2026 Sydney to Sydney Cruise

Such a wonderful fun day in West Timor- a country I’ve never heard of before. Everyone was so happy to see us and had such big smiles.

The day didn’t start off too well since we disembarked the ship just as it started to downpour. We got soaking wet even with umbrellas and I heard that someone slipped on the wet cement and broke her arm. There was some confusion as to where to get in the vans so it took a bit longer than expected to get everyone loaded up and on the road. I thought two couples were going to get into a fight in the van. Once we were on the way, everyone calmed down and were happy(mostly) to be in West Timor.

We had a police escort and 4-6 vans were in a group. The guide said they usually only get 100 or so visitors a day and today they had over 500 so they wanted to be sure everyone was safe and take care of.

Excursion description: “Drive to Baun Village (approx.1hr15min). Enjoy traditional dances and performances in Baun Palace (approx.2hrs15min). Drive to traditional smoked pork process (approx. 15min). Visit (approx.45min). Drive to Dekranasda Souvenir Center (approx.1hr). Shopping time (approx.1hr). Drive back to the port (approx. 30 min).”

The drive thru the country was amazing- it looked very much like Bali but there were no temples, shrines or offerings but rather Catholic/Protestant churches. The homes were made from concrete blocks and not wood/aluminum and had glass windows. And a number of houses had a satellite dish.

We went to the Baun Palace in the Amarasi Kingdom about 25km south of Kupang where we saw the King and his wife and one of his children. He is the 14th generation of kings. We were welcomed to the village with a welcome ceremony then we saw a traditional dance. After the dance we watched women demonstrate traditional weaving. I purchased fabric that was made with natural dyes- the king’s son said it was a very good choice.

It was pretty fun, they were taking pictures of us while we were taking pictures of them. They even had a drone for pictures and one of the young men had a stabilizer for his phone/camera. On the way out, two young women asked me if they could take a picture with me- I said yes and more happy smiles appeared.

On the way back to the ship we stopped at a pork smokehouse that is famous. Folks from the big city of Kupang come up to get the smoked pork and we had a delicious sample. It reminded me of the Texas BBQ restaurants. The owner was chewing betel nut (a widespread cultural practice with elders) which turned his teeth & gums bright red. The owner was videoing all of us in his shop and his workers were also taking pictures of us while we were taking pictures of them.

Our last stop was a cooperative weaving store. I found a piece that I really liked and purchased it. It turned out it was from the guide’s province. He took a picture of us with the fabric. The shop keepers took a picture of us too. Everyone was smiling. A wonderful end to the day.

Since I had such a great time and had great views of the Komodo dragon on the last visit to Komodo Island, I didn’t go out today. I just stayed on the ship.

I spent much of the day trying to get flights for my trip to Madagascar later this year. I’m spoiled with fast internet at home and it’s just not the same at sea in the middle of the ocean. And then I noticed my glasses had a screw was coming out. I tried to fix them but was unsuccessful. Since I had a spare pair, all is good and I’ll see if I can get them fixed when we are in Darwin in a few days.

Oceania Riviera(the ship we are on) has artwork on pretty much every wall. Quite a few pieces are frankly disturbing to me. I did like most of the glass work that is around.

Our ship holds 1250 passengers and has 15 decks, 2 regular dining rooms and 4 specialty dining rooms- Jacques (French), Tuscana (Italian), Red Ginger(Asian Fusion), Polo’s (Steakhouse). It also has a pool, hot tub, spa (with another hot tub), pickle-ball court, putting green and more.

Today is the end of one of the cruise segments so lots of folks are leaving the ship. There were lots of folks in line with their luggage waiting to get off but they had a shorter line for those of us with excursions. Caused some tensions with the folks in the long line.

Jennifer and I decided to go on the “Balinese Arts & Crafts” excursion so we could enjoy some of the fabric craft. We ended up on separate busses going to the same places and we had fun when we got back showing off all the goodies we had purchased.

The excursion description: “Drive to Bona Village (approx. 1hr). Visit (approx.30min). Drive to Kemenuh Village (approx. 15min). Visit (approx.30min). Drive to Batuan Village (approx.30min). Visit (approx.30min). Drive to Celuk Village (approx. 15min). Visit (approx.30min). Drive to Tohpati Village (approx. 15min). Visit (approx.30min). Drive back to the port (approx.45min).”

We visited craft centers for batik, painting, silver(purchased a necklace), wood carving and bamboo furniture.

some odd & interesting information about Bali from the various tour guides on my excursions

• Kids are named by birth order- there are four names. A prefix is added to indicate if the child is a girl or boy
• If you have more than four children they get the birth order name with a suffex added.
• Every house has a temple and every village has 3 temples so there are more temples than houses in Bali
• Bali uses it’s own language as well as the Indonesian language
• Bali is 90 percent Hindu while the rest of Indonesia is Muslim. The Hinduism that is practiced in Bali isn’t quite the same as practiced in India- in particular Balinese will eat cows
• Indonesia has the fourth largest population- after India, China and US
• over half the income in Bali is from tourism
• About 10 years ago the government changed and there is now an emphasis on education. Almost every village has a free school now where before the schools were a distance apart and it was expensive to go to school
• Very few go to University- it’s expensive to live away from home and go to school. They only stay one or two years and likely study hospitality(to support all the tourists) or Mechanics(to service all the scooters)

Today we are on the southern section of Bali and my excursion was called “Discover Bali” and my second excursion was a cultural show that included a fire dance.

This is the description of the “Discover Bali” excursion from the Shore Excursion handout. “Drive to Tohpati Village (approx.30min). Visit to see the batik artistry (approx.30min). Drive to Barong Dance (approx.30min). Watch the performance (approx.45min). Drive to Singapadu Village (approx. 15min). Visit Balinese House Compound (approx.30min). Drive to Singapadu Temple (Pura Puseh) (approx.10min). Visit (approx.20min). Drive to Bali Bird Park (approx. 15min). Visit (approx. 1hr). Drive back to the port (approx.45min).”

The drive around the area was as interesting as the stops. There were little shops all over and each would have certain items for sale. I saw shops for Pilates, grass(lawn), wood furniture, pottery, rock slabs, dirt, all sorts of fruit, very colorful drinks in 5 gallon buckets, all sorts of food and much more. There were lots and lots of motorcycles on the roads. Temples and shires with their offerings were everywhere. Telephone/electric wires were also everywhere.

Many of the statues in the shrines are ‘dressed’ in black in white checked fabric. The black & white checks symbolize balance. The guide gave us some examples of balance:

• black & white
• positive & negative
• plus & minus
• right & wrong
• ying & yang
• left & right
• good &. bad
• push & pull

One of the villages we past thru is known for it’s stone carvings- there were many, many different figures but the one that surprised me was that they had Moai. Now that I’ve been in Rapi Nui (Easter Island) I seem to find Moai everywhere- or maybe it’s because we’re in the islands that gave rise to the ocean travelers that ended up in Rapi Nui.

On the first excursion, we stopped at the Bali Bird Park, a Batik factory, a Dance performance, a Balinese House compound and a temple that dates back to the 15th century and is still operational. The bird park had a komodo dragon- they are much scarier in the wild.

On the second excursion we stopped at a silver shop (where I a purchased a plain silver necklace) and the Bali Bird park(again) where we had dinner and watched the cultural show and fire dance.

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.