Diane

Today we visited the northern side of Bali. Most cruises only go to the southern part of Bali. My excursion today was “Rice Terrace, Temple Visit and Organic Farm Village”. I was particularly interested in the rice terraces as I’ve seen many beautiful pictures of them.

This is the description of the excursion from the Shore Excursion handout: “Drive to the Kekeran Rice Terrace (approx. 1hr). Visit (approx.30min). Drive to Bengkel Village (approx. 15min). Visit the Organic Farm, Pak Oles (approx.45min). Drive to Banjar Village (approx. 1hr). Visit the Buddhist Temple of Brahmavihara Arama (approx.45min). Drive to a restaurant (approx.30min). Lunch (approx. 1hr). Drive to Krisna Oleh Oleh souvenir shop (approx. 15min). Free time to shop for souvenirs (approx.30min). Drive back to the pier (approx.1hr).” They don’t necessarily follow the order but they do stop at each of the stops.

It’s been warm, cloudy and humid most of this trip- which makes sense as we are here in the rainy season.

Before I went on the excursion, I visited the medical center because of a persistent cough. I’ve been coughing so much that last night I left the room and spent the night on the pool chairs and in the library so Jennifer could sleep. Other than the cough I felt fine.

The doctor listened to my lungs and ordered an x-ray to be sure everything was ok. It was kinda expensive but luckily showed no trouble other than the start of pneumonia. She gave me antibiotics, steroids and codine and the ‘ok’ to go on today’s excursion. Almost immediately after taking the medicine, I was coughing less and tonight I hardly coughed at all when I went to bed.

Today I got to see a Komodo Dragon in the wild. It’s been on my list of things to see for quite a while. I thought I’d see one laying around not moving but instead I got to see one walk by me on the trail and another two that were starting to wrestle with each other, plus another four or five that were eating and resting. Komodo dragons will eat anything- even other komodo dragons. The baby/young komodo dragons climb into trees for protection against the larger ones. They stay there almost two years. They are not toxic until they start to eat meat.

We took a tender to the pier where we met our guides- one was the leader who spoke English and explained about the Komodo dragons, the other two each had a stick with two prongs at the end of it- they were to prevent the Komodo Dragons from getting too close to us. You are not allowed to walk in the park without a guide. You can’t even get off the pier without a guide.

We walked into the forest on a path about three feet wide. As we were leaving the staging area, a komodo dragon walked by and onto the path we were going to take. Then shortly after we started walking on the path, we heard a shout and discovered a komodo dragon was walking on the path behind us and it was catching up. The guides kept saying “move off the path”, “move off the path”- everyone was so excited to see and photograph the komodo dragon they weren’t listening very well. We did all get off the trail in time for the komodo dragon to walk past us- it wanted to get closer to us but the guides with the sticks poked at it enough that it stayed away.

Then we saw a number of komodo dragons eating and resting. The guide offered to take my photo in front of the dragons. He said “sit over there” but there was no way I was sitting on the ground so I crouched down where he pointed. Then all of a sudden, I heard shuffling behind me and another guide was saying “move away”, “move away”. I jumped up and moved away! Then turned around to see that two komodo dragons were wrestling behind me.

Jennifer didn’t want to get close to them but was very excited that she saw one from the ship with her binoculars.

After the komodo dragon visit, we got on a small boat and were taken to a pink sand beach so we could play in the water and snorkel. It was wonderful and I enjoyed it very much other than the small fright I had when I realized I was moving in an ocean current away from the beach. Luckily the current wasn’t very strong, I noticed quickly and was able to get back to calm waters. Later in the day the guides had to rescue two different people from the same current because they didn’t notice and got too far out.

We had an eclair afternoon tea for today’s sea day. And Jennifer and I signed up for another cruise! Can’t believe it. We’ve signed up for the Lima, Peru to Buenos Aires, Argentina cruise going in January 2027. Should be fun.

Today we are in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. I took a tour to the Territory Wildlife park- the interesting thing about this ‘zoo’ is that it only has animals from the Northern Territory. Australia is made up of regions/governing bodies and the Northern Territory is one of them.

The Territory Wildlife park was very nice even tho I only went to four exhibit areas. It had rained recently and the paths and woods were wet but thankfully there were very few mosquitos about. It was very warm and humid tho.

The Monsoon forest exhibit had lots of aviaries with colorful birds and some of them were in larger aviaries so they the photos don’t show a cage. The Billabog area had the Australian Pelican. The Woodland Walk had wallabies and wallaroos (no koalas as they aren’t in the Northern Territory). The wallabies let some folks pet them but I just watched them- they sure move funny. The last exhibit I went to was the nocturnal house- it had lots of poisonous animals so I didn’t say too long. I did really like two of the nocturnal birds- Tawny frogmouth and Australian Owlet Nightjar.

Interesting notes about Darwin/Australia:

• Darwin has been completely destroyed a number of times and then rebuilt- twice from cyclones and twice from bombing by the Japanese in World War II.
• There are so many crocodiles and sea serpents in the oceans and stream that folks (other than tourists) only swim in man-made swimming areas.
• Tourism is the fourth biggest industry in Australia with Natural Gas being number one
• 85 percent of the world’s mangoes come from Australia and they are all hand picked! Since Australia is so big the. season starts up north and continues throughout the year down into the south.
• Australia is the largest exporter of live camels to Saudi Arabia. The camels were used in Australia as freight carries and then when the railways and roads were built, the camels were left on their own so there is a large wild camel population in Australia. The camels in Saudi Arabia were decimated by war and upheaval and the gene pool had been reduced so they are importing camels from Australia to rebuild their camel population.

Another quiet day at sea. Today we were invited to have lunch with Ludmilla, the ship’s General Manager. We were touched that she invited us as we met her on our long cruise over a year ago. It was very special as it was only the three of us at the lunch table and we had a nice time..

Then for late afternoon we were invited, as were all Oceania club members, to a cocktail party sponsored by Ludmilla.

I’m feeling better today- still coughing but no sore throat and coughing less.

Nothing much happened on our sea day today other than a wonderful wine event. We purchased the “Sommelier’s choice wine tasting lunch”. We had 6 courses and each had a special wine paired with it plus a welcome glass of sparkling wine. We were pretty full when we were finished.

I’m feeling under the weather- the sore throat I thought was from all the snorkeling apparently was really a sore throat and I”m coughing a lot. Many other folks on board have been coughing too.

Today we went on a short river cruise up the Endeavour River at Cooktown, Australia. Our ship put down an anchor in the bay. It was about a 30 minute tender ride into Cooktown and then we walked a short distance to hop onto the little river boat. The Captain did a nice job with his talk as he included history, some local news and a bit of comedy. We got a bottle of cold water right as we boarded, then about half way thru the river cruise we were served cake and iced coffee or iced tea. It was delicious.

I wasn’t going to go but then Jennifer got on the 7am tour so I booked it too. Thank goodness we were out early as it is very hot and humid and it really would not have been much fun to be out later. When we returned from the river cruise it was already too hot for us so we went directly back to the nice cool, air conditioned ship.

It wasn’t intentional but this year we’ve visited a number of places Captain Cook sailed. Captain James Cook (1728–1779) was a renowned British Royal Navy captain, explorer, and cartographer. He is famous for charting New Zealand, mapping the Australian east coast, discovering the Hawaiian Islands, and being the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. He made 3 voyages each about 3 years long. Apparently he originally got along well with natives on his journeys but as he aged he treated them worse and worse and finally he was killed by natives in Hawaii.

Another wonderful day of snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. Yesterday I went to the inner reef, today I went to the outer reef.

This time there were probably 120 of us and we took the tender to the shore, then walked down to the pier and boarded the boat. About 30 minutes later we docked at a pontoon- in the middle of nowhere- that was setup for snorkeling. They had an area for snorkeling roped off that was over a reef. They also provided a mask, fins, snorkels, ‘sting suit’ and lunch.

We had more good weather and It was another wonderful snorkel- lots of colorful coral, many more species of fish than yesterday. Since there were so many people on the catamaran we didn’t have a very good seat on the catamaran on the way to the pontoon and it took longer to get all our equipment. Therefore I wasn’t convinced that the snorkeling would be good but it was wonderful.

It was also nice because Jennifer went too.

Today I got to go snorkeling in the Great Battier Reef- one of the expected highlights of the trip. It was pretty amazing. We were in the Whitsundays an archipelago of 74 islands and we went snorkeling at two different spots.

We got onto the catamaran directly from the ship; there were about 60 people onboard. After about an hour and a half, we got to Luncheon Cove where we snorkeled for about an 1 1/2 hours. Then we moved to the back side of Caiman Island where we snorkeled another 1 1/2 hours or so. Then we boated a little ways further to another cove and had lunch on the boat. After lunch we boated an hour and a half back to our ship.

The water was pleasant and the tour company provided mask, fins and snorkels. They also provided a ‘sting suit’ since it’s jellyfish season. I was very happy to learn that the jellyfish that was right next to me was safe and wasn’t a stinging one. I was also happy when the snorkel guide asked if everything was ok when I gasped when I saw the jellyfish next to me. He said since I could see it, it was fine- which wasn’t as comforting as it might have been since I realized I wouldn’t see the jellyfish that could sting me.

There were so many different types of coral and fish during the snorkeling.

All the crew said how lucky we were because we had good weather.- clear and not super hot. Apparently the last time they went out the visibility was 3 feet. We could also have had rain since we’re in the rainy season.

Before you could snorkel they did a risk assesment and asked folks to give their swimming level in a rank of 1-5; where 1 was an Olympic athlete and 5 was you sink like a stone in the water. I picked 4 because I can float and move around in the water but can’t swim against a current. The 80 year old next to me picked 2! When they said I had to have a life vest I asked if I could change to a 3 but they said no. When I was out snorkeling I was happy to have the life vest since I could float without moving anything.

When I got back, Jennifer and I went to a Moet Chandon champagne tasting event and had three full glasses of champagne. It was extra fun because there were only 4 of us in the tasting. The tasting area was setup for about 20- don’t know when they were or if there were even that many signed up.

Another at sea day- it’s sunny and hot today. When the captain gave the weather report today, he said look outside- it will be just like today for the rest of the cruise- hot and humid.

Jennifer and I both went to the Coffee, Chat and Needlepoint session and picked up a project to work on while on the cruise..