Blogs from Pacific, Oceans and Seas - page 21

Wednesday 22nd February: For the first time in 6 weeks, our trip ashore today was affected by rain to the point where our plastic ponchos had to be wheeled into service. The clouds covered all the mountain peaks - and there are a lot of them - and our 4x4 Toyota Land Cruiser took us straight up into them. So what should have been amazing panoramic views over both the north and south islands, was a misty view of not very much. We had an 'interesting' group in our vehicle. Just 6 guests but two of them were huge. They managed to make me feel positively skinny! At the first viewing point the rest of us got out but those two just wedged themselves into the front and stayed there. And began moaning. Kept on moaning. ... read more

Monday 20th February: We've just got back on the ship as it's 7 pm and we sail in 30 minutes time and our feet throb, my hips are screaming and we've had a really excellent day here in Auckland. We had an early breakfast on board and then headed straight for the hop on/hop off bus and did the full 1-hour circuit of the city just so that we could orient ourselves. We then hopped off in time for the highlight of our day: a sail on one of New Zealand's America's Cup yachts. And it was brilliant. There weren't too many people on board so we had space to move around and anyone that wanted to join in with the actual sailing had plenty of opportunity. Richard helped man the grinders, hoist the mainsail, dragged ... read more

Saturday 18th February: Phew, we are out of the Tropics so the temperature has crashed all the way down to the high 70s! It even rained a bit this afternoon but as we were already in the swimming pool it didn't really affect anything. Today has been a normal sea day with the usual rigours of breakfast, lecture, snooze, lunch, swim, snooze, swim again and just manage to cram in one more snooze before dinner. This evening we had one of those really out-dated events that Cunard places so much store by and that was the Captain's cocktail party. Having had all the day time activities it's quite a challenge to haul your body through the palaver of layering on make-up, bling and evening dress. And then you join a formal line before finding out if ... read more

Thursday 16th February: For the eagle eyed among you, you will have noticed that we failed to post a blog on Wednesday 15th February. This is because, unlike you, we have not had a 15th February. Crossing the international date line meant we had to put our clocks forward 24 hours which means we didn't lose any sleep but one chap on board did miss his own birthday! On board ship, it is now nearly half past ten at night and Richard has fired up the GPS on the iPad and it shows we've just nudged our way over the international date line but, for reasons known only to Cunard, although we actually crossed it about 10 minutes ago, they changed the time on board last night. At least with it being a leap year, we ... read more

Monday 13th February: Sorry to rub it in but the Equator in mid February is an absolutely fantastic place to be. It got to over 30 degrees today so we spent much of the morning on our balcony as that was on the shady side of the ship. By the time we went up to the pool area in the afternoon it was so hot there wasn't a single sunbed in the sun with a body on it. But we managed to find Richard a perfect arm chair in the shade. I wallowed in the pool with an eclectic mix of other guests. The pool could only have been improved if they'd chilled it down a bit to become refreshing. No-one was swimming but we all looked like a multi-coloured group of hippos wallowing at a ... read more