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Oceans and Seas » Pacific » Coral Sea June 3rd 2012

My travel blog has officially been reignited by time to think and something to report after a year away! Travel experience poor for a year until now, I managed to arrange a long weekend in The Kingdom of Tonga. Arriving at Nuku'alofa airport was a standard Polynesian affair - don't expect efficiency, but do expect a sudden head-lift-come-nod, as in 'Malo e lei lei' to Tonga. Vichi, a Fijian born resident and our driver, graced me with a leis of flowers and we waited out another 30 minutes until the remaining 4 arrived, 25C and fine. The trip from the airport to Ha'atafu takes about an hour, but we quickly turned that into 2.5 hours with stops at ATMs, a mini supermarket and the less elaborate weekday market. Almost everywhere you look in Tonga is evidence ... read more
Burial style in Tonga
Church in Ha'atafu
Basic but functional - church from the back row

Oceans and Seas » Atlantic » Saint Helena May 28th 2012

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat Those of you with a literary bent with a particular knowledge of mid-20th century children’s fiction will have noticed that I have nicked the title of this blog entry from the title of one of Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers series of stories. Sometimes I feel that I’m in the middle of someone else’s story with me cast as a bit of flotsam in a tale of torment. Let me start at the beginning. Several weeks ago I admired Owen’s cat that was preening itself in the sun – handsome animal. Owen’s response was something like ‘You can have him if you like’ as Wahoo (the cat’s name) was the last of an enormous number of feline waifs, strays and kittens acquired over the previous year. No, the rest hadn’t been ... read more

Oceans and Seas May 27th 2012

new blog, new stories- some travel, some not, check it out if you like. all the best. totsiens!! http://wherethesunrisesandsets.wordpress.com/... read more

Oceans and Seas » Pacific May 25th 2012

A 4 hour plane ride to LA, 16 hour plane ride to Sydney, and 1 hour (but 2 hour delay) plane ride to Ballina, we have reached our final destination in Gonobellah, Australia! It's been an exhausting, but adventurous few days of just getting here. It's always said "getting there" is half the journey, and it has not been nearly half of our month long trip, but yet, myself and the 3 other girls I'm traveling with have already managed to lose a boarding pass to Sydney, had to pay extra money for over weight in kilos, and we flew over a sugar cane field! Some fun first time experiences for all of us. The 15 hour flight is not nearly as rough as some people make international flights out to be. Each seat has a ... read more
Destination
Airplane

Oceans and Seas » Indian May 25th 2012

Today I had the worst dive I think I have ever had. We went to a reef called TableTop, and the visibility was so bad I thought I was in a blizzard. Apparently we were dropped in at the wrong spot. I have never been in such a strong current, and we had to swim against the current. At times there was no choice but to hold onto the rocky coral area in order to stay put. I was very, very surprised that the dive wasn’t aborted pretty quickly, but we stayed down for 24 minutes. The visibility was maybe15 to 20 feet, at most. You didn’t really see people so much as shadows unless you were right next to them. Ironically, as I was fighting like hell to keep up and ... read more
Nudibranch
Pin cushion seastar
moz 12 tt cushion seastar

Oceans and Seas » Indian May 23rd 2012

It was the strangest feeling waking up today. It was the last Straight sea day. It was actually quite sad. I was getting used to being stuck on the boat with no set thing I had to do or places I had to be, and just make it all up as I went along. That being said, there was so much I had wanted to do today. Now I had been meaning to put out a card on the door to order breakfast in our Suite since day one of the cruise, but that didn’t happen. So breakfast again was up in the Windjammer. It was almost a routine now. I would grab a bowel, spoon, a packet of mini wheat’s and my little container of Full Cream Dubai Long Life Milk. I worked out, by ... read more
Swans
Rabbit fruit
Floral Display

Oceans and Seas » Indian May 22nd 2012

I was supposed to be on an Ocean Sarari today, but the wind was too high, so we dove instead. The dive had quite a bit of surge, but we did see a lot: blue spotted rays, torpedo ray, jenkins whip ray, leaf fish, porcupine fish (followed me around!), lionfish and a lovely octopus! Still have not seen a manta ray on a dive, or any whale shark, leopard shark, or guitar shark. We watched a documentary today called SHIVER, it is about Mozambique's diverse marine life and how they are fishing out the sharks and the mantas. Several sharks have been harvested and slaughtered right on the beach, you can imagine what is going on in more remote areas. All for shark fin soup. Absolutely ridiculous. The soup is made from the inner fibers of ... read more
DSCN0196
and off you go!
A day with low waves

Oceans and Seas » Indian May 22nd 2012

Another sea day and really think I was getting the hang of the waves and the delicious slow life. That being said, once again I ventured up for breakfast by myself, as the husband slept away. After breakfast I decided I was on a cruise and I was going to do the whole swimming and sun baking thing that everyone seemed to enjoy so much. I ventured on up to the top deck and passed over my sea pass to score my towels. I was asked how many towels I would like … didn’t realize it was a trick question, and took one. It was only later I realized, to do the whole deck thing like a pro you are supposed to take about four towels! Two are supposed to lay across your chair, and the ... read more
Expensive glue!
Trying to be poised
Formal Night

Oceans and Seas » Indian May 21st 2012

Now today was going to be a fun day at sea. We had organized an amazing Golf-off for about 10:30 or 11am in the morning against a British couple we had been having a ball with. It seemed by this point in the cruise the people you would hang around starting to be the same and I have to admit, it was always a laugh a minute when we were with this couple. It was a case of killing time between waking and the actual Golf, so as usual we seemed to gravitate to the little café on the promenade deck for some goodies to eat. I guess eating becomes part of a way to pass time on these ships, and no wonder people put on weight from cruising. Now considering I hadn’t played mini golf ... read more
One of the artists I adored
Mini Golf
Golf

Oceans and Seas » Indian May 19th 2012

What a difference a day on land makes to a cruise. It just seemed more fun having a sea day today, and cruising seemed so much better now. Plus all the sea sickness was a thing of the past I was practically a sailor now! Ended up having so much fun, and unfortunately apart from one single bad photo on the iphone, no photos were taken today, I was actually out enjoying myself … who would have thunked it! Now as to the actual way the day rolled, well that’s pretty much forgotten however I will just summarize some of the main fun bits of the day I think for this one … Art Auction Now I had heard that these events were actually the places to be if you wanted free Champagne, actually if you ... read more
3D
Some type of sickly sweet alcohol
The solo photo find taken on the day of the blog




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