2025 Long Cruise

Today Jennifer and I went on the excursion to Yala National Park in Sri Lanka hoping to see the tiger. It was wonderful even tho we didn’t see the Sri Lanka tiger. We were in the park at mid-day and the tigers are usually, if at all, seen in the early morning or late afternoon. We did see many other birds and animals. Other folks on the tour said it should have been called a ‘birding tour’ because of all the birds they saw.

It was a two hour bus ride to the park and then we had a 3 hour safari and lunch before heading back to the ship.

Jennifer and I ended up in our very own safari vehicle- there were no other passengers except the man who was in the top level of the tour company that arranged the safaris. He was good at spotting animals. All the other jeeps had 5 or 6 people each. I originally went into a jeep that had 3 people expecting that there would be 5 when Jennifer and I joined but then I realized another person was joining so I left the vehicle and went to one that was empty. Jennifer and I sat in the jeep wondering and wondering if we could possibly end up being the only ones in the jeep.

One disadvantage of the jeep we had was it was noisy– every 30 seconds or so a metal piece would clang against another piece of metal very loudly. It was so loud the driver couldn’t hear us when we asked him to stop for an animal.

The other odd part of this safari is that each vehicle is allotted a certain amount of time before they must leave the park consequently the jeeps drove very fast. Once we were stopped looking at something when another jeep came up and their driver berated ours for stopping and made ours start driving again. Between the noise, rough roads and speedy travel, it was the first time ever I was glad to end a safari drive.

Today I went on an excursion to a tea and rubber plantation. It was fun. We drove about two hours to get to the plantation where we had tea and cake before seeing the rubber trees and going to the tea factory. The drive thru the villages and countryside was fascinating.

We docked at a 750 acre working port and the exit from the pier was 5 kilometers from the ship. There was a shuttle bus that took us to the entrance because there were lots of trucks carrying containers along the way. The port handles 70 million metric tons of cargo a year.

Women are paid 1000 Sri Lanken rupees(about $3.50) for each 20kg of leaves they pick. Ninety percent of the tea grown is export and not used locally.

Random tidbits from Colombo

• In 1972 they became a republic and changed the name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka
• The population is 22 million- mainly Buddhists. But it’s a multi-ethnic and multi-religion country. It has 90+ percent literacy with free education until university and the life expectancy is 70-75 years
• Two years ago they had financial issues but they are recovering but 1 million people are below poverty.

We arrived to Colombo about noon and my excursion was in the evening. Jennifer and I wanted to find some fabric and went out to take the shuttle to town but ran into some friends and a guest speaker and decided to take a taxi together. The guest speaker was dropped off at the hotel/mall and we directed the taxi driver to the fabric store Jennifer found on google.

We didn’t find the fabric store but the taxi driver took us to a large market and said “just go down that alley and the store is right there”. We didn’t want to get out as we were worried we’d get lost and besides we did not have the necessary currency to make any purchases. We directed the taxi driver to take us back to the ship- he drove thru the market- it was fascinating. Cars and people were moving right next to each other and vendors had many, many items for sale. And we did see lots of vendors selling fabric!

They are celebrating the full moon festival today- it happens every full moon- so many of the stores were closed for the holiday. Sri Lanka has many many holidays as they celebrate the Christian holidays, the Hindu holidays, the Muslim holidays….

After we got back, we celebrated by having tea. We all wore our elephant clothing we got at the last port. I tried to find the same dress as the others but in a different color but couldn’t find one.

My evening excursion included a dance show and we got to drive by the large lotus blossom cell tower that has different colored lights. And I got to try delicious Arrack- a local drink. Arrack is an alcohol made from coconut that has been fermented. It didn’t taste like coconut but tasted similar to a margarita.

Today I took another ‘highlights of’ tour: Highlights of Cochin. We visited a Jewish community, visited Mattancherry Palace, visited an art gallery featuring telepathic art(have no idea what that is!), saw the Chinese cantilevered fishing nets and took a short cruise thru the harbor.

At one point in the tour as we were walking on the street to the harbor cruise I felt like the pied piper. I had purchased something from a street vendor so all the vendors were following me asking me to purchase something.

At many of the places/countries we have visited on this cruise, the number ONE industry is tourism. Not only were they sick but they lost significant income during the COVID years. They have all said they are slowly recovering and were happy to see us. They get money from tourists from hotel stays(hotel & staff get money), transportation(drivers, mechanics, tour guides get money), food(grocery stores and restaurants and their staff get money) and from selling souvenirs(shop workers, souvenir makers get money).

We had to remove our shoes in the temples/churches we visited today- not for religious reasons but to preserve the old tile floors!

There were motorcycles all over the place- some carried 1 passenger and some carried more. The most I saw were 3 passengers. They also carried produce, lumber, pipes, sheet metal or whatever else needed transporting. Everyone drove motorcycles- young, old, men, women. Some wore helmets and some didn’t.

We had some rain today after we got back to the ship and were having our high tea.

Today we arrive at our first port in India. I took the Highlights of Mangalore tour and visited Gokarnanatha temple, an Artisan Village, St. Aloysius Chapel and the Belmont House.

The first thing I saw as we were leaving the port was a cow on the pier!

The Gokarnanatha temple was painted in gold paint and had many statues of Hindu gods and goddesses and a couple of cow statues.

On the way to the artisan village, we stopped at a pharmacy for a couple on board the bus- they wanted to buy cheap medicine. It was significantly cheaper then the cost in Canada where they live. I was OK with that except they bought every single pill the pharmacy had which means the locals would not be able to get any until the next shipment.

The artisan village had demonstrations of how folks historically made items such as coconut oil(using oxen), baskets(using reeds), cloth(made with loom controlled by hand & foot) and flattened rice

The catholic St. Aloysius Chapel has fresco painted walls painted by an Italian artist and is remarked to be like the Sistine Chapel. The ceiling isn’t fresco painting but rather oil on canvas. The chapel is surrounded by St. Aloysius College with it’s 14,000 students from Kindergarten to University age.

Belmont house is a private home that is still in use and lived in.

Today is a sea day and another time change. The time change is 30 minutes forward. Time changes actually go quite well other than we have no idea how far off we are from our home time. We can look up the home time quickly tho.

We are so close to the equator the sunrise and sunset are almost exactly 12 hours apart! I have a sunrise picture at 6:47am and a sunset picture at 6:33pm.

We had another country fair where each department mans a game booth. Some of the games are the same as prior country fairs and some are different. Passengers play for tickets that are entered into a raffle. If you do well in the game you get multiple tickets otherwise you get one for participating.

For the boutique booth, they bring out 10 or so items and you’re to guess the total amount it would be to purchase those items. I have never even gotten close to guessing the correct amount. When they look at my guess, they actually say ‘you’re not even close’!

Jennifer does quite well with the destinations game booth where they have 9 pictures and you guess the location of each picture. She got all correct today.

Neither Jennifer nor I have won a raffle prize yet- no matter how many tickets we have. The fun thing is we now know so many people on board, we know the folks who are winning!

ANSWERS:
1- St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City Rome Italy
2- Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg Russia
3- Teotihuacan, Mexico City Mexico
4- Château Frontenac, Quebec, Canada
5- Ephesus, Turkey
6- Moai statues, Easter Island
7- Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy France
8- Taj Mahal, Agra India
9- Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Japan

Unfortunately no snorkeling today. I just didn’t want to take a chance that it wouldn’t be as good as yesterday. Instead I took a tender into the pier/town and walked around to go shopping with a fellow cruise passenger. A gentleman helped us cross the street by making sure traffic stopped, then he took us to his shop. Kinda strange to follow a stranger into a building and up the back stairs not knowing where we were going. I didn’t end up buying anything in his shop and went back outside where another gentleman took us to his shop! All in all we were escorted to three of the four shops we visited. We did make purchases at most of the shops we visited.

On the way back to the tender, we stopped at the local fish market on the pier to see the stingrays. The stingrays eat the fish trimmings after the fishermen clean the fish.

Yesterday was Ramadan in Maldives so many of the shops were closed and there were very few people on the streets. It was a new experience for me to hear the bells ring for prayer.

What an amazing day today- we went to the island resort of Adaaran Vadoo to spend the day snorkeling. We took a tender to the dock and then another boat for a 30 minute ride to the resort. When we arrived at the resort, I asked about snorkeling and got a puzzled look but then they said I could rent snorkeling gear from ‘that building over there’. At ‘that building’ I rented a mask, snorkel and fins and asked about snorkeling. They pointed out a football sized area right off the beach that they said would be good but we had to say inside the area marked by buoys. If you went outside the buoys there was a strong current and many boats.

I wasn’t convinced that would be fun snorkeling and asked about day trips. The only one they had that got back in time for us to make it back to the ship included a hour boat ride, an hour snorkeling and an hour boat ride back plus it required 4 people in order to do the trip. I declined and was bummed that I’d be snorkeling in such a small area.

When I got into the water, and even before I put on my mask, I saw colorful fish! I snorkeled out to the buoys where there was a big drop off and even more colorful fish! I spent an hour and a half snorkeling, had a rest and lunch, came back and snorkeled over an hour more and then rested and did a final hour snorkeling before we had to leave. It was amazing- the best snorkeling I’ve done. The water wasn’t cold and it was so easy to just walk into the water from the beach. Just wonderful.

We had our Sing Out Loud concert today. We have been learning our songs on the sea days since the end of February. We sang seven(7) songs at the concert. It was lots of fun. Since I”m tall I get to stand in the back so there are no good photos of me.

On a non-related topic…. Sometimes a pier does not support a cruise ship- maybe it’s not big enough, there are too many other ships in port or the water isn’t deep enough. When this happens, the cruise ship will drop anchor further away and passengers/crew will take a tender to the pier. A tender is a small boat- usually the ship lifeboats- that is used to carry the passengers from the ship to the pier.

Our lifeboats hold 150 people but we usually have no more than 80 or so passengers/crew in them when it’s used as a tender. Sometimes there are only one or two passengers in a tender. More than one tender is used and the tenders go back and forth while we are the port. The passengers have to know what time the last tender leaves the pier. If you miss the last tender you can’t get back to the ship.

Moving from the ship to the tender can be a bit tricky if the seas are moving as both the ship and the tender are moving independently and you need to step from one to the other.

Because my ear was hurting, today I found a new spot on the ship- the medical center. The diagnosis was ear infection- not too surprising after the fun snorkeling a few days ago! A little antibiotics ear drops and I”m good as new.

I had a massage today just before I went to the medical center and when they took my blood pressure it was lower than it’s been for quite some time! Guess those massages really work.

We crossed the equator again today- this time from south to north.