March 15, 2008
Yes, I know. It has been a VERY long time since I posted. I know you see I posted one I wrote a while back saying I think I found a new way of sending the posts to myself....Well, didn't work. So here I am going to give you all the reader's digest version of what's been happening over the last month and a half! We finished our Australia/New Zealand runs and on March 1st picked up our 25 day WWII cruise.
The last few cruises in Australia/NZ were fantastic - weather was unpredictable - freezing cold one day, boiling hot the next. Overall, pretty chilly though - especially in all the New Zealand ports. Did a few tours - in Melbourne, did two - both involving Kangaroos and Koala's and seeing them. I know Koala's are called Koala bears - but I never truly thought of them that way - just thought they crawled up and down a tree. But one came down out of the tree and walked across the street in front of us. Definitely neat to see! One thing I wish I could have done again that I did when I was here 5 years ago was hold a koala. Laws have changed - in the North, very few places still allow you to hold them and in the south you are not allowed to hold them at all. Studies [apparently] show that holding koalas can take up to three years off their lives. I guess I can consider myself lucky that I was here when I was and did it then. Quite sad that I didn't get to do anything in Sydney that I wanted to do because it was always an embarkation day - so I was a bit disappointed, but hey...I'm not dead yet - maybe another opportunity will find me!
We did a few crew tours too, which are tons of fun and worth the money we have to pay for them. In Picton, New Zealand we did a crew winery tour and visited 4 different wineries. Had an absolute blast considering it was all crew and we started drinking at 10:00 a.m. The cellar master even brought along some sparkling wine for us to drink in between the first couple wineries. Let's just say there were a lot of tipsy crew! :)
In Bay of Islands, New Zealand we did a crew tour where we were picked up in a "Waka" which is a canoe that the Maori tribe used/uses. They're quite stable, but so much fun. It picked up about 14 of us and we paddled for an hour and a half (my arms, back and ass were killing me for the next four days!) all the way out to this raging waterfall. We got some really neat pictures in front of it. The guys taught us these chants that they used to keep rhythm way back when. After the waterfall, we paddled all the way back to the Maori village where we visited a Marae (the meeting place of some Maori's) and they greeted us with the traditional hongi or welcome ceremony. "Kia Ora" is the term they typically use meaning Hello/Welcome/Be well. We were exhausted and running late, so they flipped on the lovely and oh-so-wonderful honda motor to get us home! :)
The WWII cruise has been an eye opener so far. The first two ports were in New Zealand, so nothing different. After leaving New Zealand we headed to our first Island which is Noumea, New Caledonia. This Island reminded me of the Bahamas - everyone else who's been other places said Bermuda or Jamaica. Neat place. We went to a Japanese restaurant where I ate lots of raw fish for the first time and really enjoyed it. Everyone spoke French and ironically, no Japanese worked there. Very expensive there though...for example, chips in the Grocery store costs about 500 francs....you do the math! (a lot!)
Next stop: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Our first third world country stop. Everyone there (and at several of the other islands) had red teeth, which comes from these things they eat out of palm trees called "beetle nuts". They chew on them because apparently they get a certain "high" off of them, but I've also heard they they make their teeth stronger. This island was so dirty which garbage everywhere. The people (which were very friendly and pleasant) were all just hanging around - nowhere to go and nothing to do. Amazing to see and gives me a true eye opener to a culture that truly doesn't have much, but where the people are happy. Walked through town, but there was not much to see at all - and it was SO ridiculously hot, I turned around and walked back home!
Rabaul, Papau, New Guinea - very very awesome culture to observe. As soon as we got there, the volcano was very very active, which is apparently not active too frequently. The smoke was billowing out. When we got off the ship I could feel the ash hitting us like raindrops. I've never seen that before - our clothes were black, our faces were covered and my feet were so black I looked like Fred Flintsone! It was so bad around 1:30ish, that the captain revoked crew shore leave and told everyone that they had to stay inside if they weren't already off the ship - the sulfur content was so high in the air that it wasn't safe for us to be out or even out on the decks. All of the ships crew were out cleaning the ash off of the decks for hours after we left the port - and three days later, still having to scrub things because it was so think on the ship. The lido deck, where there is a glass dome over the pool, was pitch black dark because the ash was coating the glass! We walked through the market, as they called it, loaded with vegetables and baskets made out of palm leaves and banana leaves. One thing I thought was pretty cool was that the women were selling lots of rice mixed with vegetables and various stews but they didn't pack them in tupperware or anything of that nature - they took a banana leaf and made it into a pouch and that's how everything was packaged. Weather there was very hot and humid and ashy :)
We were in Yap Islands, Federal States of Micronesia today. Wasn't much to the place and pretty much everything was closed, but we went to a Filipino restaurant that was very good - a hole in the wall on the water. I enjoyed it. Some of the native dancers did come on board and do some tribal dances which was awesome to watch and the guys enjoyed it because the women did the dances with no tops :)
Tomorrow we are in Guam and I'm very excited about being there for some reason - we all are because there is a K-Mart and a Wal-Mart and shopping for tolietries has not been easy recently and I hear Asia isn't the best for them! We have a very long day though - I have to be up and at work at 6 a.m. to do traffic control for passenger immigration, then we have a full crew inspection (immigration), then the US Coast Guard is coming on board because we are in US territory and haven't been hit with an inspection for awhile. They run all of our drill with us and see that we are all following proper procedure - they ask us questions when we get to our muster stations and just make sure that we are all on the same page. We also have the health and safety inspectors possibly coming too - so it's going to be quite hectic!
I'm very excited about getting to Asia soon - I have booked crew tours in China to go see the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tien'amen square (sp?) I also booked a tour in Pusan, South Korea where we will visit a temple, a park and an international market!
We crossed the equator the night of the 12th and there is a King Neptune Ceremony associated with it - it is a ceremony for anyone who hasn't crossed it with Holland America before. Our names were submitted by our managers and I was one of the 26 picked. First we met in the spa and we were "Pollywogs". The had us all hang on to a rope as we walked around the ship in front of passengers while the band played that dun dun dun song. (Good description, eh?). We got to our Navigation Deck aft pool where the whole ceremony was set up and we were thrown in our cage where they threw hot and cold water all over us. They took us two at a time where you were "made fun of" in front of everyone for something regarding your job and then they made you Kiss a fish - mind you the fish was around 40 kg. After that you were sent to the Doctors and nurses (our cast members) where they threw spaghetti and some different cream stuff all over us. It was only a little bit that the first 24 people got on them so we thought we were in the clear. Everyone kept getting called and Whitney and I looked at each other and realized that we were going to be the last ones to go - since our department was hosting it. Just as we suspected, we were called last and had to kiss the fish for 10 seconds. We got to the tables with the food and they emptied out all the remaining buckets of food on us (which was a lot!). So we got up and then they said to sit back down and they filled the buckets up again with the crap that was all over the pool floor and dumped it again! It was tons of fun and a great time - especially since we got our favorite cellarmaster and Bar manager along with the paymaster covered in spaghetti (in their white uniforms) and then threw them in the pool! Great times - and the pictures are even better!
Best question from a passenger about crossing the equator: "Is there going to be a sign so I know exactly when we're crossing it?"
Overall, this has been a hard cruise with very difficult and grouchy guests- never do we get a please or thank you and truly i've never been verbally abused until I met a few of these passengers who think I'm dirt! They're very old - most of them veterans. We did a wreath ceremony for them in memory of those lost and lots of things - but it's all crap to them. All-in-all they just want to get some money back!
We did send out a rescue boat the other day for an unidentified object (looked like a missle) - turns out it was nothing but everyone got a good show of how our rescue team works!
I think i've written a novel and still haven't mentioned half of it! I'll have to get better at this :)
Hope everyone is doing well~!
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