Day 100 - At Sea

I got up at 8:35 and let Glenda sleep in until 9:15. We saw even more flying fish today than on our last sea day. I went to breakfast while Glenda got ready and then we went out back. The weather was perfect, 82 degrees and sunny with a refreshing breeze. I wrote up our visit to St. Helena and caught up on my crossword puzzles before returning to the cabin to update the blog. The Captain's daily announcement was about the weather conditions at Georgetown, Ascension Island. He said that it did not look good as this is a tender port and the swells were too big for a safe tender operation. Glenda came back from sunning around 2. Then we went to the casino to enter the slot tournament. I made the finals board temporarily but Glenda did not. We had to shower and dress for dinner early due to the slot finals at 4, bingo at 4 and a AMEX cocktail party at 5. We are very busy people. After getting dressed, we went back to the casino just as I was being bumped from the finals board, so we proceeded to bingo where we got close, but didn't win anything. Then it was off to the cocktail party. We stayed in the Crow's Nest following the party until dinner time at 8. After dinner, we went to the casino for slots, but that did not take long, so we decided to use some of our $5 match play cards which we had accumulated as give-aways at various venues, at the roulette table. We used 16 of them and ended up doubling our investment. We then went back to the slots and summarily lost same gain. We went to the Crow's Nest again and finally got to bed around Midnight. Since everyone was of the opinion that we would not be able to tender tomorrow, we did not set a wake up call.

Day 99 - Jamestown, St. Helena

We woke up at 7 as the ship dropped anchor in the bay of Jamestown, St. Helena. As we were having coffee on the verandah, we noticed that tender #10 was not moving in the water and tender #7 went out to help solve the problem. They got #10 started, but #7 got a line tangled on the bottom of the boat and came to the ship and was hoisted up part way while #10 maneuvered underneath it to get the line loose. We also spotted a shark swimming just below the surface of the water below our verandah. After breakfast, we went down to get tender tickets to go ashore and had to wait about 45 minutes. The tendering was slowed by a narrow channel which only allowed one tender at a time as well as the swells at the ship and at shore making it slow to load and unload passengers. When we got ashore, we went to look at Jacob's Ladder, a set of 699 steps going up 600 feet. I walked up 25 steps, Glenda took my picture, and I walked back down. Many passengers and crew climbed up and back down in order to get a certificate (for $4) stating their accomplishment. Jeff, of course, was one of those who did it. Then we went to St. James Church, the oldest Anglican Church in the Southern Hemisphere, which had very nice stained glass windows. We visited the Museum of St. Helena to see some of its history, the Castle and Castle Gardens and shopped a bit as we walked through the town. We ran into Aart and Yvonne and Jeff at a bar and had a beer with them. Jeff was having a Tab, since there was no Diet Coke to be found. Jeff, Glenda and I decided to get a taxi to go to some of the sites we wanted to visit and ran into a group of 7 passengers getting in a van to tour the island. The van had been used earlier in the day for a ship's tour and the driver said he would take us for $12 a person. We first went to an overlook of the Briars, the home of the French Consul and another house where Napoleon spent his first 3 months while renovations were made to Longwood House. We saw the Heart-Shaped Waterfall and then went to Napoleon's original tomb. The driver said to just walk down this path and then come back up. Well, we walked down and down and down some more. When we finally got there, it was a beautiful valley and a great historical photo op. Then we had to walk back up that long path to get to the van. I wasn't sure that I would make it and had to stop several times to catch by breath. We then went to Longwood House where Napoleon spent his final years. It is full of period furniture and many documents and portraits. Next, we went to the Plantation House where the Governor lives and is also the home of Jonathan the tortoise, the island's oldest inhabitant. We then drove to the top of Jacob's Ladder for some photos downward and then back to town. We shopped some more before we went to the St. Helena Distillery where we tasted the Coffee Liqueur, Tongi, made from prickly pear, and spiced rum. We bought a bottle of the coffee liqueur and the Tongi. The bottles are shaped like ladders. We had a Windhoek beer (from Namibia) at Donny's Bar with Casey and Patsy. Some other passengers stopped in as well. We took the tender back to the ship and went up for the sail away. I got a good shot of the entire island (47 sq. mi.). After dinner, we went to the casino where I had no luck but Glenda won $210. Then it was up to the Crow's Nest where there was a 11 pm happy hour. Peter came in and we talked with him and decided to try our new coffee liqueur in place of Tia Maria in a "Jamestown Seal." We all agreed that while the St. Helena coffee liqueur was good on its own, it didn't mix as well with Gosling's Black Seal Rum as did Tia Maria. We finally got to bed at 1 am. Tomorrow we have a day at sea before Georgetown, Ascension Island.

Day 98 - At Sea

We got up at 8 and had coffee on the verandah and watched about 100 flying fish escaping the ship's wake. It was another typical day at sea. It is getting a little warmer each day as we go north. Nothing much happened until 4 pm when we went to bingo. We did not win, yet again. After dinner, we made our usual quick donation to the casino and went up to the Crow's Nest where we officially met Loo and Nell from Wilhemstadt, Holland. They boarded in Cape Town. Peter came up and we talked with him for a while before retiring at 11:15. Tomorrow, we anchor at Jamestown, St. Helena at 8 am.

Day 97 - At Sea

We got up at 9 and had coffee on the verandah. After breakfast, we had a normal sea day out by the pool, Glenda sunning and me working on my crosswords. I went back to the cabin at 12 to finish up our very busy day at Walvis Bay and get it posted on the blog. I also backed up the latest group of pictures to DVD. We went up at 2:30 to listen to Casey, a waiter from New Hampshire and a Napoleon expert by avocation, talk about St. Helena and Napoleon and then went to bingo where we didn't win. This was a formal evening as well as the Pink Panther Ball, so I wore my pink bow tie and Glenda wore her pink and orange formal. After dinner, we made our normal quick contribution to the casino before going to the Ball at 10 pm. We did not pick the correct suspect in the the theft of the Pink Panther diamond, so we could not win the drawing for the diamond. We went back to the cabin to find that our gifts were 2 luggage straps each. They are in the world cruise motif. We also got to set the clocks back one hour.

Day 96 - Walvis Bay, Namibia

Our wake up call came at 6 and the fog horn was still sounding. We had breakfast in the room and the ship exited the for as we pulled into the harbor. We dressed for our sand dune adventure which is advertised as "not for the faint of heart." Harbor seals swam around the ship after we docked and occasionally one would bark. I took a photo of a small patch of fog over the water of the clear harbor, the fog bank off the coast with small boats in the foreground, and a large ship exiting the fog bank as it approached the harbor. We went out for our tour and were shuttled by van to the local yacht club. After a few minutes of confusion, we found out that that the Land Rovers were were waiting a short distance away. We grabbed one with our pre-arranged group of Charles and Patsy, Elinor, Angie and us. We had a great driver named Hermann (sp) and told him that we were ready for some thrills. He delivered! We stopped to see some pelicans and flamingos before entering the dunes. We viewed a huge salt mining operation from atop a dune. Glenda followed some animal tracks that turned out to be a dog's track. We then started over the dunes and stopped at a beach where there was still fog and a fence that the Germans and British armies built during WWI to mark their boundaries. The Germans used British POWs and the British used German POWs to build the 35 miles of fence. Elinor found some bones in the sand which one of the drivers said were probably from a seal eaten by jackals. During our drive, one of the drivers spotted a side-winding snake (not related to a sidewinder) and we stopped to take some photos and watch it move across the sand. We stopped at another beach and Glenda found some real jackal tracks. Angie and one of the drivers ran up to the top of a dune and I got some shots of a pelican taking flight. The shape of the dunes carved by the wind was beautiful and graceful. We stopped at another dune and I tried to climb to the top. I managed only about one third of it before I made a U-turn and came back down, but even where I got to, the view was very nice. Angie and the driver ran up this dune and it was much higher. I guess it helps to be a personal trainer. We stopped in the middle of the dunes for a picnic lunch. They set up a large canopy and tables with tablecloths, real dishes and crystal flutes for the sparkling wine. We saw a desert gecko while they were setting up and Glenda climbed almost all the way up a tall dune. She stopped along the way for a pose with her cigarette. When she came down, she got her glass of sparkling wine to celebrate. The food was really good and included oysters on the half shell, pasta salad, and a large platter of spring rolls, calamari, hard-boiled eggs, and several other things that I couldn't identify, but were very tasty. After lunch, we saw a desert beetle they call the "kalahari Ferrari" for his speediness and we also saw a dung beetle. After they packed up, we went to a large dune that was called the thundering dune. We went down it with the motor off so we could hear the roar of the sand as we descended. We returned to the yacht club and then rode the shuttles back to the ship. We went up for the sail away and the actual sailing was delayed for 50 minutes due to a medical disembarkation. Apparently, the ship's dentist wrecked an ATV in the dunes and broke his collarbone. Hopefully, no one will have a toothache for a while. After dinner, we made a quick contribution at the casino and went up to the Crow's Nest for a 10 pm happy hour. We ended up staying around until about 11 waiting to see Peter, the Purser. It was his birthday and Don, one of the guests we were sitting with, had arranged a cake for Peter. Peter had had dinner with two other guests and when he finally came up with them, we had the cake and sang "Happy Birthday." The Captain was in the bar and sang along with us. When they brought out the cake, Peter said that it was the fourth cake he had had that day. We finally left and went to bed around 11:30. We now have 2 sea days before St. Helena, where Napoleon died during his second exile.