Day 08 - Old crocks plus young crocs and old crocs in Darwin part 1

Well, a day on land at last.  No complaints from us on either score as we have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves so far.

Awake 1 minute before the 6:30 alarm just before the ship berthed and it was a bit misty, but already warm.

As a general rule, for future cruisers, I try to post a bit of useful info here:

Ship berthed on the starboard side.

Our el Cheapo, $30 Vodafone pre-pay phones worked. To clarify here, we are both on a $20 a year minimum top up plan, called their ‘International Plan’, (which they tend not to advertise),  For those like me who only use a phone very rarely indeed, this plan has no monthly charges, no specific roaming or overseas Sim cards, so is ideal to carry in the older cars, as an extension to the tool kit.  The fact that it seems to work wherever Vodafone has a presence, is a useful bonus.  We don’t expect it to work in the USA or Canada.

A fairly quick breakfast before getting sorted for “Chris’s Crocks Tour”.  Privately arranged by a local resident who had rounded up 30 of us from the our Pacific Circlers, Cruise Critic Group, at least several on the tour were already known to us.  Now Chris is a tireless worker for various causes, including the Scouts and either I had misread her email or she had put in a typo, but I’d already paid her something but not enough as it transpired – and she never said a word!

Anyway, we trooped off the ship and assembled dockside until our 33 seater coach arrived – which wasn’t long.  Much to Chris’s surprise, we were all on time and (relatively) well behaved, which as any ex-Akela knows, is not like dealing with cubs or whatever they call junior scouts these days.  That is usually more akin to herding cats.

 

CROCS

Against a surprising amount of incoming Darwin traffic, along a stretch of road currently being dualled, the top end of the Stuart Highway, which I believe goes all the way to Adelaide.  We made good time and arrived early at the ‘Jumping Crocs’ river boat experience.  Early enough for some to grab a coffee.  There was a piano in the café area but I found to my acute disappointment that after a three year break beak from ivory bashing, not only was my left hand still unable to stretch an octave and hit the keys correctly, but I’d also forgotten the first few bars of the few tunes that I used to be able to play.   Ho hum.  Hopefully the hand exercises I’m doing will assist and some strength and dexterity will return.

Whilst standing on the river bank before our tour started, we could see quite plainly, a couple of crocodiles on the opposite river bank.  This is no caged experience.  These crocodiles are in the wild – an so were we.

We piled onto the boat and given due safety warnings by Rod, our excellent guide.  “Don’t put your arms or hands outside the boat.  Crocs have a reaction time up to 40 times faster than ours and will grab anything, even low flying birds.”

Off we set.  Feeding crocs inside the river markers attracts a $6500 fine… Once past the markers, it seems that not only do these local crocs seem to be fairly territorial, inasmuch as they frequent the same stretch of water, but they have all been named!  Rod kept hanging chunks of meat out on a pole, first to the port side, then to the starboard side (nautical terms for left and right for you landlubbers).   Needless to say, most people were standing on one side or the other and getting a decent pic wasn’t very easy, as not only did the crocs eventually grab the meat, and do so very quickly, but there was usually someone in the way and no,  I wasn’t going to lean out of the boat.

We saw crocs ranging from two who were only a couple of weeks old (they are born complete, meaning with razor sharp teeth), to the acknowledged  senior croc, a massive 6.1 metre specimen, who Rod swears, knows his voice…

Female crocs lay between 60 and 80 eggs at a time but the survival rate is about 2.  They really are tough cookies and any fight usually means the loser gets eaten by the victor, at any age/size.

One of our group who shall be nameless, to save any embarrassment (I deliberately won’t remember her name anyway), managed to sit on her bottle of sunscreen, which then covered her posterior, so to minimise the amount to be mopped up, allowed us all to scoop dollops of sunscreen off her hands and arms! 

The hour went all too quickly, and a quick visual check showed that we still had 30 people, 60 arms and 60 hands so most still seem to be intact, as far as I could tell anyway.

 

Part 2 to follow – internet slow…  See above post.  Five days later, this post still wouldn’t send.

Darwin Part 2

*After 20 frustrating minutes of trying, then another 15 later, I couldn’t send the initial email, so split it into 2 - and still no luck. Two days later, still trying to send part 1.  This is gobbling up our internet minutes at a furious rate for no benefit.  This has never happened before, so apologies if this is days later than expected.  Others have experienced similar uploading problems and used alternative methods - not using Outlook.

* 12 days later, as per the two previously written, on line posts, still not able to upload, so once this blog, with pictures, gets up on the interweb, the others that have already been written will follow in fairly quick succession – hopefully.

 

CROCKS

Back on the coach and our excellent driver (Ray – and there are few Ray’s around on this. trip) and just a couple of kilometres back up the road to the Wetland’s centre.  A free to enter display facility explaining about the local wildlife.  I was somewhat staggered to see a massive wall chart of about 40 different Australian mosquitoes – and I wasn’t wearing any repellent.  I survived.

We were running early and so Chris rang ahead to the Humpty Doo to let them know we’d be arriving for lunch a bit early.

Poor Chris.  We all piled into the Humpty Doo Pub/Hotel and waited patiently whilst Chris tried to find out where we’d be eating.  They had no knowledge of our booking – which came as a bit of a surprise, seeing as she’d been talking to them 30 minutes earlier.  Seems that we were in the Humpty Doo Pub, but Chris had in fact booked with the Humpty Doo Tavern…  Whoops.

No problem,  Back on the coach again and another couple of kilometres up the road to Humpty Doo – and its tavern, where we did indeed have a reservation.  Chris had prearranged with them an option of the a la carte, the special of the day at $15 or a local tasting plate.  I was looking forward to the local tasting plate, but on arrival, it was displayed as  a tasting plate for 2 at $25…  Oh what the heck.  Paula didn’t fancy it and opted for a chicken wrap and chips – which turned out to be enormous and I stuck with the tasting plate anyway, on my own.

We were fairly early in the ordering queue thank goodness, as some people had to wait a while for their food.

So what was on the tasting platter? Top right in the pic, was Cajun crocodile. This was in tiny strips and ironically, exactly as the crocodile sausages we had back in Adelaide a few years back when we did the houseboat river trip, the predominant taste was salt!   A little chewy, but it could have been anything.  Front on the pic were 4 pieces of battered barramundi (a local fish), but as is often the case with battered fish, difficult to identify exactly what the fish actually, is as the batter is quite dominant.  The star was probably the thinly sliced and marinated kangaroo. The salad was OK but I did appreciate the beer battered chips from Paula’s plate.  They were very moreish but I could only take a nibble at the chicken in the half wrap that Paula couldn’t manage.  The ‘Meadow’ draught cider was nice and complemented the meal well.

I went to the rest room and had a mini accident, (no, not that sort of accident).  I thought I’d wander outside into the precinct.  However, what I assumed was an open doorway turned out to be a massive sheet of floor to ceiling glass and I walked straight into it, smacking my forehead, nose and left hand pretty hard.  Fortunately, no blood, but I thought that a safety bar across, or frosting, was mandatory these days, but obviously not in the Northern territories of Australia.  That knocked me for a minute or two, so I returned the table and then back to the coach.  Once again, a full complement of passengers, on time.

 

The consensus was that a call to the Casuarina Shopping Mall was useful and so it was.   I managed a 4 pack of Bunderberg ginger beer and Paula bought some mints, as she felt a bit dizzy earlier in today and we wondered if it could be low blood sugar, or maybe even vertigo?

For the final time, everyone on the coach before time, with a fair few clinking bottles, showing that many had indeed visited the bottle shop.

Back at the dock, past experience has been that the port scanner people were quite tough, so when they opened a gate straight through to the ship, we took it!  We volunteered  to carry a couple of bottle of wine through for Dave and Sandie.  The bottles of ginger beer in the knapsack, didn’t trigger any alerts, but the two wines in a plastic bag meant a meet with the staff manning the alcohol table.  With just 2 bottles and we hadn’t brought any on in Sydney, we were straight through.  Dave wasn’t as fortunate as he had a few more, so had to pay the corkage of $15.  We found out later that at least one other had gone through the shore scanner and whoever was supposed to be manning the corkage table must have nipped off, so they paid nothing.  Win some, lose some.

Back to the cabin and Paula just crashed for a couple of hours, so missed the sailaway at the usual meeting place, the rear of deck 11.  There were a lot there.  Many grinning from ear to ear and clutching their spoils.  Probably the busiest I have ever seen.  It was only then that I found out that I‘d grossly underpaid Chris, so I put that right, sneaking back to the cabin and out again without waking Paula.

We missed the one show of the evening, Donna Campbell’s tribute to Dolly Parton, which we have seen before.

Paula made it to dinner but didn’t eat much.  Just a soup and a fruit drink.  I had also hoped to cut back (a bit), but the lure of a surf and turf (and with extra prawns thanks to Jo) was too good to resist and for the first time on this cruise, opted for the cheese platter, but Paula didn’t take much, so I had to finish it.

Paula had perked up a fair bit and we met Jim and Marie (from NZ) in the atrium and they persuaded us to join them for a dance or four, then we got chatting to a couple of ladies, one from Takapuna, who had at some stage attended Ian’s dance class, which is where I started, plus her friend from NSW.  They were bemoaning the lack of male dance partners.

Bed at midnight and clocks back another half hour.  I think that now makes us Auckland -3hrs.

More sea days ahead before Kota Kinabalu on Saturday July 2^nd.  So that must be another 4.  From then on, to Yokohama, July 21^st, never more than a day or two at sea between each port.  Keeping up with the blog will be even tougher, but as the internet connection seems very erratic, who knows?  At this rate, we’ll be looking for free WiFi ashore, something we have never had to resort to in the past.

 

 

Day 10 - Yes, at sea, so more of the same.

A big day today for the on board Pollywogs!  So, our morning routine meant skipping Men’s Shed and heading for a 9:30am trivia.  After that unsuccessful bid for stardom, up to deck 12 to witness the traditional, ritual  humiliation of the Pollywogs.  Bright sunshine and we managed a seat port side, in the shade, but all the action was starboard side at deck level and not as in the past, conducted from a bridge over the pool.  That meant we couldn’t see much but we had seen it all before.

Pollywogs are passengers (and crew) who are crossing the equator for the first time by ship.  In the distant past, before motorisation, being on the equator, there was often a lack of wind and ships could be stuck there for a while – in the Doldrums.  I have no idea when the tradition started, but Pollywogs were brought before a ‘King Neptune’ and his court, found guilty of any misdemeanours and then had to suffer the penalty of being covered with sorts of goo, such as animal and fish guts, feathers etc.  On board the modern cruise ship, using that sort of stuff might well put passengers off, but they are covered with chocolate sauce, red and yellow liquids of indeterminate origin, flour and spaghetti – and have to ‘kiss the fish’...  Usually, the senior officer around also gets dunked in the swimming pool and also the cruise director.

In the past, it has been first officers, senior engineers and this time, it was the popular, sporting captain!  All good colourful fun, with the deck crew hosing them down afterwards, then cleaning the deck and putting everything back to normal within minutes.

The pollywogs are now ‘Shellbacks’. Every passenger crossing the equator gets a certificate.  For those future cruisers a bit worried about being covered in goo, it is voluntary…

We did succumb to the lure of a NZ Natural Ice Cream.  In the past, soft serve ice cream, chocolate or vanilla, has been freely available and replacing it with a paid NZ Natural hasn’t exactly been universally popular.  At $5 Australian for a single scoop, no wonder.  However, if you have purchased a coffee card, (now $36 for 15 coffees), then a single scoop is a single clip on the card.  As mentioned in the past, we usually swap our free mini-bar for 2 coffee cards, so at the moment, we are in credit to the tune of about 8 cards.   Ironically, having brought on board about 50 sachets of Timms or Jed’s coffee, I have been using the older coffee cards anyway, as we have no future cruises planned (at the moment) and it is pointless having a pile of cards left over.  Maybe we can sell some of them for $30 each?

About 12:30, we did feel peckish, so a turkey and bacon brochette plus some beef curry (not as tender as usual) was a good filler.

Beginner’s ukulele class (the advantage of consecutive sea days is that the ‘muscle memory’ kicks in) but Salomon was a bit late and the storeroom was locked, so no unofficial practice either...       

A detour to the atrium International café which is always busy, but despite saying 5 times, ‘big cup’, it arrived in a glass.  (For those Auckland friends in NZ who know where we usually have our coffee, who are reading this, please tell Regan that we are missing her…)

At 2:30pm, we crossed the equator. The sea was extremely calm, so we hardly felt the bump into the northern hemisphere.

After a 4:15pm trivia (still haven’t won) Paula and I detoured to the Atrium again, specifically to check out our ukulele player’s piano skills. Wow! No music, no cue cards, no hints on the ‘phone, but all by memory. Incredible playing of several genres of music from classical through to ragtime.  (I wonder who requested that?)  We were transfixed as he is seriously good.  So if the name Salomon Orellana (from Chile) appears on your radar, well worth a watch/listen.  We are looking forward to his concert in the theatre at a later date.  Always smiling too, so a very popular guy on board.

The Curtis Stone ‘belly pork’, was my pick for the main course – for the second time in 9 days.   Nothing really special about it though.

Late Showtime (9:45pm) was Donna Campbell’s second show.  Good voice and a pleasant enough show, though we’d seen it before.  Whereas singers can get away without changing too much, comedians certainly can’t.

Clocks back another hour tonight and Paula was watching Wimbledon.

I’m not very happy at the lack of internet uploading, meaning that by the time you read this, there will have been another 4 r 5 or more blogs written and a few pics uploaded, probably in quick succession.

Two more sea days ahead.

July 6th

Sorry, still not able to send emails.  Other bloggers are using cut and paste, but I'll stick with the proper blog. 

Meanwhile, avoiding typhoon Nepartak has forced an early exit from Hong Kong, now heading for Incheon and skipping Je Ju and Shanghai before the scheduled arrival in Tianjin (for Beijing).

No Internet Uploads

No, we haven't been captured by pirates or eaten by sharks or crocodiles. For some reason, since
leaving Darwin, uploading of emails with or without pics isn't happening and hasn't been for 3
days now, so normal service will be resumed as and when.

Meanwhile, emails can be read on line and this is being written on line. Sorry, but outside our
control.

Day 07 - That is one week gone already!

At breakfast, before I’d even sat down, Paula had already ascertained that the lady already at the table was born in Calcutta, so they were chatting away quite nicely.  She was with her hubby of 62 years and what a nice couple they were.  Regular readers, both of you, will know that meeting new people is just one of the many attractions of cruising.

After our 9:30am ‘Men’s Shed’ meet, trivia was the next item on the agenda.  I’m sure that by now you’ll be able to predict the result of that.  Sometime around then, we had a heavy shower, but with the thermometer hovering around 31 degrees, it soon dried out.

Over to the Atrium sale where Paula was able to grab some new ear-rings and I was able to buy her something for an upcoming birthday.

The beginners ukulele class had us playing ‘Edelweiss’, which even the advanced class haven’t managed yet, so as far as we are concerned, going to both classes is quite beneficial.

Late lunch was one of those irresistible curries – lamb this time.

Afternoon quiz was nothing to brag about and the pre-dinner show was a half and half, with Ivor Richards followed by Adam Dean.  Good shows, both of them.  As this is the last night before Darwin, all these entertainers will be getting off and we have a new batch, with at least three acts we have seen before.

Dinner was a large and tender pork chop and most enjoyable.  Nothing new on the Curtis Stone dish of the day, which quite frankly, has become a bit of a standing joke already.  Certainly on our table. You’d think that there would have been more than 3 different dishes by now.

To finish our last day at sea we had another Kiwi Chris Powley Show and in some respects this was even better.  The highlight was getting two men and two ladies up on stage, supposedly to mime to the Elvis hit, “Blue  Suede Shoes”, whilst he sang.  Each of the 4 did it in turn, but the number 1 guy grabbed the mike and actually sang it!  He was pretty good too. Then having dismissed three of them, he kept a lovely Kiwi lady on stage (from Gulf Harbour) whilst he sang a love song to her and she just wrapped her arms around him, much to the delight of the audience and on returning to her seat, her husband stood and waved his fist at Chris (all in good fun of course.)

For his rendition of a Roy Orbison song, asking for the lights to be dimmed, he dragged a stool to the front of the stage, put on the usual dark glasses, but unseen by most, he’d also attached a water bottle to the glasses and every time he got to the words, ‘Crying, crying, over you’ there was a jet of water sprayed from the glasses!  A great show and a great entertainer.  We bought the CD…

So, Darwin tomorrow.  Land – and an alarm set for 6:30am, as we are on a private tour at 7:45.  The ship is due to be docked by 7am.  Looking  forward to the day and you might get some pics of something other than us and the ship.  That’s nice…

 

 

Day 06 - Yes, another sea day

First time we have seen ‘English/Canadian’ bacon at breakfast on this cruise, though the cut was not as lean or as thick as in the past. (More cost cutting maybe?  Short back bacon is more expensive than whatever we are getting!)   At 9:30, we had our inaugural ‘Mens’ Shed’ meeting up in the Horizon Court. A good turnout (see pic) from what we’d loosely put as our adjacent dinner tables.  The location we ended up with was right up by the window at the front of the ship and as it was getting warm, maybe we should have renamed it the’ Mens’ Hothouse’ or ’Mens’ Greenhouse’ meet.  Anyway, a pleasant way to spend almost an hour or so  before another losing trivia.  Yup, usual winning teams.

At 11:45am, we had the first ‘Pacific Circler’s’ lunch and a turnout of 159! Too large a group to have any meaningful communications but we sat with Hans & Ineke, from Napier, who we’d seen before on the 2011 cruise.  Hans was one of the regulars at the bowling.

We had an excellent Indian chicken curry, but had to shoot off to the ukulele class at 1:15.  Once again, this was the advanced group, there were instruments spare, so our repertoire was expanded to “You are My Sunshine” and “Waltzing Matilda”.  The class moves fairly quickly and there are about 7 or 8 passengers who have brought along their own instruments, but they seem quite content to be part of what is a fairly basic class.   Several also come along to the beginner’s class, which is nice of them.  Salomon is a very popular teacher (and a very good pianist I might add).

Back to the cabin and whilst Paula watched the “Kingsmen” movie on TV, I tried to make some progress with the blog.  As you may have gathered by now, trying to keep up on sea days is tougher than you’d think as we don’t seem to have much time doing nothing.

Afternoon trivia was an ‘only just pass’ 10/20, but we have found the quizzes so far, pretty good, regardless of who takes them.  A good entertainment crew this time, in sharp contrast to last year, where neither the entertainment staff nor our dining companions were as good as previously, so this year, it is so good having so many good people around, passengers and crew.

The pre-dinner show was a second show by comedian Ivor Richards.  Another good show, slightly better than the first.  Dinner was very tender sirloin beef.  So far, the Curtis Stone dining room speciality seems to be limited to a chicken and leek pie and the creamy seafood broth, neither of which have had rave reviews.  This is not to be confused with the Curtis Stone ‘Share’ restaurant menu.  The Kai Seafood/sushi restaurant (extra charge) doesn’t seem to be very popular (see pics), with the staff always outnumbering the customers. The most we have ever seen in there is 4 and more often than not, it is empty.  Quite why Princess thought another paid eatery was going to be a success is anyone’s guess.  We now have the ‘Sterling Steakhouse’ at $29, the full Curtis Stone ‘Share’ at $39 (or you pay by dish) and the Kai Seafood where you also pay by dish, none of which seem to be very busy, certainly on a long cruise.  It may work on a 7 day cruise, but it isn’t working on this one.

The late show was the second by violinist Patrick Roberts, billed as having an Andre Rieu slant.  Had that been the case, then either Andre wouldn’t have the world popularity that has, or Patrick wasn’t watching too carefully.  Not only was the show very lack lustre, but the drummer, sitting centre stage was not only drowning out the violinist, but we could hardy hear the piano/keyboard or the bass and lead guitar either.  It probably didn’t help that we were over to one side, but we know others were less than impressed and the sound of gentle snoring was almost as loud as the applause.  Without a doubt, the worst show we have seen so far on this cruise.  Sorry Patrick, but we have to be honest.       

A bit of dancing in the Wheelhouse bar before bed lightened the mood a wee bit and now we start with the putting the clocks back – in this instance, 30 minutes, so bed about midnight in real time.  Another day at sea ahead, then land – Darwin.