Day Two at Sea

I'm still working on getting the pics posted from the park in Tasmania -- Jon's helping, so I should have them soon or at least a link. Today was the second day at sea sailing between Tas and New Zealand. Yesterday we finally finished our laundry...ugh...who knew everyone on the ship would be trying to get laundry done on their vacation???


We also managed to be cleared by customs. Okay so here's the deal. We have a day at sea, we just changed time zones, and they decide to pull an immigration inspection on us. I mean, come on! It's 8:15 am and some mealy mouthed staff is telling me that the Immigration Inspectors are waiting for us in some part of the ship I've never even been to. Moreover, she's on the PA in the hallway and not in my cabin, so I can't hear her for all the money in the world. It's like Charlie Brown's teacher, or that drive in speaker at the Char-kel: All I hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, Immigration, blah, blah, Inspection, blah, blah, blah. For all I know, the dogs are coming down the hall and will soon be scratching on my door trying to ferret out the sea shell that came with the pearl earrings I bought in Tahiti. Man! There were several people who didn't make it to the inspectors at their appointed time...they kept announcing, "Cabin whatever, Mr. and Mrs. whoever, WILL YOU PLEASE JOIN THE IMMIGRATION INSPECTORS TO CLEAR CUSTOMS. I'm sure they were in their room eating their honey as fast as they could.

The seas have calmed a bit. The day before they were really rocking. It wasn't making me sick or anything, I just wanted to get off the ride for a bit. Finally, around dinnertime, they slowed down some. And speaking of dinnertime, the food on this cruise has been outstanding! And so has my intake of it ;-) I went to the gym, but the waves made it too hard to stay on the treadmill. I wish I could have that excuse at home...oh well.

The weather has cleared and it's warmed up nicely. We spent most of the day lounging around on the deck reading, napping and drinking. That's what you do on vacation, right? Well, we're definitely vacationing!

One of the excursions we signed up for in New Zealand was the trip to Mount Cook. It's the most popular tour on the ship, and we've been wait-listed for about three weeks. The crew was working to get another bus to accommodate everyone, but they hadn't confirmed anything. So we did what we always do...we turned to Joe's dad for some help. Wally was able to put us in touch with a friend of his who helped arrange a private tour to the mountains. Yippee! We're guaranteed! Not only for an excursion to one of THE SIGHTS TO SEE, but now we won't be fighting with Gen O and hundreds of other people vying for the same real estate...especially on the buses. Ironically enough, when we got back to our cabin last night we found that we'd been cleared to go on the excursion from the ship. No worries about canceling our tickets, though, there are still folks waiting to get on the tour...the crew was delighted that we were giving up our seats. I'm really looking forward to my own private, guided tour of this spectacular mountain and surrounding parklands.

Tomorrow: Milford, Doubtful and Dusky Sounds in the Fjordlands of New Zealand.