Another late morning and breakfast at the hotel. We packed up our bags and stored them at the reception area since we had to checkout by 10am and could not board the ship until 3pm.
We found some nice comfortable chairs in the downstairs lobby and worked on our photos. About 1pm we went out for lunch at a little place Tibor found yesterday on his walk. We had to be back in time for Tibor to get his massage at 2pm.
A little before 3pm we hauled our bags over to the check-in station. We were allowed to check in between 3pm and 4pm. All they did was to check our passport name against a list of passengers to verify we were on the ship. Then we had to haul our bags all the way down to the end of the pier- what a pain. It was very windy and my duffel bag kept falling off my rolling bag and I ended up carrying it. Then I had to stop and change hands/sides a couple of times before we (finally) got to the ramp to board the ship. At this point, the company collected the bags to delivery them to our cabin! Sure wish they could have collected them before we had to walk down the entire pier.
We have a very nice room with a tiny balcony. I love the balcony. We are on a lower deck and are relatively close to the water and have great views out the cabin windows. If we see something we want to photograph, we can just open the door to our balcony and have a clear view.
We did our safety drill, listened to a welcome message, had a captions cocktail, late dinner and then met for our Kayak Safety Briefing. There are 20 spots available for Kayakers and about 15 people had signed up. They broke us up into two groups. If the conditions are good at each stop, one group can go kayaking. The groups then rotate. We have 8 people in our group. The safety briefing was a bit scary because it listed all the things that could go wrong. Many folks had lots of kayaking experience and I have very little.
Here’s how a kayaking excursion would go:
- Zodiacs with excursion crew is sent out to scout the area for a good spot to kayak.
- If all is ok, the kayaks are removed from the ship and attached by rope to a zodiac. If they can’t find a good spot to kayak, the kayak excursion is cancelled and we go on the regular excursion.
- This zodiac is with the kayak group the entire time we are kayaking. It’s a safety measure and can collect us if the conditions change for the worse and we need to get back to the ship.
- We get into the Zodiac pulling the kayaks and zodiac to the spot where we will kayak
- We load onto the kayak directly from the zodiac and start kayaking
- After about 1 1/2 to 2 hours of kayaking, we re-board the zodiac (directly from the kayak)
- If we have time, we are taken to the same landing site all the other passengers have enjoyed and get to enjoy it for short time otherwise we are taken back to the ship
Dinner is plated and you select what you want from a menu. Breakfast and lunch are buffet.
