Month: November 2009

Contributed by: filbert Thursday, November 19 2009 @ 07:37 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Six

November 9 (Monday, Day 12, Port Victoria and Praslin, Seychelles, continued) –

Snorkeling at Coral Island:

Ray, just as soon as we got into the water

More after the jump . . .

Parrotfish?

Trumpetfish

Things started a bit slowly, actually

Don’t stand on the coral!

Parrotfish?

Rush hour

Phil likes the yellow and blue fish for some reason

These guys were out in force, too

The Death Turtle

Phil got very excited about seeing the turtle and tried to mimic its behavior by breathing seawater. (ed: Turtles breathe air. So does Phil. Turtle obviously thought “stop breathing my air!” Phil, being ecologically minded, foolishly tried to obey the Death Turtle.) He quickly found out that humans are not supposed to breathe water. He then abruptly said “I want to go back to the boat” so we started swimming back to the catamaran.

Drama. Tension. Danger!

We got along side of the catamaran (the ladder was in the front so we still had ½ of the length to go) and he stopped and reached up to grab one of the plastic/rubber bumper things since he was really starting to cough and gag. Janet yelled up to one of the crew to throw down a life ring and he did. Janet managed to get the horseshoe life preserver thing around Phil’s chest and Janet was kind of pulling him toward the front of the catamaran. By then another guest swam up and took off Phil’s mask and helped. Phil was okay other than he kept coughing and spitting. Janet was quite worried since his spit was red and bloody. We finally got him to the ladder and he scooted up the steps.

Death Turtle vs. Snookums

Janet then went up and realized that Phil had a bloody nose. That relieved her a great deal since that explained all of the bloody spit that he was coughing out! He was able to stand up after 1 minute and other than continuing to cough for the rest of the day, he survived. He told everyone that breathing salt water is NOT recommended. That wasn’t the end of our excitement on this shore excursion, though. It was unfortunately the end of the fun for a little while though.

The Death Turtle flees

Our catamaran had one of the four Regent shore excursion employees on it. The woman stood up and said “I hate to have to tell you this, but Mr. Moore on the ship just died so I need to go back.” Janet was very confused as to why she would tell us about a dead man on our ship and then Janet realized that Mr. Moore actually was on our snorkel trip and was on the other excursion boat–the catamaran anchored right next to us. His wife was there, too. The Regent employee said the died from a heart attack but I’m not sure that can be determined within 5 minutes of death. Couldn’t it have been drowning or maybe some kind of stinging fish or something? A water ambulance (really just a fast little boat) came to get the corpse. When all of that was done, the three catamarans sailed back to the dock and we got on the tender to return to the Voyager. That was a first for us – a death on our shore excursion. It put a bit of a damper on the rest of the day, as you can well imagine.

They say “never turn your back on the sea.” Phil got away with it, this time. The other guy didn’t, apparently. Kinda makes you think. So, the lesson of the day is: You don’t know for whom the turtle of death tolls. (Phil deals with strong emotional situations with humor. OK, he deals with most situations with humor. Usually very odd humor. He shrugs as he types this, which is every bit as tricky as it sounds.)

Phil was still coughing a lot so we ended up ordering room service and went to bed by 8 PM. He also took a cough suppressant. We got to set our clocks back another hour, too. All in all, it was an exciting and somewhat sobering day.

Next: Albatrosses? Or boobies?

Contributed by: filbert Wednesday, November 18 2009 @ 07:30 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Five

November 5 (Thursday, Day 8, Malé, Maldives) –

Malé. It’s flat.

We woke up around 6:30 AM and decided to walk around deck 11 for 30 minutes at 7 AM to enjoy the beautiful day. Snookums did laundry for the third time. Working out frequently causes us to get clothes dirty. We were supposed to drop anchor around noon but got in later. In any event, it started raining hard around 11 AM. We were scheduled to go on a shore excursion that would take us to a beach for 2.5 hours. We were hoping to go snorkeling since the Maldives are known for diving and snorkeling but a snorkel excursion wasn’t offered. So, we thought we would go to the beach and hope that there were some reefs nearby. The rain made us rethink those plans.

More after the jump . . .

Athletic field light poles. We must be near civilization.

We took the tender to town and just walked around. The one square mile island of Malé that houses half of the Maldivian population of 120,000 was quite nice. Janet was expecting it to be poor like India but we saw lots of nice stores and no poverty. There was even a pet store. Most of the stores were closed when we got there (around 3 PM) since the Muslim call to prayer was in progress (100% of the population is Muslim). We were warned that most shops close 3 times a day during the prayers. We walked by a modern grocery store and went in. Phil bought two cans of diet ginger beer imported from the UK for $.60 each so that Janet could get her typical souvenir of a coin from every country that she visits. Janet was surprised at how cheap everything was since EVERYTHING has to be shipped in other than fish and coconuts.

We headed back to the dock just as it started to pour rain (again). We didn’t get too wet and ended up having a nice hour-long walk or so around Malé. We heard from some people later on that the shore excursion to the beach that we canceled was pretty much a disaster and rained the whole time. So, we made the right decision to just walk around on our own.

Did we mention it rained?

We went to dinner and said that we wouldn’t mind joining others and were seated with an elderly couple from New Zealand and a couple in their early 60s from Scotland. This cruise has the most diverse group of people (nationality-wise) that we have ever encountered.

November 6 (Friday, Day 9, Crossing the Equator) –

Coffee Connection

Phil woke and had his instant oatmeal. He has found that eating his breakfast of instant oatmeal at “Coffee Connection” on deck 5 provides few temptations so he has made a habit of it. It serves a continental breakfast and doesn’t have anything hot so he doesn’t have to smell sausage and bacon.

Janet woke later and went to the “Muscle Mix” class and stayed for the “Tae-Boxe aerobics” class. Each workout class is 30 minutes and she got a great workout from these two. Then she went to La Veranda for her French toast and fresh berries. (Janet loves Regent’s French toast [thick egg bread with raisins] and orders this just about every morning on every Regent cruise.)

Phil went to political science lecture about the world’s hot spots and stayed for the Seychelles destination lecture. He learned that Pakistan and Afghanistan are a mess and that the Seychelles are beautiful. Janet will watch the Seychelles lecture on tv later today or tomorrow.

Although this was the second sea day on this cruise, it really felt like the first one since the first one was spent unpacking and getting situated. This afternoon Phil spent some time on the balcony listening to his short-wave radio while Janet tried to get the journal caught up. We both skipped the “Crossing the Equator” festivity by the pool since we’ve seen it on Regent and Holland America. Phil also took a nap.

Dinner was at Prime 7 which is Regent’s new steakhouse. (It replaced the IndoChine restaurant, Latitudes, that used to be onboard.) We weren’t that impressed. Phil says that the Holland America beef supplier is much better than Regent’s. Janet ate 3 bites of her pork chop but ordered 3 desserts. She was mightily disappointed that the “apple crisp” was simply a stack of thin sliced apples in a pastry shell. That’s NOT apple crisp! The key lime pie was okay, though, as was the tres leches cake. After enjoying his surf and turf, Phil had the 14-layer chocolate cake. Don’t worry, the layers were almost paper thin so it wasn’t that big.

November 7 (Saturday, Day 10, Cruising the Indian Ocean) –

Janet laid out in the sun (and WIND) while Phil stayed in the shade of our balcony. Both got sunburned. We saw schools of flying fish, but no other sealife. We went to afternoon tea (“Strawberry Time” was the theme) and enjoyed a few nibbles. Around 6 PM an announcement was made that due to high winds and equatorial cross currents, we would be getting to Port Victoria around 6 PM tomorrow rather than 2 PM. That meant that all shore excursions were canceled. So, no snorkeling for us on November 8. We missed it in the Maldives and now we’re going to miss it in Port Victoria. Arghhh.

November 8 (Sunday, Day 11, Port Victoria, Seychelles) –

We ate an early breakfast and then we both attended the Muscle Mix class. Janet stayed for the Abs class while Phil went to the lecture about the world’s hot spots (West Bank, Gaza, Somali pirates, Darfur) and learned that there have been many pirate attacks near the Seychelles in the last two years. There have been pirate attacks off the coast of Mombasa, too, which is where we will be in several days. We ate lunch outside (but in the shade) at the Pool Grill and ended up talking to another couple (Tony and Sharon – she graduated from KU and Wilt Chamberlain cheated off of her in a class!) for more than 2 hours. The afternoon was a pretty lazy one – reading books and watching the waves. We also watched “Star Trek, the Movie” using the in-room entertainment system that lets us pick movies when we want, no DVD required.

Post-sunset color over Mahe Island

The ship lights come on

After the movie it was getting close to our docking time so we went up to the Observation Lounge to watch. We saw Carl. His mother grew up in Independence, MO and went to William Chrisman High School. He’s been to Independence a couple of times. He is the great nephew of Phog Allen of KU’s Allen Fieldhouse fame. We also talked to a group of women from Oregon and learned that one of them went to Stephens College for one year (when it was only a two-year college) and then her daughter graduated from there in Fashion Design. It’s a small world! We ended up docking around 7 PM so we ate dinner outside at La Veranda. But, we ended up moving inside when the stemware started to blow over due to the wind. Phil wasn’t feeling well (allergies?) so he went to bed early and Janet read. We’ll have to visit Port Victoria another time since we are scheduled to leave at 4:30 AM for our next Seychelles island, La Digue.

November 9 (Monday, Day 12, Port Victoria and Praslin, Seychelles) –

We set our alarm for 7:00 in order to meet out snorkel tour at 8:15 AM. By the way, Regent now has a policy that 99% of all shore excursions are free. (Flying to the Masai Mara in Kenya costs $999 and an airplane flight over the Maldives was $89. But, we’re able to find plenty of free ones that meet our needs.) As we left our suite for a quick breakfast, we noticed that we had mail. It was a little card that said that we would be leaving Port Victoria at 10 AM. Hmmmm. We were supposed to have left at 4:30 AM. Looking out the window showed that we were still docked so we called the front desk to find out what was going on. The refueling was taking much longer since the hose was only 4” rather than the typical 9” diameter. Our stop at La Digue was now canceled but our second port of the day, Praslin, was still on. Well, this meant that we wouldn’t be snorkeling in the morning in La Digue and then going on a nature walk in the afternoon in Praslin. Instead, we changed our shore excursions to just do the snorkeling in the afternoon since we could now only do one shore excursion and not two. We had breakfast and then hit the gym to weigh in since we were docked and the scale wouldn’t bounce around. Janet gained 0.5 pound and Phil gained 4 pounds. Phil admitted that he had been “very bad” and decided that he would eat his instant oatmeal and protein bars in the room and would NOT go to dinner. The 2-hour dinners are hard for him. He also hasn’t been working out or walking much so this was his week of being a slacker!

We got out of our snorkel outfits and put on regular clothes for a quick stroll around Port Victoria.

The clock tower

The market

Jackfruit

It was pretty hot and humid and we were sweating and then it rained for a few minutes to cool us off. We needed to get back to the ship for the 10:30 AM all ashore so we started our walk back. We stopped at a modern grocery store and saw that the bakery was selling hamburger buns for $.25 each and little cans of tomato sauce were $.30. 1 pound of chicken legs cost $2.90. So, prices were a little higher than what we would pay in the US, but they didn’t seem astronomical considering everything has to be shipped in.

The clock tower, again

Big weird palms

They were big

We were within 3 minutes of the ship when it just started to pour. It wasn’t cold rain and we weren’t going to melt so we just kept walking. We hung up our soaking wet clothes above the tub and let them drip dry. Janet commented that she would like to return to Seychelles one day and she rarely says that about the places we visit.

Next, snorkeling, and The Death Turtle!

Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, November 17 2009 @ 07:18 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Four

November 4 (Wednesday, Day 7, Cochin, India) –

It was a very festive atmosphere and we were served coconut water in the coconut along with other beverages. The Nehru Pavilion was decorated with fresh palm fronds and every railing was covered in fresh flowers. We found out that the workers worked the entire night getting it cleaned up since it hadn’t been used since August. The two women’s bathroom stalls were made “nicer”, too, although Snookums didn’t notice any upgrade! We also were given box lunches that contained cashews, plantain chips, taro chips, tangerine and a little bag of pulverized rice mixed with jaggery (sugar cane syrup), cloves, cardamom and other spices. It was all tasty although the little bag of the rice mixture was “different”. After the races the men were very thirsty (and hungry) and motioned to the Regent crowd of 250 to throw them their water bottles. At some point some of the men got out of the boats and they were walking through the pavilion and picking up half drunk water bottles and taking them. They were also taking “used” leftovers from the boxes.

On the boat to the Nehru Pavilion

More after the jump . . .

A snake boat

The rudder men

The boat crews, on their boats

Pre-race ceremonies

Stirrups

Drummers

The first heat begins!

Crossing the finish line

Halftime entertainment

A photo finish! Not this photo, of course . . .

Post-race celebration

We ended up taking naps at 4 PM and when we woke up at 8 PM (yep, 4 hours!) we decided to have room service for dinner. Everything was delivered lukewarm so we probably won’t do that again.

We got to set our clocks back ½ hour. With that, we are currently 11 hours ahead of central time zone so I guess over the next 44 days we will gain 10 hours of that back. That sure beats losing an hour every now and then. Yippee!

Next: The Maldives, and the Seychelles!