon things were back to being able to walk a straight line down the corridor.

My watch died this afternoon. Too many time changes, I guess. It's a good thing that I had bought a cheap watch on board a couple of weeks ago when I thought the band on the old WalMart special was going to break. Tonight we turn our watches back one and a half hours. I'm glad they give us little notes about these time changes, especially the weird ones.

At dinner there were Mardi Gras masks for everyone and all the staff were dressed in purple, green and gold sequined vests and most had on jester hats. There was going to be a Mardi Gras party up on deck 9 forward in the Crows Nest. But since a) it probably involved loud music and alcohol, b) our cabin is way aft and c) the ship began rocking again, we gave that one a miss.