Day thirtyfive, Saturday 5th March, Our last day onboard

So what does it feel like?  There is an air of excitement. Is it because we’ll be getting off tomorrow and back to home comforts?  Is it because everyone is waiting for the passenger talent show?  Nah, it’s because today is the day for the big exhibition.  All Peter’s students have given us pictures to display, and we keep getting asked what time is the exhibition? When are we putting the pictures up?  Do we need a hand?  All the students are dead keen.

We on the other hand are filling in time. We sat in on the ghost talk that did not convince us about ghosts, and then we happily sat in on Moss’s talk about the birds seen in the Caribbean and the Azores.  Moss is a good speaker, and fun.

Then we had lunch, and chatted to a few passengers, then finally it was time to get the paintings on the wall.  It seemed like the whole class turned up to help us, and it was a good job they did, because we would never have got all the pictures up in time if they hadn’t, remember this was a very large class, and they were working with Peter for 18 workshops/classes.  We covered every inch of wall we could find.

The area used for the display was the sort of foyer/reception area into the Neptune lounge and the restaurants.  Everyone had to go through there for something (especially as the passenger talent show was due to start at 3.30, and our exhibition was ready at 3pm.).  It was packed. out.

The “general public”  were genuinely impressed with the standard of the paintings of the class, and the whole occasion was an absolute success.  The students were happy, Peter was happy, and I managed to slip out and get cake whilst everyone else was “mingling”.  Superb.  I also managed to pop in on the talent show.  None of them are going to get a job on stage I’m afraid, but it could have been worse......... I could have had a go. The choir didn’t do too badly though.

Our exhibition is still running on.  We had thought to take it down about 4.15, but it was closer to 5 by the time we had started to get the pictures down. We delivered those that hadn't been collected by the students, (and got to have a nose in on the cabins on floors 7 and 8 - Dead nice!) Then we had to get back to our cabin to pack.  Then it was dinner, a game of Scrabble with Moss and Robina, which we thoroughly enjoyed, then back here to the cabin for a final blog.

Tomorrow we are back in Southampton, Monday I go back to work and normality.  I have kept this blog as a sort of diary.  We have seen so many things and enjoyed so many new experiences it has been hard to keep track. Peter has videoed just about everything and will make a DVD type film of our cruise. I have taken hundreds of photographs, we have hoarded all the Daily Times, information sheets, maps and details of the tours and places we have been, and as I said before, we managed to get a copy of the Ship’s DVD.  If possible, I don’t want to forget anything.  I can honestly say have enjoyed these last 5 weeks, the only downer has been rough seas. Would we do it again?  To the Amazon?  Oh yess!!  But not just yet eh? 
Final pictures are Peter in class and one of the exhibition this afternoon, and the pink dolphins.  I never managed to get an actual photo of these but I did take some film.  I have finally managed to cut a few stills out of the film to give an idea of how these creatures look.  They are pink, (and grey), have very long beaks, and a sort of floppy dorsal fin.  Cool huh?

Day thirtyfour, Friday 4th March, the last formal night.

Tonight is our last formal night and us ladies like to dress up.  We love posh frock do’s where we can go all out and get a new dress, visit the hairdressers, spend hours in the salon getting nails n legs n eyebrows done, and finally spend 2 hours getting showered, make up and dressed ready for the night.  The reason we love it is it is a rare opportunity to make ourselves look and feel real good. Us run of the mill, normal women look forward to those special occasions when we can do this.

On the cruise ships, we get the chance.  There is a dress code for every evening, and not one of them allows a pair of jeans or a Black Sabbath t-shirt, except mebbe on the first and last days of the cruise:

Formal means black tie for him and evening dress for her.

Informal means a suit for him, “informally smart” for her, (a small step down from formal).

Elegant Casual - trousers and shirt for him, “casual separates or summer dress” for her.

Casual is “comfortable attire for ladies and gentlemen, yet with a casual elegance”??

On this cruise we’ve had 6 formal nights, 9 informal nights, fifteen “elegant casual” nights, and 3 theme nights (western, tropical and british).  That’s an awful lot of dressing up and while it was nice at first, it eventually got to be tiresome, having to get changed for our evening meal every night.  You begin to wish for a “slob night”, and the dressing up has lost it’s attraction.  It was as much as I can do to get the frock out of the wardrobe.

Peter only brought 2 suits, his dinner suit and a beige one - no other trousers as such, just his combat trousers, jeans and shorts.  He’s just about worn out the trousers on that beige suit, because he has had to wear them most nights. (I insisted “Elegant Casual” does not mean combats or jeans).  Tonight he got his dinner suit out again, which at least gives the beige one a rest.  Tomorrow we are allowed to dress casual, since all our cases will be packed and everyone will be down to the clothes they are travelling home in. Jeans at last........Phew!

Overall today has been relatively uneventful.  We listened to Moss again, (on the tele), watched the dolphin racing and Peter’s last class had 42 people, who all brought their pictures to be included in the Grand Exhibition tomorrow.  It was nice to see how appreciative they were of Peter’s teaching, the compliments and thankyou’s were overflowing.  Really lovely.   The show tonight was the crew show, made up from the staff of the ship, such as engineering, deck, reception and housekeeping.  They sang, danced Philippine and Indonesian dances and included a couple of modern routines.  Good fun.

We have one more sea day, and we wake up Sunday morning back in England.  I am looking forward to solid ground, our bed and loads of space to walk in.  The ship doesn’t seem very big when you are on it for this long.

Enjoy the pics, the first lot are from Antigua. The one of Peter was taken as he walked off the ship as an escort for the “Spectacular Antigua” tour.  You can see now how he earned this responsibility.  It was taken by the onboard photographers, who charged us £7 to get it off them.  I’ve had to photograph the photograph to get it onto this blog.  Worth it though.

The responsible, reliable, sensible escort

Leaving Antigua

And I’ve added a few more from the Azores.  

Sao Miguel. The view of the east of the island from the top of the central volcanic crater

Symmetry. The old city of Ponte Delgada is a fantastic place to see

Day thirtythree, Thursday 3rd March, the end is nigh.

Another seaday.  The sea started out smooth enough, but has developed a bit of a rock n roll thing for us as the day progressed.  The captain did warn us that today would be OK, but tomorrow is gonna be pretty rough, but it will all calm down for our last sea day on Saturday as we get closer to Southampton.  That’s good actually, because Peter is organising an exhibition of everyone’s work for that day.  We don’t want everyone feeling too ill to come see.

It’s been cold and windy outside, so we didn’t spend too much time on deck, but we did go see Moss’s presentation about Africa.  We’ll never remember what he’s told us, but we can try.

We’ve spent loads of time in the cabin today, on the computers.  Peter is working, looking after his online students etc.  I spent the day going through my photo’s, of which there are hundreds, deleting the duff ones and renaming the good ones.  I’ve only got as far as Santarem so far.

Peter had a class of 41 today, and as usual they all seemed happy.  It’s “British” night tonight, which means we all wear red, white and blue (or your national colours if you don’t come from good ole blighty), and join in on patriotic songs in the Neptune Lounge.  Well done Sophie for getting Peter his union jack t shirt.

Anyway, because there isn’t much to say about the day, more piccies.. These are from Bridgetown, Barbados where we went to Harrison’s Cave in the morning

Gardens around Harrison's cave are lovely

These are from Castries, St Lucia where we did escort duty to the Mamiku gardens.  The view overlooking th port of Castries shows four cruise ships.  The one first left is a Royal Caribbean ship, second left is the Boudicca, which looks absolutely tiny, the third from the left is another Royal Caribbean cruiser and the little one furthest right is a Silver Seas ship and about the same size as ours.  The little cruisers carry around 850 passengers and 300 crew.  Those big monsters carry 3500 people.  Basically, they bring a small town full of people into a city or port.  Much too big to go down the Amazon though!

Orchids in Mamiku gardens

Spider orchids

Day thirtytwo, Wednesday 2nd March, Ponta Delgada, Island of Sao Miguel, Azores

We’ve had a really good day today.  We woke up to the view of the port of Ponta Delgada which is on the south coast of Sao Miguel, one of nine islands that make up the Azores.

Our first impression.......?  These people have got OCD!  That’s a bit mean, but this place is so different after the unkempt and disorderly Caribbean.  Everything looked so neat and orderly and in place.

We were on a tour today, so this morning we followed our escort out to the bus where “Connie” our Portuguese tour guide met us.  Lovely lady, very enthusiastic, loves flowers, English not brilliant, very cheerful and chatty.  She did our heads in after a while.  The tour bus took us first to a ceramics factory.  It did seem to be a working factory, but maybe not a very busy one.  Staff appeared in various rooms for the period of our visit, demonstrating the skills.  Hand painted really does mean hand painted in this case.  I have to admit, I would not have chosen to visit a ceramics factory ordinarily, but it was mildly interesting.

From there the bus took us through the countryside to the place Peter and I had wanted to see, the Fire Lake.  Interestingly, the countryside is very green and has loads of cows, (shades of England).  The bus climbed the 900 metres to the edge of the crater and stopped at a couple of sites giving magnificent views over the lake.  Glorious. 

Sao Miguel island is actually very long and thin, made up of 3 volcanoes in a row of different ages.  If I remember rightly, the one furthest east is 6 million years old, the central one is 60,000 yrs old, and the one in the west is 1.3 million years old (thereabouts).   From our viewpoints almost central on the island, we could see the eastern volcano/hill and both the north and south coasts.

The views were spectacular and our tour guide explained that the area was now all national park with conservation orders all over it, although all outdoor activities such as walking and climbing were being encouraged.

The bus then took us down to the small city of Ribeira Grande, where we were left to our own devices for half an hour.  A lovely, lovely placewith fantastic buildings and a lovely little central park, we could have easily spent a lot more time there.  Sadly it was time to leave, and we returned to the ship in time for lunch.

A quick meal, and then we dashed back out again to have a look round Ponta Delgada itself, which is the capital of the island and actually a wonderful city.  Everywhere we looked was a pleasure.  Like Madeira, the people used the volcanic basalt to create their houses and streets.  The streets and paths are made from basalt blocks and another cream stone in wonderful mosaics. 

The houses have ornate balconies and doors and are a pleasure to look at.  As were the churches and official buildings.  We were looking at the “old” city of course, we had seen the modern buildings of the “new” city further out during our tour this morning.  As we passed our fellow passengers they all said the same thing – “what a wonderful place”, most saying they wanted to come back.

Sadly we had to return to the ship which left the port at 4.30 this afternoon.  And that’s it.  The last port.  I’m slightly sad but also pleased to be getting home.  5 weeks is a long time, although I am certain then when I turn up for work Monday morning it’ll seem like I’ve never been away.

Day thirtyone, Tuesday 1st March, ANOTHER seaday.

We keep putting the clocks forwards as we make our way east towards the Azores and eventually, the UK.  Now we are only an hour behind British time.  This means that although we were dead lazy and got up at 10 this morning, if it had been 5 days ago, it would have been 7am. 

Amazon 17^th Feb Swallowtail moth onboard ship just as we were leaving the river.

Anyway, we woke up, and there was a distinct difference in the sea.  Not smooth, but definitely less rise and fall.  Everyone is feeling much better about it, and the sun even came out, so a lot more people were out on deck.  We still have the front of the ship and one deck closed off due to high winds, and the pools are still empty, because they just rock with the ship, create massive waves and flood the decks.  There is no way you can swim in them.

Today we watched the Can’t Cook Won’t Cook show which involved one of the chef’s and the two comedians.  I have seen this before on the Braemar, and it is fun to watch. We followed this with a coffee and a chat in the Iceni lounge, lunch, dozing in the iceni lounge and then Peter’s class.  Numbers have been down, but we had 42 today, and as usual they seem to enjoy themselves.  Then a cup of tea out on deck before the sun went in before coming to the cabin to chill.  We will probably not watch the show tonight, I feel a couple of episodes of  X-Files coming on.

Tobago 20^th Feb the Argyle waterfall again with Peter trying to get a better photo shot

Tobago 20^th Feb the stream from the waterfall.

Tomorrow we are in Ponta, on the island of Delgada, which is one of the islands in the Azores.  We have a tour booked which should be fun.  We were supposed to get there about 11.30, to go ashore about 12.30 and leave at 5pm.  Apparently there port staff want to go on strike, so now we have to get there earlier and leave earlier.  I think it works in our favour, and we get an hour or so in town after our tour.  We’ll see.

St Vincent 21^st Feb  Another view from the beach at St Vincent

St Vincent 21^st Feb Peter doing “the thinking man” impression

St Vincent 21^st Feb, a tiny little blue eyed gecko at the beach bar.

Day thirty, Monday 28th February, More Rough Seas

Now the captain promised us better weather today.  He lied!  The sea was described as rough to very rough today, not quite “A perfect storm” but enough to make the ship go up and down like a seasaw all day.  Humph! I am not liking it at all!  Seasick pills are being chewed as I type.

Today was dedicated to charity fundraising, the charity being an orphanage in the Philippines.  The first of the fundraising events was quite novel.  It is basically a line of coins started at the lowest level on the staircase. Passengers add their loose change and foreign coins and the line of coins climbs up the stairs.  The aim was to get it to the top floor (level 9) and back down again.  Well, by 13.30 this afternoon, it had already gone all the way up, and then back down to level 3.  So it was sent back up the stairs doing another circuit, I’m not sure how far it got, but there is definitely a load of money there.  Apparently all euro’s and pounds will be donated to the orphanage, and the foreign coins and notes to the RNLI.  We’ll find out later how much was raised.

As for the rest of the day - most of the normal entertainment was cancelled in favour of the “Country Fair” this afternoon in the Neptune Lounge.  There were loads of raffle stands and fundraising games.  Our favourite was the living fruit machine – 3 guys stood behind the bar with a bag containing fruit each, and one stood in front of it – he was the arm of the fruit machine- you lifted it and swung it down, and the three guys each pulled a piece of fruit out of the bag - 3 matching fruits and you won a prize.  Brilliant fun.  Although I nearly wrenched the guys arm off doing my “spins”.   Trying to get ping pong balls into brandy glasses also kept our attention, but we didn’t win.  

Peter did win a copy of the ships DVD in a raffle though, which is actually good, because there are clips in there that we haven’t managed to film or picture. 

The final event of the occasion was the auction.  There was a fantastic wall flower display made by one the staff, several photographs, two paintings by one the passengers, a painting by Peter of Boca Do Valeria, and a ship’s chart showing the route of this cruise signed by all the senior officers.  The last item was expected to be the chart topper and raise around £500.  As it happened, although everything sold well, Peter’s picture went for the largest amount of £420, and the map only managed £270. (How smug are we!).  And all for a good cause.   We will find out later how much the whole event raised.

More pics from the Amazon, except they are from the towns.  The first four are of the Opera House and surrounding building in Manaus – the area bears no resemblance to the rest of the city, which is teeming with people.  The last three are Parintins, the last place we visited on the river.  If you remember, this place does not have a dock big enough for the ship.  It was also the place we liked best – a cleaner, more attractive and more restful environment. You can play “where’s Peter” on two of them, but they do only show a back view. 

Opera House Manaus

I think this is a governers building or palace, Manaus

Parantins

Another Parantins street.  Bright and sunny 

Inside the cathedral, Parantins