Wanderung 22

Return to the Land of Oz

November - December 2009

Monday, November 16th, At Sea between Australia and New Zealand

Bob:

Clive Raharuhi gave another lecture covering the ports of Tauranga, Auckland, and the Bay of Islands and that was the first thing we did in the morning after breakfast. The word must have spread about how good his lectures were, because the theater was at least 3/4 full compared to the smattering of people we had seen the previous day. The second presentation was equally good and the lady just in front of us was so intent on capturing it all that she used her video recorder to tape each film clip and Clive's slide show. One tidbit that I was certainly not aware of was the fact that Australia's constitution has a provision for New Zealand to become an official state of Australia if the New Zealanders ever decide to do so (which is doubtful, of course).

Again the wealth of information provided by Clive left us in rather a quandry as to exactly what we should do at each of the ports. We finally settled on a visit to the Tamaki Maori cultural center while in Tauranga. We wanted to see the historic Treaty House in the Bay of Islands, but that excursion was already sold out and we didn't see any others that really interested us. So in the end we decided to walk on our own when tendered into that port and also when we docked in Napier and Auckland.

Luncheon in the Horizon Buffet offered deserts with a Mexican theme. The layout was, of course, beautiful. So we took pictures, but abstained from sampling any of them.

Our main afternoon activity was a dance class. This time Jerry and Ginger decided to teach us "jive" (AKA Lindy Hop, jitterbug, etc.) because the ship's band tended to play a majority of that kind of music (e.g. rock and roll) in the evenings. They started off with a triple step to substitute for the "long" side steps in the sidestep, sidestep, backward rock sequence that is inherent for that dance. They also quickly covered an underarm turn, a man's behind-the-back turn (which was much easier with those triple-steps), the Stop and Go, and the American Twirl, which involved a strong push with the man's left hand resulting in a spin on the part of the woman. They were all fun moves but I was having more trouble consolidating each step, and in particular exactly how you lead into and then execute each move plus how you lead out of it and stop the move. With the quick rhythm of rock and rock I sometimes get up quite a head of steam [I am, after all, 6' 2" tall and 195 pounds!] and it becomes remarkably difficult to stop doing something. Should you ever be on a dance floor with us I would recommend you stay far away if I am dancing to fast-paced music as things really do get out of control and while I don't think I've ever knocked people over like ten pins, I certainly have stepped on stray feet and had people rebound off of me occasionally. It's so embarrassing!

After our dance class we found that the Captain had re-opened the promenade deck and we walked 3 laps or a mile all together. But each time we came to the stern we took pictures of a pair of albatrosses and some "wave skimmers" that were riding the air currents at the rear of the ship. They were so graceful, but taking good pictures of birds in flight is quite difficult! After I had taken 50 or so pictures, we returned to our cabin where we sorted through them and kept the 10 best, discarding the rest, which is one real advantage of digital photography.

Then I had my customary afternoon nap before dressing in our finest togs to meet our table mates for the formal night dinner. While chatting we heard the Captain come on the intercom and tell us that the evening show, a major production number with dancing and so forth, had been canceled due to the ship's movements endangering the dancers. I hoped that they would reschedule the performance and that turned out to be the case. Much to my surprise, however, the "champagne waterfall" event where people pour champagne down on a huge pyramid of stacked champagne glasses was held as scheduled just before the Captain introduced his officers and the Employee of the Month (a nice touch, that). I watched in suspense as people poured champagne into the top glass form where it cascaded onto the glasses below, but the stack did not topple over and everything ended quietly. Afterwards we betook ourselves back to our cabin and read and worked on the computer quietly before turning in for the night.


 

Copyright 2010 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Cruise around New Zealand Map of Drive through Victoria Epilog

November 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
December 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30

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