January 29th, 2006, first of 2 days at sea day 24 of our cruise of 105, 81 to go. I opened a bottle of Malbec wine last night. It is a grape grown in the Andes, deep rich red juice: lovely. Every afternoon is tea in the crow’s nest on the 12th floor at the front of the ship: best view in the house. We eat at 8:15pm, the second seating of the Lafontaine ding room. We had asked for a table of 8; #7 and 8 only came once and moved to the next table. Our 4 remaining seat mates are fun interesting people. Nancy and Ed are from the south of the US, with a you- all type of twang. They have been retired almost 20 years, traveling in a 37ft RV, towing a ... read more

January 24th, 2006, second day of 3 at sea, south along the coast of Uruguay, day 20 of our cruise, over 6000 nautical miles from Ft. Lauderdale. At Montevideo( means: see a mountain) we will be at latitude 35 degrees south, same as our South/North Carolina, temperature on deck this morning was in the high 70s. The days are getting longer, sunset is 2 hours later than at the Amazone. I wonder how long the days will get at our most southerly point! Sea days are soooo… busy. Today, Terry will attend a lecture by Terry Hughes the producer of TV shows in Britain and US and participant in the production of Monty Python- not my cup of tea. I will be busy being creative: watercolour class and creative writing. Here is my haiku homework: Out ... read more

January 19th, sea day had a wonderful time in Recife saw colonial towns, beaches and arts and crafts of Bresil see Terry's blog for details... read more

January 8th, 3rd sea day, last night was the captain’s reception and formal. We are very busy attending seminars, talks and workshops. At 10 this morning was a ½ hour introduction to Barbados which we will visit tomorrow; following that at 11, a Doctor Wolf, historian, gave the 3rd talk about the history of the Americas-Colombus, rum, slavery, battles…gold, etc. This afternoon, a seminar on digital photography was held and then Doctor Miller, a classical guitarist who entertained us last night retold anecdotes about musical writer from the early 20th century and played favourite sound tracks, he had the audience humming, myself included. Terry and I walk the promenade deck twice a day, 2 miles in the morning and the same 8 laps before dinner. Today, we had a bit of free time in the afternoon, ... read more

Son Number one is leaving for a while to teach English in Japan... read more