2 days at sea

Tuesday, December 6 &  Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The next two days were “sea days,” meaning that we would be out in the open ocean, making our way to New Zealand, without any stops or even seeing any land, in this case. These two days we spent getting to know the ship and participating in some of the events they have planned for the guests. Some of the things we participated in included a ring toss, bean bag toss, putting and chipping competitions for Tim, trivia challenges and, of course, happy hour!

During happy hour one of these days, we met Peter, who is from Australia’s capital, Canberra. He was traveling on the cruise with his sister and brother-in-law and friends of theirs. Peter was a great person to meet and we eventually found ourselves spending more time with him, his relatives and friends through the cruise. We even eventually moved our seating for dinner to their table, as they invited us to eat with them and made arrangements for a bigger table. We have since received invitations to stay with them in their respective cities on our next trip to Australia. Tim has a standing tee-time date with Peter at his golf club for whenever we are able to come back and Peter’s sister and her husband have offered to loan us their “caravan” (RV) to take across the Outback or along the coast when we decide to come back. Needless to say, we’ve made a few friends on this trip! We also crated a solid trivia team with them for the pre-dinner trivia challenge put on by the DJ nightly. We won a few times and consistently come out toward the top in the times we did not win. 

We enjoyed our time on the ship during these two days, but I got a bit antsy at times and just wanted to be on solid ground and start exploring New Zealand. We did take a few trips around the outside deck on our floor to get some fresh air and exercise, but it still wasn’t the same as being on solid ground (though when we did eventually make it to solid ground, it constantly felt like we were still on the ship, with the ground below us moving. This was such a strange feeling to me and had Tim and I constantly laughing at each other in port when one of us would stumble because we felt like the ground was moving. It’s a feeling that is hard to describe, but those of you who have been on a ship or boat for an extended period of time and know the feeling we are talking about are probably laughing right now!).