Catching Up

We’ve been a bit quiet recently, sorry about that.  It’s a combination of being at sea for a while (hence nothing too exciting to tell you about), not having much connectivity (because we’ve been at sea for a while) and a little bit of laziness thrown in.  Since leaving Hawaii on Saturday we’ve continued even further into the middle of the Pacific.  As of this morning (Wednesday) the closest land to us was about 250 miles away, but even that was a small, barely inhabited island.  We’ve seen nothing but sea, a very large sky and the horizon since the lights of Hawaii disappeared into the distance on Saturday evening.  We’re quite glad to be back on board.

As we’re progressing further south and west, the weather has been getting progressively warmer and more humid, and we’ve had several big tropical down pours during the day and at night. During the day, it’s very easy to predict the showers, you can see them coming, and you either meet them, or they meet you, resulting in a fairly predictable scattering of books, bodies and towels as people take cover.  Katie and I were walking through one of the pool areas the other day, a heavy shower loomed, so we stopped and waited, purely for our own amusement.  Not 30 seconds later, the first heads popped up from books, a quick look left, then right, combined with a quizzical expression, then the hasty gathering of belongings and husbands began, and a sea of sun beds became available for those of us not too bothered about getting wet by warm rain.  We honestly even saw people getting out of the pool!  One has to keep oneself amused somehow, and most of our fellow passengers seem happy to oblige!

Speaking of fellow passengers, I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet, some of the more well known guests that have been entertaining us.  Before San Francisco, we had the pleasure of an evening with The Legend, Roy Walker, and only this morning Michael Howard, (who boarded in Honolulu we think) changed his long socks and shorts, for a suit and tie to talk to a packed theatre about Winston Churchill.  I went to see it out of curiosity, and surprised myself by finding it quite interesting.  I think he’ll be talking again in a few days time, but it seems that the guest speakers/acts fly to meet the ship, stay a few days, mingle with the rest of us by the pool (that’s how I know about the long socks and shorts), then fly home again. 

Other notable events during our 5 days at sea happened yesterday, at about 12.30pm our time (22.30 GMT).  We crossed the equator for the first time on this voyage, and in our lives.  Despite both us traveling a fair bit already, it’s the first time in the southern hemisphere for both of us.  An announcement from the bridge informed us when we reached latitude of exactly 0 degrees, and despite them telling us to look out for the red line draped across the ocean, neither of us could spot it!  It was a moment of muted celebration and excitement between the 2 of us, no great “Equator Party” or T-shirt sale to be seen.  So now that we’re officially upside down, I can report that it doesn’t feel much different and the water doesn’t always go down the plug hole the other way.  The next big line to cross will be the International Date Line, which we’ll cross on Thursday night after stopping in Pago Pago.  I’ll write about that after the event.  At that point, we’ll suddenly move from being behind you, to being ahead of you in time. Weird.

Tomorrow, Thursday, will be our visit to Pago Pago.  We’re both looking forward to that very much, mainly because it’s quite an exotic location, one that we’re unlikely to visit again.