Around the World. Week 10 Wrap Up

“I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle…. I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.” - David Hockney

This week, we are still crossing the Pacific Ocean, which means lots and lots of sea days, increased by one more due to the storms moving through the Hawaiian islands. Some may think that all these sea days would be monotonous, but as you'll read, they were not.

Subject

• Day 64 / March 10: At Sea

• Day 65 / March 11: At Sea

• Day 66 / March 12: At Sea

• Day 67 / March 13: Honolulu, Hawaii

• Day 68 / March 14: Kailua-Kona, Hawaii At Sea

• Day 69 / March 15: At Sea

• Day 70 / March 16: At Sea

Day 64

Since the beginning of the voyage, the dreaded five (5) straight sea days has been the topic of discussion with concern about how we could fill our days for that long on a small ship. To add on to this, we only stop in Hawaii for two (2) days and then have ANOTHER four (4) sea days before we get to French Polynesian islands. Lots of anticipation about our sanity has been snowballing going into Week 10.

Well, let me tell you that we may have indeed gone crazy as sixty (60) people signed up to race around the Vista for bragging rights and 200 Big O points, which can buy swag at the end of the cruise. Today was the initial qualification round, starting with thirty (30) teams, reducing to ten (10) teams for the semi-finals. I teamed up with one of the other solo travelers to for our team. Can you find us? (Hint: We are wearing sunglasses)

Due to the constraints of materials and time, the teams were split into ten (10) heats with three (3) teams in each heat. The race consisted of clues, leading you to different venues on the ship where we had to complete silly challenges to move on to the next clue. For day one, there were three different challenges that had to be completed with the winner of each heat moving on to the next round. We were in the third heat for the day.

When our turn was up, we flipped the piece of paper in the atrium (Deck 5) and determined our first stop was the pool deck Waves Bar (Deck 12). At first we considered running up the stairs because we figured the elevator would be too slow. However, after a few flights of stairs, we realized we were much slower and waiting for the elevator would be faster. Once on the elevator, we got to Deck 12 and were the first team to this challenge. The challenge required us to unscramble letters to form a phrase, which ended up being “Be Kind.” Once complete, we were handed our next clue, taking us back down to Deck 6 to Martini’s Bar. We elected to take the stairs, going round and round and round, until we were dizzy, but again were the first team to the next challenge. This time, we had to bounce ping pong balls into solo cups. Successful in just a few tries, we received our final clue, sending us back up to Horizons on Deck 14. This time, we just waited for the elevator, knowing we had a good lead. As the doors were closing, a sweet older lady stopped the doors, even though we were urging her to wait for the next elevator. Clueless, she sauntered in, asking us if we were participating in the race. We quickly told her that we were indeed currently running our race at that very minute, but she didn’t seem to understand. Luckily, she was also going to Deck 14. Otherwise, I may have tackled her from pushing any other button. As we arrived to the desired level, I may have pointedly told her to say away from the doors as she may be run over. I was as polite as my competitive spirit allowed me to be, promise! Once out of the elevator, we dashed to the front of the ship. Luckily, there seem to be quite a few folks on this ship that know my name and started yelling and pointing to where we needed to go. Our last challenge was to waddle with a ball between our legs and drop it into a box at the end of the lane. We completed this challenge well before either of our competitors arrived and secured our spot in the semi-finals! Whew!

After quite a bit of water, I decided to take the rest of the afternoon easy and went to a Kukui Nut Lei Making class. Since the class only took about 20 minutes, you can only imagine that I napped on and off until it was time to get ready for the evening events.

Tonight’s events included an Around the World Cocktail party where all of the ATW guests were gathered into the Vista Lounge. We were speculating that we were called together for a major announcement about our future route, given the current state of the world. However, we were disappointed when the Captain confirmed that they are still evaluating day by day. Instead we were treated to some officer introductions and of course, cocktails.

Day 65

The Race is ON!

Continuing the semi-finals for the Race around the Vista, we were curious to know how the heats would be sorted with ten (10) teams remaining. The cruise director drew names from a pile for each heat, with the first heat having two (2) teams, the second and third having three (3) teams, and the last having two (2) teams. Our team was called to be in the second heat, along with who we considered to be our strongest competition. Ugh…

Same start as the prior day with us all receiving a clue in the Atrium on Deck 5. Learning a bit from the prior day about elevators and stair strategy, my team discussed if the first stop was in the back of the ship, we’d race up the one flight of fancy stairs and book it to the back elevators, bypassing the other teams who might wait for the front elevators. This was also key safety strategy because it had been raining that morning and if we took the front elevators, we’d end up having to run across the wet deck. Lo and behold, the clue took us to Toscana, which is the back on Deck 14. Off we went! This strategy paid off because we were the first to the restaurant and completed our challenge of rolling a ball across a table into a solo cup before either of the other teams arrived. Our next clue took us back down to Deck 6 at Founders Bar. This is where we hit a pretty big snag. The game was Heads Up / Charades. My partner and I were not in sync for this and took quite a bit of time, during which, the other team came and went. Finally, we completed and headed down to Red Ginger (Deck 5). The final challenge was to stack six (6) dice on top of each other using chop sticks and having to alternate between partners. By the time we got to the pitstop, the other team had already completed the challenge, eliminating us from the competition. Double Ugh…

However, we did challenge the final ruling because we actually completed stacking the dice before both teams from the First Heat! Yes, they were still in there when we came in from the second group of the day, but the ruling stood that it was the first team to complete all three challenges from each heat, so literally, no dice for us.

Oh well, off to a Cooking Demonstration.

I’ve described these Cooking Demonstrations before where the Senior Executive Chef Frederic, along with the Toscana Chef Lorenzo and Executive Pastry Chef Adil, prepare two dishes each, at the same time, in a very small space. Today’s demo was equally as comical as the prior two. While there’s a chance I learned something, they are more of a comedy show than really teaching any culinary skills. With Chef Frederic leaving the ship this week, I am curious to find out if his replacement will continue these demonstrations and if they will be as funny to attend. Only time will tell…

No nap day (crazy!) with a pre-dinner comedy show (separate from the Cooking Demo) and dinner at Polo Grill. However instead of going to the evening entertainment, I played a new card game with some fellow passengers. I don’t actually remember the name, but it seemed to be a combination of Up-and-Down-the-River, mixed with Phase 10, mixed with Gin Rummy. With beginners luck, and likely the fact that I didn’t join until the 6th hand, I managed to win! They even keep a prize bag with ridiculous items, so for my efforts, I received a small package of Post It notes. These are definitely my kind of people!

Day 66

The race is still ON! But we are no longer competing…

Instead, I spent the morning in the Culinary Center, cooking Samoan cuisine. To confirm, I did my best to win the race the day earlier and would have had to make a tough decision between cooking and racing, but since we lost, no choice required. (I would have picked the Race Finale…)

Today’s menu included Sushi Reimagined, which was sashimi tuna layered with sticky white rice topped with cucumber and watermelon. This became my favorite of the dishes for the day. The flavors all melded so well together. Yumm! Next up, crispy coconut shrimp where we fried shrimp in coconut flakes and panko bread crumbs. I swear I have tried similar techniques at home before but today, the fry came out much crispier and fresher than when I’ve done it before. Last was Samoan fish in coconut sauce. While the technique for this dish was fun and different from anything I’ve done before, the spiciness was a bit too much for my sensate palate, so I will not try this recipe again.

Our new speaker for this segment kicked off the series with a discussion on Amelia Earhart, which I watched on the TV in the cabin. His speaking and presentation style kept me engaged (almost) the entire time, so I decided to go watch his next session in person. Inadvertently this has become basically my approach to decide if it’s worth spending an hour in the theater during my normal nap time or if I should just continue to watch the series on the TV with fast forwarding as an option.

Today’s talk covered the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. Timely as we were scheduled to port in Hawaii the following day with many of the excursions planned to visit the memorial sites and museums. The speaker presented the actions and approaches by both the American and Japanese militaries as well as the likely motivations from each side at the time, giving the context about the other events happening in the world, such as Nazi Germany expansion. Since I’m not quite a history buff, the parts I found most interesting was the strategic approaches we assume to be true given the results and how seemingly minor actions could have drastically changed the outcome of the conflicts. In addition to the content of the presentation, the artwork and slide content impressed me. He seemed to have beautiful artwork to support the storyline that didn’t quite seem to come from Google search.

The evening entertainment was Kenny James, including his son, Trevor, on the bass. I did my normal photography stuff, sent the results over to them, and Trevor posted them on his Instagram, including a photo credit for me! While this is not the first time one of the entertainers used my photos in their social media, it was the first time I was tagged for the photos. Even though I take the photos for fun and practice, which is why I share them without any conditions, it was really nice to receive the public recognition. I am a millennial after all!

Day 67

LAND!!!

After five (5) days at sea, we have finally docked in Honolulu, only to be greeted with monsoon-like weather with strong gusts of wind, blasting rain, and road-closing floods, to the point that the area was in a State of Emergency given the power outages around the island. Great time for two large cruise ships to disembark passengers who are eager to explore and descend upon the city. Because of the conditions, many of the museums and typical tourist destinations were closed to where the ship had to cancel a few of the planned excursions. Some folks were able to be transferred to the Pearl Harbor museums, but were not able to be ferried over to the USS Arizona memorial site.

Before heading out, I “researched” by scrolling and zooming around Google Maps to see what was walkable or open. Not much to be honest, but then…. I saw it. Sold. Done. Pinned. Destination set.

DAVE & BUSTERS!

For those of you who are not familiar with this particular place, it’s an arcade, but where all of the games are sized for adults or big kids. And I am addicted. There was a time in my life where I was on the road quite a bit for work and would find the nearby D&Bs that I could go to for evening entertainment, racking up tons of tickets and perfecting my skills on a lot of the games, including the claw machine and ball drop. For the past few years, I lived on the East side of Toronto, but sometimes had to travel to the corporate office on the West side of Toronto. While this was only a fairly short distance, traffic during “rush hour” resulted in about a 2+ hour drive home. Whereas, if I waited until after rush hour, the time was reduced to about an hour (on a good night, assuming no accidents). Given that there was a D&Bs close to the corporate office, I started the routine of going there to “waste” a few hours after work before embarking on the drive across the city. Thus continuing my dependence on the arcade for entertainment.

So here I am, on a beautiful Hawaiian island, with the option of being pelted by sideways rain OR go hide out in D&Bs for a few hours, while also using their WiFi to backup my phone. As you may have guessed, I went to play.

FOUR HOURS LATER…. My phone finally completed the much needed backup and I had managed to accrue about 19,000 more tickets than what I had walked in with! It was a bit ridiculous to start when I had hit the big jackpot on the Spiderman game, obtained full sets of cards from the coin pusher games, but the biggest win of all was when I was just about out of tokens on my card and found a Popeye game that looked like it was almost at the bonus game. Using the last of my tokens, I had accepted that once those were gone, I was leaving. Well, just a few button pushes later, I had not only started the bonus game, but hit the biggest jackpot of my life, racking up almost 7,000 tickets in just that one play! Oh, not to be forgotten is that I also played the claw machine, which provided medium sized stuffed animals (not the small ones that are typically in those games), so I also walked away with a cute little turtle, an orange ram, and a rubber ducky. Sometimes, I do feel a bit silly when I hand over my card to the employee to spend a grand total of about 5,000 tickets at the prize room, knowing that they’ll see a grown adult has amassed still over 70,000 tickets remaining. Oh what a fun time!

Given that D&Bs was at the mall, I attempted to go to the ABC store, which in Hawaii is their souvenir shop, not a liquor store as it is in North Carolina. I say attempted because it was so crowded and chaotic, I procured just a magnet, but feeling my anxiety skyrocketing, I knew I needed to get out of there. Also, at the time, I assumed I could go back to the ABC store at the next island, hoping it would be less crowded. (Spoiler alert, we did not stop at the next planned island, meaning I did not get a chance to buy anyone else a Hawaiian treat. Sorry!)

After getting back to the ship and realizing it was already past 4pm, there was just enough time for a quick nap and shower before heading to the Solo Traveler meetup, including dinner together, followed by the Blue Horizons party for this segment.

Again, no photo evidence of my dancing adventures, but because the ship was really rocking and rolling, the dance floor was sparsely populated. With the entertainment crew change-out onboard, I had to ask some of the new friends to be my dance partners and started learning some different steps and styles. Since then, a few people have commented that I am a good dancer, so credit definitely goes to those partners as all I do is follow along.

After the long day, I headed back to my cabin to find a letter from Oceania on my bed regarding the future itinerary for this cruise. I’m not sure if I’ve described the situation to all of you yet in this blog, but we’ve known for some time that the originally planned destinations were always at risk given the hostile situation going through the Suez Canal. From the beginning, I’ve said I was good with either paths - through the Mediterranean or around Africa. Actually, I preferred Africa because I’ve already scheduled trips back to the Mediterranean this Fall, assuming we’d end up going around Africa. Since we’ve been on the ship, a conflict in the Middle East has broken out, further influencing the cruise route. The letter we received did not officially confirm a reroute, but instead, reiterated what was communicated last year, which was the expected path if we were to be diverted. It also indicated that Oceania would provide further information by the end of this month. Being the ever-planning planner, my brain craves a bit of certainty in schedule, so looking forward to knowing in the coming weeks as it will impact our excursions and required Visas.

Day 68

Given the weather conditions around the Hawaiian islands and that we were to tender at the next port, our scheduled stop at Kailua-Kona was canceled. I’ll give some credit that the Captain notified us of this cancellation the day prior so we were able to sleep in (aka get up early and do laundry) and set expectations of another 5-day sea day series.

With the unexpected sea day, the Cruise Director and his team came up with some unique activities for the day, including coloring! Yes, if you read my description about being a big kid at the arcade and now how excited I was about coloring, you may be questioning my actual age or at least, my mental age.

My coloring time was cut short as the boat continued to bounce and shake and tilt and shudder and all the things that are known to cause a bit of seasickness. Even though I’m not typically prone to this disease, it hit me hard and fast, so off to my room I dashed. Thankfully, after some Ginger Ale and a long nap, I was back to normal and off to listen to the Speaker Series again.

The presenter covered Operation Mincemeat, which took place during World War II, where the Allies managed to trick the Germans by planting an already dead body with a suitcase full of false “Top Secret” documents off the coast of Spain. Thus, altering the Nazi war plans and creating an opportunity for the Allies to capture southern Italy. During the talk, I started paying more attention to the artwork on the slides as I continued to be impressed with how well they supported the story, and I noticed the “latin” words that my AI buddy, Copilot, tends to add to a graphic. After the session was over, I had a chance other discuss this with the speaker, with him confirming that he does use AI to help fill in the blanks if he doesn’t have any other photos or artwork to support. I’m continually impressed at how far along AI has come in just a few short years because until I noticed the words, I thought the artwork was man-made.

The night went as normal with dinner at Jacques with a couple that I met at the pre-embarkation hotel, which was nice to just catch up from the past few weeks and not have to explain why I’m on a 6-month cruise by myself for the umpteenth time. Dinner was followed by the evening entertainer, Irina Guskova, a classical violinist. Going into the show, I was a bit hesitant because most nights I fall asleep to classical music, and given I was tired from the day already, I wasn’t too optimistic about sitting in the front row and keeping my eyes open. However, she was phenomenal! The pieces she played were upbeat and lively, including genres from movies, Irish jigs, and country. I’ll be going again when her next show is announced!

Day 69

We saw the sun rise this morning! And then the clouds moved in again…

Knowing that I managed to get behind again on journaling and still working on my February photo book, I packed up my laptop and headed to my “office” in Baristas. Especially since there was no coloring on the schedule for today…

But there was BINGO!

Which I did not win, but the Jackpot was up to over $1,000 so I had to try. Having been on the ship for almost 10 weeks now, this was the first time I actually played Bingo because it’s scheduled at noon on sea days and I’m normally eating lunch. However, I was convinced I’d have beginners luck, so I ate very quickly and headed to Horizons.

They offer different amounts of cards for different prices. You can play three cards for four games for $20 or six cards for four games for $30, but you can also add on another three cards for the final game for $5 each. The final game is when we’re playing for the big jackpot, so it increases your chances with those extra cards. I went with the three cards for four games with the addition for the last game. As each game is played, the winning pattern changes. For the first game, it was the typical straight line, any line. For the second game, it was all four corners, For the third game, it was the “small picture frame”, which is all the squares surrounding the free space and for the final game required all boxes to be punched. The Jackpot portion is only awarded if all boxes are punched before a certain number of balls is called. To win the jackpot today, all squares had to be covered within 50 balls being called. With 25 boxes, that really equates to having a match every other call. No one won the jackpot, so it will roll over to the next day, increasing the pot once more.

Delaying my nap again, I went to the Speaker Series. Today’s discussion covered the real history of Robinson Crusoe, which was a book written about 300 years ago establishing the now-common theme of someone being stuck on a deserted island and surviving. For example, the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. Apparently, the original book was written about a real person named Alexander Selkirk. Back in early 1700s, Alexander voluntarily marooned himself on a remote island when he believed the ship he was sailing on was destined to sink in the coming weeks. He assumed there would be another ship that could pick him up, but given there were ongoing wars in the area over the new lands, the only ships that came to shore were those of his enemy. It took over 4 years for an English ship to come even remotely close to shore and after flagging them down, he was rescued. Interestingly enough, his original ship did indeed sink as he thought it would. The crew was captured by the enemy, spending almost the same amount of time in a prison, and returned to England about the same time that Alexander made it back.

Then I napped.

After dinner, there was a party to watch the Oscars. Because we’re about 6 hours behind Eastern Time Zone, they recorded the show and played it back at the later hour. I don’t normally watch award shows, but it was fun to dress up and hang out with the other passengers who were interested in watching the show. I have absolutely no idea who won, but I enjoyed watching Conan O’Brien host. It brought back memories of staying up to watch his late night show when we were in college.

Day 70

Third sea day in a row. Two more to go before we see land again...

Today started out like most days, at Baristas, working on this wrap up summary. Part of why I like sitting at the rail overlooking the pool is to wave at people as the walkers go around and around the upper decks. Today, however, I watched as the nose of the ship bobbed waaaay up and waaaay down, transitioning the horizon in and out of view. It's an odd sensation because you don't quite feel yourself moving as much, but seeing that definitely explained why I get a bit seasick sitting in Horizons, since that lounge is at the very top of the front of the ship.

From there, I went to teach the third class for iMovie as it was requested for after the San Diego pick-up. One thing I really like about doing this is the questions that get asked the lead to us all learning a new feature with the software. We played with filters today that turned the whole movie into a black and white cartoon! I can’t say that I’ll use that for the port recap videos, but my mind is already thinking about other applications where that could be a cool effect to add.

Heading back to the Speaker Series in the afternoon, we learned all about Easter Island, including the purpose of those heads, which are actually full bodies. The speaker explained that these rock sculptures were created to represent important ancestors to allow their mana (or spirit) to live in and watch over the village. He said that there really isn’t any mystery to how these were created, but the challenge archeologists are still working out is how they moved them since the largest ones weighed about 100 tons. They have a few theories such as rocking them back and forth to pivot the massive rocks into place or rolling them along a log path. However there are issues with both of those theories because of the distance from the rock quarry where they were chiseled to the village across the island, so it remains a mystery.

I can’t believe we’re headed into Week 11 already, but here we go!