Wanderung 33

After two days of walking around towns, we were ready for a sea day. We were not, however, completely idle and filled up our morning with an Excursion Lecture at 9, where we learned very little indeed, followed by a Port Lecture on Lifou, Loyalty Islands, which was given by Leeanne Fiedler and full of useful information, such as the fact that it was the largest coral atoll in the world. Who knew? Although renting bicycles to drive around the island was very tempting, at $15 per hour you would pretty much be buying the bicycle if you rented it for a day or two! Instead, we decided to take a RCI bus tour out to the seaside Cliffs of Jonkin, where we could compare cliffs caused by uplifted coral to, say, the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland that were formed by erosion.

Then we took a quick break to go shopping in the ship`s atrium as they were selling handbags and sunglasses. Monika needed sunglasses as she had lost her prescription sunglasses somewhere on Fiji, either in Suva or when coming back in board as going through the metal detectors is always a big mess. I've coped with that problem by hooking everything together with the carabiners, including my clip-on sunglasses, which has helped me stop losing such things in security screenings, but that is an ever-present problem.

In any case, we found a $30 pair of sunglasses that advertised 100% UV protection and picked those up as Monika needed protective eyeglasses for the upcoming beach day and didn't want to risk her remaining pair of prescription eyeglasses.

We returned for the theater for a dancing lesson on the waltz from 11-12, followed by another Port Lecture by Leeanne, this one on Mare, Loyalty Islands. That looked like another beach day, and I only regretted that more of the island's didn't offer bicycle rentals that would allow us to pedal around and take a look at things ourselves. We have problems often on tours in that we want to see some things in much more detail than a tour allows, such as the Fiji Museum in Suva, and other things like shopping stops we could skip all together. So we do better when we can set our own pace, so to speak.

Since Mare is about 26 miles long and 11 miles wide, it would seem to be a perfect size for a bicycle tour, especially if they had electric-assist bikes. Oh well. We still had to decide whether or not to take the RCI shuttle bus over to Yejele (or Lejele) Beach. It looked like a very inviting white-sand beach, but it has almost no shade and we tend to overheat after about an hour in the tropical sun.

Leaving that decision for another day, we headed up to the Windjammer for a late lunch. We settled in for a relaxing afternoon or reading and doing crossword puzzles together out on the balcony whilst watching the ocean roll by, which suits us to a "T" but would probably bore most other couples stiff.

I also took some time and used the second sewing kit I had obtained from the front desk to sew up a frayed corner of my camera case. Since the case swings from my belt loop on a carabiner, the constant light abrasion against my pants has finally made the fabric of the corner of the case wear thin. So I attempted to kind of darn it and reinforce it with the needle and thread from the sewing kit. Monika recalled that I had found that camera case in a sidewalk sale just down the street from Detlef and Susanne's condo in Haffkrug, Germany about 4 years ago, and my camera has lived in that case ever since over many, many trips. I used the first sewing kit to sew some white yarn onto that case so it's more noticeable against a dark background, because I was occasionally having a problem kind of losing track of it in dark areas. With luck, I have now fixed it to last a couple more years.

At dinner, we had some more fast-pace conversations, but one question put by Shannon had us all stumped. He asked, "How many people have died on this trip, and how many have been taken off in an ambulance ?" That type of information is obviously NOT published in the ship`s daily newsletter, but he had conversed with a chaplain who informed him that 3 people had died en route (one body being taken off at Lautoka) and two people had been taken off in ambulances. Further trivia along those lines was that the Explorer of the Seas could accommodate a total of 4 bodies in its mortuary, and 8 passengers in the ship`s brig or jail. Amazing. Obviously, our table typically had "no holds barred" dinner conversations, and as a result the conversation topics spun around quite unpredictably. Entertaining, however.

After dinner, we retired to our cabin and finished the Nora Roberts novel "Hidden Star" a part of a trilogy concerning 3 precious jewels, and in my view a direct homage to Dashiell Hammett`s 'Sam Spade' detective series. Similarly to Nora Robert`s spin on the Science Fiction genre, intermingling romance with the basic detective story, in the former case, or with the basic science fiction story, in the latter case, leads to a much more deeply emotional type of narrative and far more believable characters than you would typically find in either the old crime novels or prototypical science fiction novels. In any event, we liked it very much and finished it before turning in for the night.