Three rough blokes were having a beer one day and Roger was saying how he’d like to do the other half of the Amazon from Manaus to the coast. The other two didn’t take much persuading so in January 2015 we met in Manaus, Cam flying in from a week in Guatemala, AJ arriving after a few days in Panama and Roger after the shot show in Vegas and a few days in Panama.
Check out the full story below.
Friday 5 June 2026: True North II, King George Falls – Sylvia
Wow and wow! This keeps getting better. True North has a slogan: Life’s Different After… and I do feel that I have rekindled my youthful spirit a bit being here. We woke this morning and at 6:45 Guia, one of the crew led a yoga session up on the helicopter deck. This was a fantastic way to start the day, at the mouth of the King George River. True North, the slightly larger sister of this boat sailed past us while we were doing our yoga. The yoga was followed by a pancake feast on the bar deck. The chefs had prepared delicious pancakes with a variety of toppings. Yum! During breakfast Roger was awarded the coveted fishing hat for his exploits yesterday.
After breakfast we started cruising up river. This massive river with its red rock walls, towering some 80m at times, was only discovered in 1911. It is really magnificent. The rock has been eroded over millenia, with different layers showing both the formation of the rock and the effects of weathering over time. Eventually we reached the twin falls, separated by a large rocky outcrop. They were stunning today and must look even more incredible in the wet season. Lloyd, guided by Max, who had been dropped off on a rock ledge near the falls by tender earlier, nosed the boat right under the falls and we all got drenched as the water cascaded over us. We had done this at another waterfall earlier in the trip but this was more powerful and more exhilarating.
As we turned to head back, I went down to my room to shower and change. No sooner had I done that than Lani’s voice came over the speaker saying it was time for our tender excursions, ‘don’t forget to wear your bathers as you’ll get wet’. I quickly changed again and we headed back to view the falls from an even lower perspective. We really felt like ants. We stopped to watch True North make their way up to the falls. It was impressive to see from outside the boat just how close it gets. We then continued our way down river marvelling at the rock formations.
At one point we came across a massive 4m croc basking on a rock ledge just out of the water. Lloyd gunned the outboard, spraying the croc, hoping it would open its mouth, but instead it slunk very quickly back into the river and out of sight.
A little further on we came to the Fountain of Youth waterfall, where we had our second cold shower of the day, although Roger opted to sit at the back of the boat and take photos, before making our way back on board for a delicious lunch of fresh fish and chips.
After lunch it was back into the tender and up river to a small inlet where we clambered a short distance over some rocks and boulders to a little rain-fed grotto. A few brave people swam, but this late in the season the pool was getting shallow and had lots of midges flying around. I didn’t want that to be my last memory of swimming here so chose not to. We made our way back on board where it was sadly time to start getting our things together and packing up.
Later in the afternoon Roger headed into the bowels of the boat for a tour of the engine room. Then, just before 4pm we boarded the helicopter for a 30-minute scenic flight over the falls. I am about out of adjectives to describe it. We started low over the bay as we did a fly past of True North. It has been obvious how well the crew on board gets on. They all just jump in to help each other with anything that needs to be done. From all the interactions today with the crew from the sister boat, it is clear that the whole team (there are about 100 in total) connect.
We then flew along the river and circled the falls a couple of times to ensure we all got a good look before swooping down the front of the falls and along the river with the rock walls towering on either side. It was another exhilarating experience. As we flew out to the ocean we could see a few sharks swimming in the bay before returning back on board to have a group photo with all guests and crew.
After our last delicious onboard dinner (goat ragu with tagliatelle and a pumpkin and feta salad, followed by coconut and passionfruit pannacotta), we retired to the lounge for a quick recap of the trip and a viewing of the impressive video that Ryder, the onboard photographer, had put together of the trip. We will all receive a copy of this video which will be a great reminder of this holiday. I can truly say this has been a marvellous experience. Every little thing has been put together with excellence. I couldn’t help myself and have booked for another trip with this company next year…
Saturday 6 June 2026: Wyndham to Perth – Sylvia
We woke this morning berthed in Wyndham, and packed up ready to disembark and travel to Perth for a few days before heading home. While I was getting ready I heard an almighty clatter, followed by a lot of expletives coming from the bathroom. Roger had fallen while stretching with his leg on the bench and had hit the toilet quite hard. No damage to the toilet but I wasn’t too sure about Roger. He assured me he was okay so I continued getting ready.
We said long goodbyes to Ryan (captain), Lani (cruise director) and their incredible crew and boarded a bus along with the other guests, headed for Kununara, about an hour’s drive south. The road was pretty straight and on both sides we were flanked by small boab trees, which looked as though they had been planted. At one stage a dingo ran across the road in front of the bus, the first one either of us had seen in the wild. It didn’t hang around long enough for a photo.
We arrived in Kununara and I got the first real sense that Roger’s injury may have been worse than he had initially let on when he asked me to carry his bag to the plane. Luckily we had business class seats for the three-and-a-half hour flight, but it was obvious he was quite uncomfortable as he kept wriggling around and standing up to try and get some release. Once we arrived in Perth and checked into our hotel, we headed off to the nearest doctor. On arrival were were advised that we had an appointment for 3:45pm, about 30 minutes later. We were eventually seen just after 5pm. By that stage there were no reasonable options for imaging and as he seemed okay, the doctor prescribed some pain medication and booked him in for a CT scan on Monday morning. We headed back to the hotel, where, after a quick room service dinner, Roger took a sleeping pill and managed a reasonable night’s sleep.
Sunday 7 June 2026: Perth – Sylvia
We had a very leisurely start to the day before grabbing an Uber to a highly rated cafe in a nearby suburb, where we enjoyed a delicious brunch. We returned to the hotel and set out on a slow stroll to explore some of the downtown area. Perth does not seem like a big city. Other than a few homeless people on the streets, it is pretty clean and easy to get around. We wandered past the old town hall and into Stirling Gardens. I was bemused by the names of some of the businesses in the State Building. Roger sat for a bit while I explored a bit, then we headed a little further on to Elizabeth Quay.
By this time Roger was pretty uncomfortable so he took an Uber back to the hotel and I continued to explore a bit. There is lots of cool street art around the city.
I had noticed a Titanic exhibition across the road from the doctor’s office yesterday and decided to head there. It was very well done, focusing on the personal experiences of different people involved. It started with an overview of the global environment in the early 20th century and continued through to the rescue, aftermath and more recent discovery of the wreck. Inside were replica set ups of first, second and third class spaces on board. I spent about an hour-and-a-half immersing myself in the history before returning to the hotel to check on Roger.
Later in the afternoon we had booked massages, thinking it might ease a bit of Roger’s muscle soreness. Then we had a very quiet evening back in the hotel.
Monday 8 June 2026: Perth – Sylvia
Roger headed off just after 8:30am to the radiology place to get a CT scan of his lumbar spine and hip. Once he got back, we caught an uber to Freemantle and wandered around the very impressive Maritime museum there. Outside the museum are walls with the names of thousands of immigrants who arrived in Freemantle. The museum houses some very interesting exhibits, including lots of different boats, a submarine and even a preserved shark! Upstairs they have a 180 degree dome theatre and this was a comfortable spot for us to sit. We watched three different movies, one on the stars and the stories they tell us about creation from both a scientific and an indigenous people’s perspective. Another was about the Ningaloo reef and the annual coral spawning, and the third was about the whale super highway.
After our visit, we headed back to the hotel to rest, then attended Roger’s follow up doctor’s appointment at 4:30pm. We were both surprised when he told us that Roger had fractured three vertebrae in his lumbar spine, as well as two ribs in his back. This was the minor part though. What they were more concerned about was the large haematoma he had developed that showed ongoing internal bleeding. The doctor couldn’t believe how good Roger looked, saying that if Roger didn’t look as good as he did, he would have sent him straight to hospital in an ambulance. As it was, he gave us a referral letter and sent us to the ED department at Perth hospital under our own steam.
We arrived, took a number and waited to be triaged. Overall I thought it was a very straightforward and efficient approach. It wasn’t too long before we handed over the letter to a nurse and Roger was rushed straight in to be seen. Even though we had travel insurance, it was great to be advised that because of the reciprocal arrangement with NZ our costs would be covered. The rest of the evening was spent with Roger being poked, prodded and examined by several different doctors, x-rayed and scanned etc. He kept his spirits up and entertained the nurses with tales of his crocodile catching exploits. He was admitted overnight for observation.
I returned to the hotel and made all the arrangements to postpone our flights home.
Tuesday 9 June 2026: Perth – Sylvia
I headed back to the hospital just after 8am. Roger had managed a little sleep overnight and the good news was the scan showed the internal bleeding had largely stopped. Having recently experienced the public health system in New Zealand and being underwhelmed and a bit concerned at the state of it, I was pretty impressed with the system here in Perth. Roger was seen by numerous different medical professionals, including occupational therapists, nurses, doctors etc. Despite it being incredibly busy the staff were friendly and attentive. After more blood tests showing he was stable, he was released after lunch (a meal he actually enjoyed, unlike the inedible food at hospital in NZ) and we were cleared to return to NZ tomorrow.
The hospital was only about 400m from the hotel we were staying at so we decided to walk slowly back. Roger settled back in and I rebooked our flights. I then headed out to walk and explore a bit more of Perth, visiting the massive King’s Park. Then it was back to the hotel for another quiet evening. Tomorrow we have a late evening flight back to Auckland.
Overall this has been a fantastic trip. I am just very grateful that Roger’s injury wasn’t more severe, and that it happened at the end of the trip. He will have 4-6 weeks of discomfort as his fractures and haematoma heal but shouldn’t suffer any long term effects.
Monday 1 June 2026: True North II, Roe River and Porosous Creek – Sylvia
It was nice to have a gentler start this morning. Some of the guests took off on the tenders for a fishing trip at 6am but we had a later breakfast at 7am and then had an hour or two to relax before our first activity at 9am. We all headed off in the tenders for a ~45-minute ride ‘up the back’ of the Roe river to a lovely spot with a waterfall. The crew lit a fire and prepared damper and billy tea while we wandered around the rocks and dipped in some of the smaller, shallower pools.
This was croc territory and we weren’t allowed to swim in the larger deeper pools in case one was lurking around. There was some aboriginal rock art on the roof of one of the caves nearby. A whistling kite circled overhead, a magnificent large bird with a definite point to its tail. Roger and I rested in the shade under one of the cliffs for a while, before I, being still wet from dipping in one of the pools, needed to get back into the sun to warm up.
At about 11:30am we headed back to True North II, spotting a small crocodile and a small pod of dolphins along the way. At one point one of the banks of the river was full of fruit-bat laden mangrove trees, squeaking and carrying on. I would have expected they would be still and silent during the day but it sounds like they are squabbling and they seem to flap and move around a lot. Maybe they are all fighting for the best spot.
After a delicious lunch (cous cous salad with fresh caught fish in a saffron and mussel broth) we opted to stay on board while some of the guests went on a short excursion to view some more modern aboriginal art work. We had opted to do an overnight camp, along with three other guests, (Mark, Michelle and Siobhan), and three crew (James, the helicopter pilot, Lucy and Matt) so just after 3pm we boarded the helicopter and headed off. It was only a short ride to our destination, a truly idyllic spot in a canyon with a tall waterfall and a fantastic swimming hole. Our beds were already set up and chairs laid out around the fire pit. Most of us jumped in for a refreshing swim before exploring around the area a little.
The crew cooked up a lovely steak dinner on a grill plate over the fire and then we sat around chatting while the sun set, the moon rose and the stars came out. Then it was a fairly early night for all of us as we retired to our rather comfortable beds under the open sky.
Tuesday 2 June 2026: True North II, Porosus Creek – Roger
It was just before 0600. We woke in daylight with the moon still in the sky, surrounded by cliffs and, in particular, paperback trees. Overnight there had been a very bright moon, to the point that one didn’t need a torch when taking a stroll for midnight relief. The stretcher beds were very comfortable. They keep them here, stored under the cliff, as I think they have many trips into this delightful little spot.
Lucy turned up with some firewood and soon there was a brew on, with Max and James both chipping in to assist with the cooking of bacon and eggs for breakfast, along with some avocado and toast of course. Sylvia, Mark, Michelle and Siobhan headed off for a short swim before we packed up the camp and mounted the Bell Jet Ranger for the short flight back to the boat. As we approached the boat there were two four-meter crocodiles hanging about 50m off the stern. After landing we went down to the deck by the transom. I leaned over to look and saw four tawny nurse sharks swimming back-and-forth across the transom, close enough to be touched. Apparently they’re quite placid and even enjoy the odd pat, not that anybody was going to try that with the crocodiles hanging around.
After a shower and a change of clothes, we headed off with Heather and Jude up the nearby Porosus Creek for a spot of mud-crabbing. This is done by laying some bait in the bottom of a crab pot, which is surrounded by wire and a nylon mesh. The pot is dropped onto the mud bottom of the creek where it lies flat and has four cords coming off the top onto a rope that is attached to a float. They’re pretty careful to make sure they put the float up in a tree – most of the existing floats had crocodile teeth marks in them from where they’ve been grabbed when floating in the water. Apparently it’s nothing to see a crocodile racing off down the river with a float in its mouth, towing a pot behind it. We laid our pots in six different places and, having laid the last one, we returned to the first one and hauled it up to find quite a large crab in the bottom. Dropping the pot again we went off to the next one, each taking turns to pull the pots up. We would sometimes find jennies (female crabs) or undersize crabs in the pot, which we were returned to the water. At one stage, a particular pot I was hauling up seemed a little bit heavy. Thinking it might have been caught under a branch or something I gave it a bit of a yank and it came up quite easily, but at the same time a crocodile popped up nearby with the bait in his mouth, threw its head back, swallowed the bait and sat there looking at us for a while. The crocodile had managed to chomp through the wire on the pot so we had to dispense with using that one for for the rest of the morning. On another occasion Jude was hauling up the pot when Max told Heather to move away from the edge of the boat. Heather thought it was just because there was a branch brushing her back but when we looked down, right there was a young crocodile, partially hidden by the bushes but within easy bouncing range. This creek was a bit of a crocodile alley. During our crabbing expedition we saw at least half a dozen or more crocodiles in various parts of the creek. With quite a good catch between us, and each of us having hauled up at least one decent crab, we headed back to the boat. There is a limit of 20 crabs for the boat and the plan was that with three boats out, they would count up everybody’s catches and keep the 20 biggest ones, the rest being returned to the sea. As it turned out, we had been by far the most successful with the other two boats only catching 5 crabs between them so all were kept.
At around 1330 we sat down for another delicious lunch, this time consisting of flat bread with lamb shoulder and baba-ganoush. At 1430 we took off in the Bell Jet Ranger again for a 40-minute scenic flight over the local area, looking at the different varieties of mangroves and a pretty spectacular waterfall. It makes you wonder where the hell the water comes from around here because it looks so dry, however there are a number of rivers running through this land. The final part of the flight we flew over our campsite from last night, then around some islands before finally heading back to the boat. Along the way James, the pilot, had pointed out a number of landmarks, including a hill which had been called Donkin Hill. When Parker and his team surveyed this area back in the 1800’s, they took a stroll around the area and on the last day of their stroll ended up on this hill with only one tin of donkin (like Spam) left so the hill got its name as did the nearby waterfall.
After returning from the flight we relaxed for a little while before heading out on one of the tenders to a nearby island. We landed on the beach and walked up the sand and over a little hump to the beach on the other side. The tide was going out fast so we brought the boats back and headed to another island where we watched the sun set at precisely 1715.
Returning to the ship we enjoyed drinks on the bar deck along with a large quantity of the mud crab that been caught earlier in the day, not a taste Sylvia or I enjoyed.
At dinner in the evening, we were joined by Tamarin, originally from a town South of Broome. She joined this True North II crew in February this year. We were all humbled learning not only what she does as a crew person, but also how she spends her three weeks off. (The crew are scheduled on for three weeks and then off for three). During her off time she works for an organisation that helps disadvantaged children. She also works one day a week for St John’s ambulance and in the future wants to become a paramedic. It was from her perspective that we were able to understand how the crew on the boat works so well together. She explained that when she undertook her training the owner of the company said ‘you’re here to have a great time but also to make sure that you work really hard so the guests have a great time too’. She was explaining that during her first three weeks, every time she did anything somebody would be very quick to point out what she had not quite got right but soon she was reaching the required standard and managed to be part of this very professional operation.
Wednesday 3 June 2026: True North II, Osborne Islands and Eagle Falls – Sylvia
Days start early on board and after another 6am breakfast we headed out to look at some indigenous rock art. Lloyd regaled us with more stories of how the family groups worked. Each would have a totem animal that would protect them and that they were not allowed to hunt. Our first stop was in a cave with a large crocodile painted on the roof. This would have been the totem animal of the family group from this location. Apparently there is photographic evidence of indigenous people with a crocodile totem swimming safely with saltwater crocs.
Back in the tenders, we headed to another spot. I managed to stand still in one place for two long and get bitten by a couple of green ants – not an overly pleasant experience but I guess I’ve had worse. Lloyd explained the various scientific techniques used to date the artwork. As the ochre used gets absorbed into the rock it can’t be easily dated itself. One of the techniques involved analysis of overlying wasp nests. In general they date back 12-17,000 years. At this cave was a large serpent painting along with some other Gwion Gwion figures, which often feature elaborate headdresses and tassels.
Our third stop was another small island, which had been visited by the Makasar people from Indonesia. They came in the 1400’s to hunt giant triton snails, some shell remnants of which were evident. More recently they have hunted a type of giant sea slug they consider to be an aphrodisiac. Despite this being banned some time ago, they are still seen here on occasion now, driving very fast boats, enabling them to evade the customs patrols.
We returned on board and had a fairly fast turnaround to head off for our second heli-picnic, this time to Eagle Falls. This was a stunning site with tiered waterfalls and a couple of great swimming holes. The landing was spectacular, in a narrow gorge beside one of the smaller falls. The staff had set up a shade cloth and cooked a delicious Australian themed barbecue lunch with lamb, kangaroo, barramundi, chicken and prawns, potato and broccoli salads and delicious scrolls. Later in the afternoon they brought out brownies and a fresh fruit platter.
There were a few indigenous rock art sites to explore and we alternated our time sitting under waterfalls, swimming in the deep pools, and relaxing in the shade. I have rekindled my love of water after several years of not swimming much and spent a lot of time in the pools, despite a few qualms… even though they assured us that freshwater crocodiles are shy and don’t attack people, I still wasn’t that keen to bump into one and the pools were pretty deep and dark. Still, it was worth it and if there was a croc around i didn’t see it.
We flew back to True North II late afternoon with time for a short rest before heading up to the bar deck, where Ryan, the captain, shared some more information about the True North history and other itineraries she and her sister boat do… We are very interested…
We had another delicious meal of eye fillet steak with scallops, béarnaise sauce and potato gratin before getting dressed up and heading back to the bar deck for the crazy quiz night. I was happy to be part of the winning team. We had been provided with an array of western gear to dress in and the staff donned a variety of weird and whacky costumes. It was a pretty fun evening. I retired at the end of the quiz but Roger, who has been dubbed the new sheriff in town, was last man standing, enjoying trading stories with the other guests and crew.
Thursday 4 June 2026: True North II, Mitchell River – Roger
Just after 0700 we hopped in a tender with Lucy, our fishing guide, and Deb, one of the other passengers, and headed out for a spot fishing. We had moored up last night about 20km up the Mitchell River, which is still saltwater at this point, with, of course, lots of saltwater crocodiles about. We headed upriver about five or six kms and then fished along the bank near the mangroves with a lot happening as we drifted down the river. We came to a clear bit of beach where a small crocodile of about 2.5m was lying just out of the water soaking up some morning sun. After taking a picture or two, I cast the lure up onto the sand a couple of feet away from him. As I flicked the lure he leapt to life chasing the hook back towards the boat. It was quite entertaining and it was also interesting to see how fast the bloody things can move.
With not much happening there on the fishing front, we headed up a side tributary where we tried our luck at the intersection of a couple creeks. Sylvia and Deb were fishing towards the rocks and I was casting out into the middle of the stream where there weren’t supposed to be any fish and suddenly I hooked a barramundi. I kept the tension on the line while he fought, wrapping himself around the anchor line a couple of times and around Deb‘s fishing line. In spite of all this Lucy got there with the net and we brought it in at 62 cm. We took a photo and then threw him back as the ship didn’t require any more barramundi.
We headed back to the river and then down the stream about 10km to try our luck again. We drifted along near the bank, casting our lines in amongst the mangroves with not much luck. We reached a bit of a beach where there was a little crocodile lying sunning himself so I thought I’d try the same trick with the lure and cast it up beside him to see if he would chase it also. Unfortunately the cast wasn’t too good and the lure landed on the other side of him. I thought if I wound the line across his back he might take off but he didn’t and the lure hooked him on the back. Bloody hell! now I’d caught a crocodile! It was highly entertaining listening to Lucy and Sylvia and Deb as I reeled the thing towards the boat, getting it right up alongside and realising there was no way we were going to get the lure out of it back. We ended up cutting the line. We thought he would just swim away but he didn’t, just staying near the boat. Lucy thought maybe she could use the gaff to remove the lure but as she reached out and touched the crocodile it went mad, flinging itself up in the air and then diving deep into the water. Lucy screamed and the crocodile was gone.
We continued our way down the river for another 300m or so to some rocks, with Sylvia and Deb fishing along the way. Having lost my lure, I had been banned from more fishing. Then we spotted the little crocodile again, complete with green and red lure, swimming not far from the boat.
Fishing over, and having had a very entertaining morning, we headed back to the boat. After a cup of tea and a lot of laughs as we told our fishing stories, we hopped back in the tender and headed down the river and up a side stream. There we dismounted the tenders and walked up the side of the river to a freshwater swimming hole where the group had a swim.
After about 30-minutes the helicopter turned up, dropping off David, Sonya, Andrew and Kate. Sylvia and I jumped aboard and we flew back to the ship to refuel and also pick up Deb and Ian. Taking off and flying up the river, well past where it became freshwater, we landed near the impressive Mitchell Falls. We dismounted and went for a short walk up to a viewing area overlooking the falls. Returning back from the walk there were another two helicopters parked nearby, turning and burning and waiting to pick up passengers to take back to a nearby campsite. We took off first, flew over the falls again, and then around past the campsite where another three helicopters were parked. We flew back cross country, taking the direct line to the boat, passing over various freshwater creeks and rivers. Sylvia even spotted a mob of cattle along the way.
Back at the boat we enjoyed another nice lunch and some more fishing stories as Andrew had also dangled a lure in front of a crocodile which had been hanging around their boat. It took the lure for a few seconds till it broke away, but it continued following their boat around. There’s a strict rule around here if you’re anywhere near the saltwater you have to be very stupid to go swimming.
After lunch I stayed on the boat as my right knee had started to swell up a bit. Sylvia went out on the sightseeing tour with Mike and Bree, our two American guests, and Lloyd as the guide.
At 5pm we had a very interesting presentation from Lloyd on the history of the Kimberley area, including many of the goings on here over the years. Following that I spent a few minutes in the bridge looking at how the electronic navigation system works in conjunction with the radar. Even with all that equipment they still carry paper charts. We then joined everyone for another fantastic meal with sticky date pudding for dessert.
Thursday 28 May 2026: True North II, Buccaneer Peninsula – Sylvia
We woke early this morning after a peaceful night, with only gentler rocking as we cruised northward into the Kimberley’s. We had arrived overnight in the Buccaneer Peninsula, a large area of 884 island (more than 1000 at low tide). After a light breakfast at 7am we headed out for our first expedition. Most people took the tenders a short ride and walked up a short but steep slope to a water hole for swimming. Roger and I, along with two others opted instead to do a scenic cruise on one of the tenders, exploring the many nooks and crannies around. At one stage we passed through an arch that had been carved out by the sea and noticed hundreds of sea lice scuttling up the walls.
This area was mapped by a young man called Philip Parker King in 1822. Using the tools available to him at the time he made an incredibly accurate map of the area, which is very impressive.
The Kimberley Basin was separated from the rest of the Australian continent when Gondwanaland broke up and the many rock formations were formed when it crashed back into Australia millions of years ago at a rate of about 12cms per year. It certainly makes for some impressive scenery. Iron in the ground has turned the, originally purplish, rocks bright orange. Near the tops the colour has been washed away and they are almost white. These three colours contrast beautifully with the turquoise and blue of the ocean and the green of the limited foliage around.
Eventually we arrived in a cove where we could see an old shack on the hill. Apparently a couple of sailors had decided one day to set up home there. They lived happily for many years and even had a bar set up that True North used to patronise. The wife wanted a swimming pool and her husband obliges, welding her a pool out of an old water tank. I think they called it Squatter’s Rest. It was pretty rustic. When the land was returned to the indigenous people they were originally told they could stay, but after a change in leadership they were kicked out. She died a few years ago but her husband, who must now be in his 80’s still lives in their trailer yacht.
Sea Eagle
We returned to true North II in time for an emergency drill, followed by a briefing on the helicopter. At about midday it was our turn for our first flight and, after donning our life jackets, we boarded the chopper to fly first over the horizontal falls, which are formed by the massive tidal movements pushing water through narrow gaps in the rocks. We then flew over a couple of iron mining sites. Apparently some of the purest hematite in the world was mined here but the mine closed down a few years ago. I actually thought it was pretty sad to see the impact on the environment.
From the helicopter the colours of the Kimberley region really come to life. It is a pretty stunning place. We returned to the boat after about 40-minutes, just in time to join the other guests for a delicious lunch of chicken learn salad with crispy wontons. Another trip we will definitely not go hungry on…
At about 2pm we climbed back into the tenders for our afternoon’s exploration. As we stepped onto the tender a nurse shark was circling calmly, nearly passing right below us at one point. First stop was the horizontal falls that we had flown over earlier. At peak tide today (neap tide period) the volume of one olympic swimming pool flows through the two cracks in the rock, one 17m wide and the other 9m wide every second. We were not allowed to go right through but were able to motor about half way in through the current and then turn and come back out again. It gives a good sense of the force of the water, which was very hard to capture in photographs. A few boats are allowed to go all the way through but they had stopped giving out licenses by the time True North II started operating in the area.
There is a large installation nearby where people fly in on seaplanes and board fast jetboats to go through the gaps. Some stay overnight on the pontoon area and others fly back to Broome or Derby the same day.
We next motored around to explore Cyclone Creek. This area showcased the many layers of sandstone, the youngest, Pentecost sandstone being 600-800 million years old and the oldest, King Leopold sandstone dating from about 1.814 billion years ago. In some places different volcanic rocks project through the layers of sandstone, which themselves are angled and warped in many different patterns, highlighting the ferocity of the land movements that created this area. We motored as far as we could down the creek without getting stranded on the still outgoing tide. At one point a number of bright orange fiddler crabs stood out on the grey mudbanks. We came across a ~2m salt water crocodile lying lazily on the surface of the water. Unfortunately it sank out of sight as we approached. I am sure we will see many more on the trip.
Fiddler Crab
We made our way back to the Horizontal Falls which were by now pretty much at peak flow before returning to True North II, as four seaplanes taking off from the pontoon, and the ship’s helicopter taking off with the last group of guests for their aerial flight made a great spectacle. The moon was rising over the cliffs behind the boat as we tied up and disembarked for the evening.
Back on board we enjoyed sunset over drinks at the bar followed by another delicious meal. All of my favourite foods were featured tonight… bar snacks of blue swimmer crab, followed by a delicious lamb rump with tomato pepper sauce and courgettes and then chocolate fondants with vanilla ice cream for dessert. The food is divine and the portion sizes are just right so you don’t feel over full.
Friday 29 May 2026: True North II, Raft Point, Red Cone Creek and Montgomery Reef – Roger
It was about 0630 when I walked out to the dining room to have everybody sing happy birthday to me. Sylvia obviously told them it was my birthday although she denies that and says that they knew through the form we filled out. Will the truth ever come out?
After breakfast we were on the team with Lloyd again and headed out to a nearby peninsula, where there were some tuna running. We threw a couple lines over the back and trolled for a while but nothing was biting. The colours around here are quite amazing with the emerald-blue-green water, the red rocks and the nice ‘almost painted on’ high tide mark, which is a black line that runs horizontally for miles and miles. Above that there is a white line on the rocks which is caused by the king tides that happen only a couple of times a year. Lloyd is incredibly knowledgeable about this area and told us of a boat that got stuck on a rock near here with the rock piercing the hill. The boat was held in place by the engines and they flew in an underwater welder by flying boat. He welded up the hole as they removed it from the rock, which is now named after that boat.
Intermediate Reef Egret
Our next stop was at some graffiti done by the locals 40 or 50,000 years ago, now called rock art of course. How they managed to find this particular piece of rock to put these drawings of their hand prints on, in such a place that it is still around thousands of years later, while many of the other rocks in the area have crumbled into the sea, is beyond me. It looks like they even survived the last Ice age. The rest of the team climbed up into the rocks for a closer look while I stayed in the boat with Lloyd.
From there we headed up a creek, covered on each side by mangroves, looking for an unsuspecting crocodile. We had covered over 20km on the journey and it was time to head back to the ship. When we arrived we were treated to freshly baked scones with lemon curd, cream and strawberries.
Morning tea over, we caught another tender, this time with Max. We headed off up Ruby Creek once again surrounded by mangroves. Along the way we saw a turtle and a number of tomato jellyfish that we nearing the end of their life. They apparently get eaten by the turtles. We arrived at a waterfall at the end of the creek, which runs up a cliff. Some of the group have gone for a climb up there to swim in a pool. Lloyd was in the other boat and we rafted up so he could give us a bit of a rundown on some of the aboriginal customs around here. They used to build mangrove rafts and float out on the tide to some of the local reefs to catch fish, and then float back in when the tide came in. He also told us how nowadays they use helicopters to drop firelighters so the undergrowth is burned off every couple of years to stop large fires by reducing the amount of fuel available. It’s interesting how this practice seems only to be done in the northern territory and Western Australia. New South Wales and Victoria don’t do this and have massive fires which cause a huge amount of damage.
On the way back down the creek we spotted a 3m-plus crocodile lying up on the bank in the bush. In actual fact what happened was that Lloyd had spotted a bit of plastic and gone to get it and then realised this male crocodile was lying there so the plastic got to stay. Apparently these crocs can move pretty fast even though they look very docile.
Back at the Main channel we headed up another creek, where we saw a large number of baob trees, similar to those that we saw in Madagascar a number of years ago, but a lot smaller. We headed back to the boat for lunch, after which we were the first group up for the scenic helicopter flight over Montgomery reef. This reef covers some 400 km² and basically when the high tide comes in it floods the whole thing and when the tide goes out the water gushes off the side of the reef continuously for 12 hours until the next high tide arrives filling in the water again. As we flew over the reef we saw turtles, manta rays and a couple of crocodiles lazing around. The 20-minute flight over, we hopped on a tender, this time piloted by Lucy, who took us through the channel between the reef where the water gushes in. There were many turtles up this channel which now and again stuck their heads up for a quick breath before disappearing again. A number of birds hung around and there were lots of fish also feeding on the small fish that would be pulled off the reef by the outgoing tide.
Soon after arriving back at the boat we were ferried out to a little sand bank (cay) that had appeared as the tide went down. There the staff had set up chairs, a drinks table and a fire. As we departed the True North II, a small school of dolphins played just off the port side and we went over to check them out before heading to the cay. People played cricket or football for a while and we stood around and chatted over a few drinks. Then the staff produced a can of petrol and lit the fire they had prepared. Soon the sun was setting and the tide was coming in so it was time to head back to the boat, which by this stage was sitting in the water against a backdrop of a beautiful orange sky.
At dinner I was again serenaded with many rounds of happy birthday. The guests seemed to find the whole thing very amusing. The chefs had prepared a delicious chocolate cake, which we all enjoyed for dessert.
Saturday 30 May 2026: True North II, St George Basin and Prince Regent River – Sylvia
We were up in time for the sunrise again this morning with breakfast available from 6am, and our first excursion, a sightseeing ride around the St. George Basin, departing at 7am. We set off up the river, with Lloyd, our guide, as always providing some really interesting information. We meandered into several mangrove-line waterways, spotting numerous birds and a couple of crocodiles. As we were making our way back to the mothership we came across a pod of snub-finned dolphins. These funny looking creatures have a bulbous head and a very short fin. Lloyd had been explaining to us that they are known to use a very unusual fishing technique, whereby they spit water ahead of them to corral fish. Apparently this has only been observed quite rarely. He had just finished this explanation when the dolphins started spitting. It is hard to capture well on camera as they are only up out of the water for seconds at a time but we did get one semi-reasonable shot. It was very entertaining and we stayed with the pod watching for quite a while, while a few bridal terns circled overhead, occasionally diving to take one of the fish the dolphins had rounded up.
Striated Heron
Snub Fin Dolphin
Bridal Tern
Back on board we had a brief break before heading out on the helicopter, flying over the Prince Regent river, which carves a nearly straight path down an old fault line. Occasionally we could see waterfalls on the tributaries leading in to the main river. After a fairly short flight we turned and headed up Quail Creek, landing in a stunning spot where the crew had set up chairs and were cooking a barbecue lunch. We swam, ate, wandered around exploring the area and examining the rock art across the river, relaxed and generally had a fabulous time. Eventually it was time to reboard the chopper and head back to True North II. It is hard to really capture the idyllic essence of this place, even in photographs.
Back on board we headed up to the bow where the team had set up a bar and some tuna sashimi, caught by some of the guests out fishing a day or two ago, was served. We then had another delicious dinner of confit duck leg with a divine beetroot, pumpkin, pecan and feta salad, followed by an equally tasty dessert. We are up early here so not long after dinner it was time to retire for the night. While out on the picnic Roger had done a few pushups and was challenged to do some one-handed. In typical Roger fashion he obliged. Before we retired he was challenged again by some people who had missed the first show – and of course, he complied again… much to my chagrin.
Sunday 31 May 2026: True North II, Prince Regent River and King’s Cascade – Roger
Breakfast was at 0600 and around 0700 we were on the tender, just Sylvia, me and Lloyd, our guide. A smallish croc was hanging around as we headed downstream to Camp Creek. It was good timing as the tide was coming in. We headed up Camp Creek spotting some chestnut rails that we hadn’t seen before. At one point we passed a large rock, known as Suzuki Rock. Just after low tide it was several metres high, but it got its name because a guy came around the corner on a tender going flat tack on a much higher tide with the rock covered. He rammed into the rock and the motor ripped off. As the tide dropped the motor was left sitting on top of the rock.
Chestnut Rail
A little way after that we turned up a small stream getting stuck in the mud for a short time until the tide came in a bit. On the left-hand bank was a fruit bat colony, the noise of which was almost unbearable and the smell even worse. We sat there and watched as a couple of kingfishers landed in the nearby trees and some Brahmini kites flew past, also landing in the nearby trees.
Sacred Kingfisher
Brahminy Kite
We headed back down Camp Creek and turned back up the river, passing a couple of other boats before pulling up by some rocks where we clambered about 20m up the hill to look at some more graffiti. Nobody knows exactly how old this stuff is but they think between 20 and 40,000 years ago. The ochre or dye used penetrates into the limestone rock and as it was positioned under an overhang it seems to have survived the journey through time. There was an image of a rock wallaby in one place and not far from there were a number of figures that were people in elaborate headdresses. We climbed back down to the boat, which in the short time we had been up there had risen about a meter as the tide was coming in. Heading downstream we soon reboarded the True North II where we enjoyed some morning tea.
Soon we were back in the tenders again, heading up stream again and then turning right into a rather magnificent series of waterfalls. Apparently here, in 1987, a woman had been taken by a rather large crocodile. We disembarked from the boats and climbed up the hill past the top of the waterfall eventually coming to a large pool, which was fed by another small waterfall. We stripped down to our togs, dived in and swam across to the other side, which was quite a pretty area with more pools above the main pool or fed by small waterfalls. After hanging out there for an hour or so we headed back down into the tenders to go back to the True North II. We then headed up the river to the waterfall nosing in right against the large flow of water. We gathered together and had our photos taken under the waterfall. This exercise over we enjoyed a delicious lunch.
After lunch we relaxed for a couple of hours and then a group of us went out with Lloyd again. We drove around various bays looking at the rock formations while, Lloyd who is very knowledgeable, was able to tell us about everything that goes on in the area. The various tribes one from the north side of the river and the other from the south side of the river had managed their populations over the last 50,000 years with various customs and traditions ensuring that they maintained their tribe and that no inbreeding took place.
Back on board the True North II we had a presentation on pearls by Guia, one of the staff originally from Italy. She gave everybody rundown on how the pearls were seeded in the large oyster shelves and eventually harvested. There was also an opportunity to buy strings of pearls or pearl earrings and other things.
At around 1830 we all sat down and enjoyed another great dinner prepared by our two very professional chefs in the small kitchen or galley as they call it the sea.
It’s really impressive to see how all the staff here work together so well making the experience so enjoyable.
Saturday 23 May 2026 – Adelaide: Roger
It was about 4am when the bumpy ride came to a halt at Port Augusta. We stopped here for the best part of an hour. I found out later it was to change drivers. Around 5 we were on the move, again bumping along. Apparently the track gets a lot of use here making it a bit more worn than in other places. Or so we were told later. It was daylight by the time we passed through Port Wakefield.
We headed down to the dining carriage for our last train breakfast, where we chatted to Ralph and Alison, who were in the suite next door to us. They had flown out to Lake Eyre yesterday. The lake had filled with water last year after having last filled to capacity in 1974. The north lake is already fill again this year and has just started flowing over to the south lake.
It was around 1030am when we arrived at Adelaide Station. After disembarking we were driven to Sylvia’s sister, Debbie, and husband Dave’s place. After a cup of tea and a yarn we headed out to the Mount Lofty Golf course to pick up Dave, who had just finished his Saturday morning game. Next stop was Lenswood orchard to pick some apples and enjoy some apple crumble and ice cream.
After that, we visited Mike and Jackie, friends of Debbie and Dave at their modern, old-style house on a hill in the middle of a vineyard. Here we saw our 4th kangaroo 🦘 of the journey.
On the was back into town we stopped at the Uraidla pub for a drink and a snack before heading back to Debbie and Dave’s for the night.
Sunday 24 May 2026 – Adelaide: Sylvia
We had a very leisurely day, enjoying catching up with family on a rainy Sunday. My great niece, Ivy, had her 5th birthday party this morning at a local indoor play area so we joined in the celebrations. Lots of excitement from the kids for sure. I was impressed to see DAve (Pops) joining in the fun on the play equipment. Debbie had made a birthday cake in the shape of a 5, which was much enjoyed by kids and adults alike.
We then headed back to the house where we relaxed over a few games of Code Names, a fun way to challenge the brain a little. Then we decided to drive out to the Belair National Park, only about 20-minutes away. It was actually quite pretty in the rain and we saw several kangaroos and lots of birds but the emus and koalas proved elusive.
Back home again, we dressed and then headed out to dinner at a very nice steak restaurant. We ate way too much again and enjoyed each other’s company. It is always so good to have time together.
Monday 25 May 2026 – Adelaide to Broome: Roger
It was around 9:30am when Debbie dropped us off at the airport, where we managed to check our bags all the way through to Broome, even though our two flights were on separate tickets. (Adelaide to Perth and Perth to Broome). We took off and headed west, soon crossing the border into Western Australia, the first part of which looked pretty barren, with many salt lakes spread around the vast plains. As we headed further west we flew over a huge cropping area, with farms ranging in size from 3,000 to 4,000 hectares. The paddocks all appeared to be fenced. It was just after noon when we landed in Perth, where the airport seemed to be incredibly busy with flights heading out to lots of places in Western Australia I had never heard of. With Western Australia hosting over 120 major export-oriented mining projects and hundreds of smaller operations, there are thousands of people transmitting through Perth on their way to and from work. On the other side of the runway there was a Qatar airways A380 parked along with some other large aircraft, with flights leaving to the Middle East and Europe from here.
It was just after 3pm when we boarded an A320 for the 2.5-hour flight to Broome. With a substantial tail-wind, this was reduced to under two-hours. We witnessed more large farms with the land running into scrubby hills and deserts further to the east. As we came in to land at Broome we noticed that the runway is smack-bang in the middle of town, meaning in the latter years the town has been built around the airport. Broome has a population of around 20,000, rising to over 40,000 in the tourist season, which we have struck the beginning of. We collected our bags and a very friendly chap suggested we jump on his shuttle bus, which we did. Very soon we were checking into the Moonlight Bay Suites, where we passed a very relaxing evening.
Tuesday 26 May 2026 – Broome: Sylvia
We had a lazy morning this morning, heading out just before 10am to wander into town. It was a gorgeous sunny morning but the wind was quite strong, keeping the temperatures mild. We stopped for a quick look at the views from the Roebuck Bay lookout. This area hosts multitudes of migrating seabirds over the summer, but most have now left to return to the Arctic or Siberia. I was particularly struck by the baob trees and the frangipani.
Broome was once a major area for harvesting mother of pearl from the Pinctada Maxima oysters that are found here. They are the largest oyster shells in the world and although they can be found in small quantities in some other parts of the world, are only in abundance here. Prior to the invention of plastic, mother of pearl was an important commodity for the manufacture of buttons and other things. In the early 1900’s some 80% of the world’s mother of pearl came from Broome. It was a dangerous business and many pearl divers lost their lives in cyclones, diving accidents or from tropical diseases. In the late 1940’s the advent of plastics dramatically reduced the demand for mother of pearl. It was some years later that the cultured pearl industry really took off on the area. Today, Western Australia provides some of the highest quality cultured pearls in the world from a few pearl farms, which continue to develop their techniques to maximise the quantity and quality of pearls they farm.
There are numerous pearl boutiques along the streets of Chinatown, the main area of old Broome. Several of these have small museums or displays about the pearl industry. One has some old pearl loggers (boats) out the back. We spent a bit of time in another watching several videos about the industry.
We enjoyed a delicious brunch at the Haven Cafe. I would highly recommend this place to anyone visiting Broome. The food was delicious and the staff friendly and welcoming. After lunch we wandered down to the Old Streeter’s Jetty. This is a historic site and played an important role in the pearl diving era. It is also the start of the Jetty to Jetty walk, a self-guided walk with an app providing information and stories about the history of the area. The jetty juts out into a mangrove estuary… I had hoped to see a bit of wildlife around but nothing doing today…
We followed the Jetty to Jetty route, passing an old boat shed, some abandoned camps, and Sun Studios, the world’s longest running outdoor cinema, built in 1913 and still operating today. I found the commentary and personal stories on the app to be very interesting. We continued back to our hotel and took a bit of a break to rest Roger’s knees before heading out again towards the Town Beach Jetty at the other end of town. There is an interesting monument near the base of the jetty related to the bombing of Broome during World War II. It has nine representations of people of different ages and races, showcasing personal stories and reflections of survivors. Over 100 people lost their lives, the actual number will probably never be known. Many people had fled Java after the Japanese invasion and were sheltering in Broome, some in the flying boats that were easy targets. Many women and children were among the dead and injured.
We wandered back towards the hotel, stopping at Matso’s Brewery and Bar for a quick drink on the way.
Just before 4pm we jumped in a taxi and headed across to Cable Beach House, a stunning bar and restaurant perched on the cliffs overlooking Cable Beach, a fantastic spot to watch the sunset. A camel train headed past, off to pick up tourists for their sunset camel ride. I enjoyed a delicious gin and tonic while Roger opted for another alcohol-free beer, and we shared some scallops, tempura broccolini and zucchini fries. We headed back to the hotel after sunset for another quiet evening.
Wednesday 27 May 2026 – Broome, Kimberleys: Roger
It was just after 0730 when Erica, from Broome Adventure Cruises, picked us up in a 50-seat bus and we headed off around the town to pick up a few other people before heading out to Port Drive. Just before reaching Broome Adventure Cruises venue, we came across a road-train pulling out of a container terminal, pulling four 65-tonne containers. Most of the road trains here have three trailers but I think this one runs on a private road bringing out Magnetic Zircon from the mine. The project is a joint venture with a Chinese company and sells for between $700 and $800 Australian per tonne.
Arriving at Broome Adventures, we were briefed by Brendon, the son of the owner, before being led down to the beach and walking a few metres into the water to climb the steps into the back of the Brahminy Kite, a flat-bottomed-boat with a couple of outboard motors. After a further safety briefing on life jackets etc., we were on our way, heading along the coast for about 10-minutes to a very prominent jetty where we stopped for a while. Martin, the owner of the company and father of Brendon, gave us a briefing on the massive tides that they have here while Brendon sat up front and demonstrated using his head to represent the earth and his hands to indicate the position of the sun and the moon. The exceptionally high spring tides occur when the sun and the moon are lined up with the earth, pulling the water in the ocean to a high point on each side of the earth. He also gave us a rundown on the Catalina Flying boats that were here during World War II, housing some of the people that had come from the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, to escape the Japanese. They were living on the boats when nine Japanese zeros attacked, sinking the Catalinas and setting the sea around them on fire from the oil slicks. Most of those that escaped into the water were eaten by the large number of hammerhead sharks that hung out on the bay feeding on the offal and blood that came from the local meatworks. Those that did survive were badly burned and it was discovered that being in the sea for a period of time had helped heal the burns. This resulted in saline solutions being used to treat burns in the future.
Talk over, the boat was cranked up to 20-knots (about 40 kph) for another 10-minutes. We were then nosed into a beach and Brendon got out and put an anchor up on the sand with another anchor being dropped behind us. We dismounted and headed about 100m along the beach and soon nine of our party of thirteen were standing in dinosaur footprints. It was around 30-million years ago that a bunch of dinosaurs had walked through this country when it was a bit soggy. With the large brachiosaurs weighing in excess of 30-tons each, they left their footprints in the boggy surface. Over the years this had become sandstone with the footprints frozen in time. Round Broome 21 different species of dinosaur prints have been identified, the most species of prints found in one place anywhere in the world.
The low tide here goes out about 2km and many hundreds of footprints can be found in the sandstone rock. Many universities and their fellows from all over the world come to study these. There was one piece of rock where you could see a footprint and below the imprint the shape that the ground had been pushed into below where the heavy foot had landed. Martin was both very enthusiastic and very knowledgeable about the dinosaurs in the area and many other things too.
Brachiosaur print on top, note the weight pushing down the layers below the print.
Meat eating dinosaur track (Three toed)
Eastern Osprey
Footprint examination over, we reboarded the boat heading back out to sea and back along the coast for about 10-minutes before heading up into the Dampier Creek. This creek is home to a lot of wildlife and we even saw a turtle making its way through the water. Back in the old days many of the pearl divers kept their boats here and headed out to sea to dive for the pearls. Snacks and sparkling wine were laid out on an improvised table while we quietly cruised around the creek looking at the wildlife and learning a little about the mangroves. For those that have seen mangroves before you’ll see little sticks or pods sticking up underneath them. These are not just ornaments but apparently they’re there so when the tide comes and they are covered they send a signal to the rest of the plant to stop respirating for awhile and when the tide goes out signals it to start respirating again.
Australian Darter
Creek cruise over we headed back to the Broome adventure base, the tide having gone out a little bit so we had to walk a bit further to the beach this time. From here the road runs out onto a wharf, which is about 300m long. At the end of this there is a channel that runs along the coast in excess of 30m deep, which means really large ships can tie up at the end of the wharf and load their cargoes before heading north.
The tour over, Erica dropped us back in town where we headed back to the Haven Cafe for a relaxing lunch before strolling back to our hotel.
It was just before 1530 when the bus from True North turned up. We boarded it and Stacey welcomed us as we did another circuit of Broome to pick up the other 17 guests from various hotels before heading off to Cable Beach, where we boarded tenders that took us out to the boat that is to be our home for the next 10 days. With the helicopter sitting on the top deck and the large transom at the back it looked very impressive as we approached. We were soon welcome aboard, given a tour of the boat including the bar, lounge and dining room, along with a couple of relaxing decks up the front. We were handed limoncello spritzes as we arrived in the bar and got to chat with the other guests before being shown to our very comfortable rooms.
At around 1800 we were given a safety briefing and a bit of an insight into how everything works. We were also introduced to the crew including the two chefs, the many guides and the helicopter pilot. This was followed by a delicious dinner consisting of white snapper, asparagus, saffron beurre blanc and a mixed salad followed by a very tasty lemon and fig tart. It was a good opportunity to get to know some of the other passengers, who I’m sure we’ll get to know a lot better over the next few days as we venture into the Kimberley.
Monday 18 May 2026 – Auckland to Sydney: Sylvia
After arriving in Auckland to join Roger on Sunday afternoon, we spent a quiet evening at home. We were up bright and early this morning with a 5:30am pick up arranged to take us to the airport to check in for our 8:10am Qantas flight to Sydney. All went very smoothly, both on the NZ and the Australian end and we were very pleased that the Shangri-La hotel had our room ready when we arrived at the hotel just after 12. It was a grey, drizzly day in Sydney and, having been there numerous times before, we didn’t have anything specific planned for the afternoon. I googled what’s on in Sydney today and a Harry Potter Experience popped up. Given that I have recently been relistening to the books on audible, we decided to go and check it out.
We caught an Uber to the Olympic Park area, where the experience is being held, once again marvelling at the incredible engineering of the long tunnels that make getting around Sydney pretty simple. The experience itself was a bit of light-hearted fun, show-casing costumes and memorabilia from the movies. There were plenty of interactive exhibits and opportunities for photos. Roger particularly enjoyed blowing up potions in the cauldron – by not adding the right ingredients, and the wand that shot green sparks out when you held it….
We returned to the hotel for a light snack and a rest before meeting our friend Lesley for drinks in the bar up on the 36th floor. With stunning views over Sydney Harbour it is not a bad place to catch up. We continued on with an early dinner in the Altitude restaurant next door, enjoying a delicious two-course gourmet dinner before saying goodbye to Lesley and heading back to our room for an early night.
Tuesday 19 May – Sydney to Darwin: Roger
It was just prior to 6am when we jumped in an Uber for the 25-minute drive to the Sydney airport. Check in and security went quickly and smoothly and soon we were sitting in the Qantas lounge waiting for our boarding call. A cup of coffee and a snack and it was time to hobble down to the gate. Yes, I’m still hobbling along at a fairly slow pace, after a severe knee infection and blood poisoning on 1 March, following a knee replacement three-and-a-half weeks earlier.
The flight to Darwin is four hours and forty minutes, fifty minutes longer than the flight from New Zealand yesterday. The food on this flight was a big improvement on what we had yesterday, which helped the time to pass a bit quicker. Landing in Darwin, our bags actually came out first and soon we were in an Uber and on our way to the Palms City Resort with its advertised harbour view. If you look carefully through the foliage you can make out a little bit of sea, but I’m not quite sure what they’ve done with the harbour.
After dropping off our bags we headed off to the Laneway Cafe, which Sylvia had found on line, claiming to have the best coffee in town. The food was pretty good too. I enjoyed some spicy beans with kale and a few other things and Sylvia had the nourish bowl, with arancini, kale slaw and halloumi. Fed and coffee’d, or in Sylvia’s case hot choclate’d, we grabbed another Uber and headed to the Stoke’s Hill Wharf, where there is a museum covering both the bombing of Darwin and the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
We were given a rather thorough introduction by one of the staff, who told us how all the interactive stuff worked and when the holographic shows were going to be on. Plonking ourselves in a chair and donning a VR headset, we watched one version of the bombing on the 19th February 1942 in which this wharf was completely wrecked and the ship sitting alongside it, unloading mines and ammunition caught fire and exploded as around 200 Japanese bombers and fighter planes demolished not only the wharf but also several of the war and merchant ships in the harbour. We then had a look through some of the exhibits, many of which are interactive, including one showing the Australian prime minister at the time, who you could ask some pre-selected questions to which he gave some politician-like answers. There was also another VR set up where you found yourself sitting beside one of the pilots in the Flying Doctor service.
We were then ushered into the theatre where a hologram film was shown about Commander Etheridge Grant, who at the time was the Commanding Officer of the USS William B Preston, a frigate that had been converted into a sea-plane tender, which was operating through South East Asia and happened to be in Darwin on the day of the attack. Commander, later to become Rear Admiral, Grant was at the time of the bombing at the American Consulate and his number two, that was on the William B Preston, engines already running just in case, headed on a zig-zagging course to try and avoid the bombs and get the ship out of the harbour. One bomb hit near the stern, jamming the rudder so the engines were used to steer the ship to safety.
This was followed by another hologram of the formation of the Flying Doctor Service by John Flynn. With the first flights taking place in 1928 after some letters convincing parliament that the service was needed to support the people living in the remote outback of Australia. The service now has over seventy aircraft with many being purpose-built twin-engine jets that can fly from Darwin to Adelaide in three hours. Now days they clock up the equivalent of 34 return trips to the moon every year. The planes are equipped with very sophisticated medical equipment including incubators, ultrasound and x-ray equipment to name a few.
After that we headed to the local Coles supermarket to get a few provisions for the train journey tomorrow only to find that the place had bugger all and many of the shelves were empty.
In the early evening we took a stroll down to the waterfront and sat at the Beef and Bar eatery overlooking salt water pool with the last of the swimmers and sunbathers vacating the area as darkness absorbed the grounds and these odd-looking things which Sylvia claimed were bats flew around from time to time. I thought they were just seagulls heading back late from their feeding.
Wednesday 20 May 2026 – The Ghan, Darwin, Katherine: Sylvia
Breakfast at the Palms City Resort didn’t start until 7:30am and our pick up for the Ghan was scheduled for 7:45am so we had a very hurried, light bite to eat before boarding a very comfortable van for the ~20 minute drive to the train station, some 25kms south of Darwin city. We were met by the station manager, James and our butler for the trip, Sebastian. Our luggage was whisked away and we were ushered into the Platinum lounge to wait boarding. Tea, coffee, Bollinger champagne and an array of pastries and fruits were available and we were handed our lanyards for the journey. As we had booked one of the two suites on the train we had fancy burgundy lanyards while the other platinum guests had white ones. It made me feel a little conspicuous.
We took the opportunity to take some photographs of the train, which at 854m long, will carry 239 guests and 44 crew the 2,979kms to Adelaide. It wasn’t too long before Sebastian returned with an extended golf cart to transfer us and Ralph and Alison, who are in the other suite, to our carriage. More snacks and a non-alcoholic sparkling wine awaited us. We will certainly not be going hungry on this trip. Sebastian introduced the plans for the trip and left us to settle in and unpack before returning to stow our unneeded luggage.
Our suite is very comfortable…. One room with a queen size bed and a spacious wardrobe, another with a couch, small table and a well-stocked mini-bar and coffee station, and finally a comfortably sized bathroom.
The railway from Adelaide to Darwin was first developed in the early 1900’s. The first cameleer from Afghanistan arrived in Australia in 1838 to help with the exploration of the centre of the country. It wasn’t until 1859 that more camels and cameleers were imported. They played a critical role in opening up the country through until the early 1900s, supporting the development of major infrastructure projects like the Overland telegraph and the construction of the railways. The Ghan took its name from these cameleers. The first train from Adelaide to Alice Springs ran in 1929. The railway played a critical role in troop movement during WWII. It wasn’t until 2001 that work began to close the gap between Alice Springs and Darwin. The Adelaide to Darwin line was finally completed in 2004.
The train set off and we relaxed in the cabin. The eucalyptus scrubland outside the window didn’t change that much, broken only by the odd billabong and a few cattle grazing here and there. I did spot a couple of buffalo and at one stage we saw a small kangaroo, or perhaps a wallaby racing along beside the train. This would be tough land to farm. Some way south of Darwin we crossed the Elizabeth River, the half-kilometre long bridge will be the longest that we encounter the whole trip. Large termite mounds are scattered everywhere and from time to time we passed areas where the undergrowth was being burnt. I had forgotten how vast the sky feels in Australia given these massive expanses of flat scrubland.
At 12-noon we headed out, walking three carriages down to the platinum dining car, where we joined 24 others for lunch at a long table. Apparently there is another platinum dining lounge at the other end of the train for another 30 guests and there are also several gold dining cars. Roger had the buffalo curry (rather tasty apparently) and a pineapple mousse tart (too pineapple for his liking) while I had a Vietnamese chicken salad (perhaps a little bland) and a delicious chocolate mango dome. We then headed back to our carriage to get ready for our first off-train excursion.
The Ghan pulled into the station at Katherine at about 2pm. It is a pretty barren place with several containers stacked about and an interesting train designed to do track maintenance sitting off to one side. There is no platform, just a long pathway alongside the train. We hopped off and wandered a few hundred metres back to where several coaches were waiting. We had chosen to visit the Cutta Cutta caves. This was the least popular of the trips today with the majority loading into several coaches to head to a river cruise down the Nitmiluk (Katherine) gorge. We had only one coach for the caves and half of those on board got off along the way at an Outback Experience farm.
As we drove to the caves we passed through an extensive area of undergrowth burning, the flames glowing quite brightly right alongside the road. There has been a lot of rainfall in the area, and some devastating flooding, and so now is obviously a good time of the year to keep the undergrowth down for bushfire management.
We arrived at the caves and, despite the big signs warning to be aware of snakes, didn’t see any wildlife on the 375m walk to the cave entrance. These limestone caves have been formed over millenia and form part of the Jawayan lands, although they have never been inhabited due to poor ventilation. The caves themselves are pretty impressive with massive stalactites and stalactites. There is a pretty straightforward path through the caves with some steep steps to get in and a few squeezy areas to pass through. There is apparently a bit of wildlife in the cave including several species of bat and two species of snakes but we only saw one bat flying around.
We returned to the outback experience where tea, coffee and snacks were available. It was a beautiful station with lots of very healthy looking animals around. After a short time we headed back onto the bus for the short drive back to the train.
At 6:30pm we headed back to the dining car and met Alison and Ralph for a very special 7-course degustation menu, put on solely for the suite guests. Starting with caviar we were treated to a delectable dinner, with the chef himself introducing each course. Other courses included marinated feta in a tomato infused oil, tuna tartare with a soy poached egg yolk (divine), poached lobster tail in a beurre blanc sauce, kangaroo, a yuzu sorbet with green apple caviar to cleanse the palate, wagyu beef with truffle and a vanilla bean pannacotta. Each dish was paired with a different Australian wine for those who chose to indulge. It truly was a spectacular meal.
We retired after dinner to be rocked to sleep by the gentle motion of the train.
Thursday 21 May 2026 – The Ghan, Alice Springs, Uluṟu: Roger
As we sat in the dining room enjoying our breakfast we noted that the scenery had changed somewhat overnight. There were lots of scrubby type shrubs and a yellow grass, with no more of the tall eucalyptus on each side of the track. It was around 9am when a van picked the four of us from the suites up and we headed off for a tour of Alice Springs. With its population of around 30,000, about 25% of those being indigenous people, they claim it’s a thriving little town, but ruled by the northerners out of Darwin. It’s the only place in the world where they have a ‘rowing’ regatta that gets cancelled if there’s water in the river as they use bottomless boats and run from the shopping mall down along the river bed to the finish line, feet driven not pedal driven.
We drove up to ANZAC Hill, which is quite well presented with its four flags – one Australian, one for the northern territory, one aboriginal flag, and the fourth the flag of the Torres Strait Islanders. From the hill we could see the train back at the station. The hill is on the other side of the big gap through which the river runs and our guide pointed out various buildings around the place. One particular building, designed in Darwin, is the courthouse, where some bright spark decided to put two layers of office on the top two floors surrounded by glass, not realising that it hits 48° here at times in the summer hence neither floor has ever been rented.
Next we headed to the airport. Because of the dry climate, during Covid they had over 300 planes parked up here. Now it only has a few dozen, two of which belong to Air New Zealand. The rest of the people taking the flight to Uluṟu turned up in a big bus and we climbed aboard a number of 628 caravans and were soon in the air flying out past the ‘once upon a time secret’ Pine Gap, which is a listening station belonging to the Five Eyes.
It would be quite interesting from a geologist’s perspective looking at this country, which from the ground looks pretty flat, but when you get up in the air you can see massive creases in the land where it’s been pushed up in places and then, suddenly with what appears like no reason, the river cuts right through the middle of a long row of hills. As we headed further east we flew over the large Amadeus Salt Lake. At 160km long and 10km wide at its widest point it generally doesn’t have water in it but, as they’ve had huge rains this year, parts of it are full of water and look quite spectacular.
After a bit over an hour the Rock came into view in the distance and as we closed on it the pilot did a few circuits of both Uluṟu and Kata Tjuṯa, another nearby outcrop. We landed at the local airport and the four of us were loaded into a van with a young lady from Italy as a guide. It is becoming more and more evident that Australians don’t seem to work in these places because everybody we run across seems to be from somewhere else. Even the pilot was from Ireland.
Rising 348m from the surrounding land and at 3.4kms long with a circumference of around 10kms, Uluṟu is a spectacular rock. It is the largest single rock in the world and is believed to be rather like an iceberg with the majority of the rock still underground. It is made of a very strong type of sandstone that doesn’t really erode. With its bright orangey/red colouring it really stands out.
We headed off to the Cultural Centre at Ayers, Rock where we saw various very high priced (in my opinion overpriced) paintings. In another room where they were making wooden items such as ornamental snakes etc. This is all done by the local indigenous people, a group of whom walked past us at one stage and had seemingly not been near a bath or a shower for sometime as the BO stench wasn’t very pleasant.
Viewing over, we headed around the south side of the rock where we enjoyed our lunch, which was quite tasty for a packed lunch. Lunch over we headed down a couple of different roads until we were within about 400m of the rock. We dismounted the vehicle and strolled along a gravel track with a number of viewing platforms where we could stand see the rock from different angles and one place even put our hands out to touch it. This area was flooded back in March when they had very heavy rain and only a week or so ago they had another rain so there is a lot of greenery and fresh growth around. Apparently during the rains waterfalls tumble down the sides of the rock, which must be pretty spectacular. A little further round there was a pool, which contains a few frogs. It was quite full at this time of year and has water most of the time but in periods of extreme drought it just dries up.
Rock viewing over, we headed back to the airport and mounted back into our caravan for the flight back to Alice Springs. From the airport we were transported to what was once the Overland Telegraph Centre, complete with battery room, blacksmith shop and a good water supply from the nearby river that was often dry but had water underground. The telegraph line came into Darwin from Indonesia and right across Australia to Adelaide. Back in the day these telegraph stations were the main stopping points for people to get things fixed. Like most things that come about through the political system the pros and cons were carefully weighed up as displayed on one of the information boards.
Out the front of the telegraph station tables and chairs were set up to cater for everybody on the train and they produced a rather excellent meal from the nearby kitchen, including an entree and platters brought out for the main course. There was even dessert including a cheeseboard, panacotta, madeleines and chocolate truffles.
A local band played and later in the evening a guy called Tom got up with his laser pointer and gave a fun and informative lesson on the stars including how to navigate South using the Southern Cross, and pointing out many other constellations around the sky. He finished off his talk by picking up a didgeridoo and performing with the band as people danced around them. Evening over it was back on the buses and back to the train. We slept through the night as we headed into South Australia.
Friday 22 May 2026 – The Ghan, Coober Pedy, The Breakaways: Sylvia
We woke this morning and immediately noticed another change in the landscape. There was much less vegetation and the land spanned out around the train tracks in varying shades of red and yellow, dotted about with low shrubs and the odd cactus. We wandered down to the dining room for a light breakfast before arriving at Manguri, a small siding off the main rail line. We boarded our coach just after 9am and headed out. Our driver maintained a constant, entertaining and informative patter as he navigated the rough roads and potholes. This siding housed a few rail workers back in the 1970’s but their houses were all demolished in the mid 1980’s with only the foundations now visible.
We headed the 40-minutes or so toward Coober Pedy, where we dropped off a few guests at the airport for their flight over Lake Eyre. We then continued through Coober Pedy towards the Breakaways Reserve. We spotted a kangaroo and a small group of brumby horses along the way. This area, once apart of the vast inland sea of Australia has been eroded over the millennia and now boasts a number of mesas of varying colours, showcasing the different layers that formed. Many fossils have been found in the area including a fossilised plesiosaur. I had a bit of our chuckle as our driver-guide insisted on calling the area the Kanga Breakaways Constervation Park. I am not sure where he got the word Constervation from but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Rock Hopper
We stopped at a few different view points, at one point meeting a couple of guides who shared their knowledge of the indigenous flora and fauna with us. At another viewpoint the Ghan team had set up a drink station with tea, coffee and a variety of alcoholic beverages. Our driver-guide kept us entertained pointing out the different shapes found in the mesas (a cow, a camel, dogs, a crocodile, an emu, a fish) some of which required significantly more imagination, or perhaps that’s what the alcohol was for, than others to find. He also entertained with his descriptions of the road, free massages and roller coaster ride included.
We stopped to look at the Dingo Fence. Built between 1880 and 1885 this fence stretches 5,600kms across Australia designed to keep the dingos from bothering stock. Apparently it costs ~$10million per year to maintain.
We headed back towards Coober Pedy for lunch. The name Coober Pedy comes from the indigenous language and means ‘white man in hole’, a reference to the 2.5 million open mine shafts in the area. Opals were first discovered in the region in 1915 by a 14-year old boy travelling with his father. The area quickly became a hive of mining activity with about 9,000 miners in the area during its peak in the 1990’s. Today about 1,650 people live here, with 50% living in underground dugouts to escape the scorching summer heat and freezing winter temperatures. Underground the temperature generally stays within a narrow 21-23 degree range. While a vast area has been set aside for opal mining, only about 20% has been mined so far. Only individuals are allowed to make a claim and pay a small fee to license their claim. They have to work it themselves for a minimum number of days in their claim period to retain their rights.
The land around Coober Pedy is covered in small conical piles of dirt that indicate the entrance to a mine shaft. Initially dug by hand, today the shafts are drilled and a vacuum type machine is used to suck the dirt the 35m or so out of the hole. Apparently originally invented by a kiwi, these vacuum machines are largely built on old trucks – apparently the dust would ruin the electronics in a newer vehicle within days. Driving through the town was not an advertisement for the riches to be made from opal mining. Mostly the town looks like a large dump site with old bits of vehicles and machinery scattered about everywhere. Apparently they don’t throw anything away in case it might come in handy one day.
The underground dugouts that many live in, are visible due to the white ventilation pipes poking up out of the hillsides. Only the sleeping and living areas are underground. The bathroom and kitchen facilities are generally in a lean-to area adjacent to the dugout.
We headed to the Quest Mine and were ushered down a ramp into some large underground chambers that had been dug out to be used as dining rooms. Here we were served a three course lunch on shared platters, after which we had the opportunity to walk further into the mine area and try our hand at opal mining. Most of the mining is done by pick and shovel or grader. We could see seams of opal shining in some areas. There is also some open cast mining where the roach is separated from the clay and then sorted under a black light, under which the opal glows a purplish-blue. A few people found small pieces of opal to take home with them. Apparently it is not uncommon for people to find opals lying on the surface of the ground, especially after it rains.
We next drove through the town to the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum. Here, we were met by our guides from earlier in the day, who explained a bit more about opals and showed us through a couple of dugouts, the first one of the more traditional, basic dugouts, and the second a more modern one. Our guide was keen to point out the benefits of living underground, particularly in terms of sleep quality – it is very dark and silent underground. I have to say, I wasn’t convinced.
We then wandered around the museum in the mine, showcasing a number of fossils and other finds from the area as well as the history of opal mining. I was particularly impressed with one very large ammonite fossil, and also the partial remains of a fossilised plesiosaur. There was of course also the obligatory gift shop.
As we drove back to the airport to pick up the guests we had dropped off in the morning, we passed the Coober Pedy golf course. This is definitely a unique playing area. Apparently in the summer golf is played at night due to the high temperatures during the day, using golf balls with lights in them. The tee areas are astro-turf and the greens are some form of sand with a bit of tar.
We headed back to the train, stopping to take a few photos before we climbed back on board. It had been another interesting, but long excursion so it was nice to have an hour or so to rest before dinner. We enjoyed another delicious meal in the dining car before heading back to the room for an early night. I think everyone reading this probably knows my aversion to group travel but I have to say The Ghan team have done it well and this has been a very good way to see the centre of Australia.
Sunday 25 January 2026 – Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas USVI: Roger
We arrived at St Thomas, the capital of the US Virgin Islands, at around 0630. With a population of about 51,000, the island was originally settled around 1500BC and later occupied by various tribes from the America’s. It was sighted by Columbus in 1493. The Dutch West Indies Company established a trading post here in 1657. It then ended up in the hands of Denmark until the British invaded in 1801, then gave it back to the Danes in 1802. Sugar was the main industry during the slavery period. It was eventually purchased by the US in 1917 as a port to control the Panama Canal and the Caribbean.
The reason these were called the West Indies is because Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1942, he mistakenly believed he’d reached the Indies. To distinguish these islands from the East Indies (Indonesia, Asia) they were labelled the West Indies.
Around 0900 we disembarked from the ship, strolled a short distance down the wharf and boarded a taxi, which took more of a resemblance to a truck, with a double cab and four rows of bench seats on the deck behind the cab. The driver told us as we climbed aboard to make sure we had the right change as this was his first run of the day. A 15-minute drive took us to the Emerald Beach resort, where we dismounted and waited for Sven, our guide, who turned up in a beat up Toyota with bench seats on the back and kayaks on racks on top. He drove us a short distance around the airport to Brewers Bay Beach where we dismounted. Just taking our snorkel gear, we strolled the short distance to the beach. Along the way he gave us a rundown on some of the various trees growing on the island. This included the Gumbo Limbo or turpentine tree that has large spikes on its branches to stop monkeys and other animals climbing it.
Arriving at the beach, Sven pulled out snorkel and masks for those that did not have them and we wandered down to the other end of the beach and entered the water following Sven. The first thing he pointed out was an octopus, which had buried itself into a little hole and apparently often hangs out there. As we swim over it we could basically see an eye looking at us. Next find was a green sea turtle, which was feeding on the sea grass on the floor of the ocean. We watched it until it came up for air and then disappeared. Next we swam over a stingray, which was lying gracefully on the bottom, not worried at all by us. We saw several other species of small fish as we swam away back along the beach to where we had entered. At one stage Sven called out to Sylvia that she had had a large dogfish swimming alongside her, which she had failed to notice.
Back on the beach, we packed up our gear and headed back to the Toyota. The drive took us over a hill from the Caribbean side of the island to Hull Bay Beach on the Atlantic side of the island. St Thomas island being part of the richest and most powerful country in the world (or so we are constantly told) has pretty poor quality roads with lots of potholes and very narrow stretches, where vehicles have to pull over and stop to let oncoming vehicles pass.
Arriving at the beach, Sven produced some beach chairs and insisted we sit, relax and eat a sandwich while he got the kit sorted. Lunch over we piled into our two-person sea kayaks and paddled out past the boats moored in the bay, soon passing a young couple in a tinny doing a spot of fishing. At a little cove a few hundred meters from the beach, and under a number of houses perched on the hillside, some with stairs leading down to the water, Sven tethered the kayaks to a rock a few feet below us. We put on flippers, masks and snorkels, and slid into the water, following Sven as he took us around the cove pointing out different species of fish. At one stage he dived down and held onto some rocks to film the fish in a little cave. Dave, who wisely left his life vest on the boat, also took a look followed by Sylvia who took her vest off to dive.
We swam back to the kayaks where Sven gave us a lesson on how to get back in. Basically this meant holding onto the side of the kayak with our body lying on the water outstretched, then pulling our body down into a vertical position kicking hard, bending our knees and pushing down with our arms. This sort of propelled us into the boat, although in all our cases not very gracefully. Back in the kayaks we paddled a bit further out to where some rocks protruded into the edge of the bay. Sylvia, Dave and I took another plunge as the water surged back and forward between the rocks. We spotted a few more fish before it was time to clamber back aboard and follow Sven in his one man kayak, which he handled with ease, back to the beach.
The two-plus hours we had been at that beach had gone really quickly. Having packed up the Toyota we headed back up the hill, taking a left turn at the top and a different route back to the pick up point. We stopped at one point where Sven pointed out a few landmarks, including Water Island, which was still owned by the British up until the end of WWII. Also Hassle Island which contains significant marine ruins from the British and Danish days, including old barracks, forts and the oldest marine railway in the western hemisphere. It was separated from the mainland in 1860 to improve circulation in the harbour.
We asked Sven to stop at a place where we could see and photograph the aircraft carrier we had seen moored off-shore on the way up the hill. He stopped a little further down the hill where we got our distant picture. After Sven dropped us off we got a taxi back to the wharf. This time there were 10 people on board, two dropped off at another cruise ship along the way. When I went to pay, the price had suddenly gone up to $10.00 each. When I disputed this the driver pulled out a huge wad of cash and peeled off the change. I am convinced that there must be an international training school for taxi drivers as everywhere I have been they will take every opportunity to rip one off.
As we left the port we headed east along the coast. I headed up to deck 14 with my camera hoping we would pass the carrier we had seen today. After about 40-minutes it came into view. Although it was a couple of kilometres away it still looked impressive, especially through the 400mm lens on the Nikon camera. At a total cost of around 12.8 billion plus 4.7 billion in development costs the Gerald Ford does look impressive. With a displacement weight of around 100,000 tons it is 337m long 41m wide. The crew, including air crew for the 78 aircraft, is around 4,500. Apparently it is here for a few days R&R for the crew and to get some supplies. It has a strict 200m no-go area around it. It has been in the Carribean for a few months as part of the US mission to invite Mr Maduro to spend some time in New York.
In the evening we enjoyed a lovely meal at Toscana, with its Italian flavours before retiring for the night.
Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 January – At Sea: Sylvia
We spent our last two days at sea relaxing, walking around the deck, attending gym classes and eating. We enjoyed a last dinner at the Polo Grill on Monday evening and our last afternoon tea in the Horizons Lounge on Tuesday afternoon. Debbie and I managed to beat Dave and Roger at a game of Euchre. It has been a long time since I’ve played cards (other than the bridge lessons on our last cruise) and we really enjoyed the game. We also attended the highly energetic and entertaining Our World show in the Allura lounge. It is always sad when these holidays end, even though we are always happy to get home.
Wednesday 28 January 2026 – Miami: Sylvia
We had done all our last minute laundry, packed our bags and left them outside our suite yesterday evening. After meeting Debbie and Dave for a last breakfast aboard in the Grand Dining Room, we departed the ship at 8:30am. We walked the short distance into the terminal to collect our luggage. Oh dear! My suitcase was nowhere to be found. I could see another suitcase, same brand and colour but larger, and with a big red ribbon tied to the handle. Surely they hadn’t mistakenly taken mine instead. After lots of interactions with the not particularly helpful ground staff, and walking the entire building to see if my suitcase was anywhere else, we finally managed to call the person on the name tag of the other suitcase. She assured us she was all good and had her three bags with her. It took quite some convincing to get her to check the labels and admit that actually, she had my suitcase. I will admit that I had reached the end of my tether by this stage and was feeling fed up with the whole thing. She had already exited the building through US immigration. I wanted to leave her suitcase inside and let her deal with the situation but Dave took pity and took her suitcase through immigration. We met outside and she was very apologetic. I reminded her quite sternly to be more careful next time and we moved on.
A short taxi ride later, we arrived at the luggage storage depot I had found and booked on line. It was nice to be met by a very friendly, helpful man who was happy to store our bags for the day. Customer Service is thankfully not dead everywhere.
We had originally booked a private boat tour around Miami to fill our day but the weather had turned and was unseasonably cold. Based on the forecast I had cancelled this booking so we were left with several hours to fill. The museum we had decided on didn’t open until 11am so we wandered to a nearby Starbucks, where we enjoyed some hot chocolates while Dave and Roger thrashed Debbie and I in a retribution Euchre match.
A short Uber ride took us to Superblue, billed as an interactive art installation museum. A huge photographic mural covered the outside walls, showcasing the people of Miami. We were warmly welcomed by the enthusiastic staff and after buying tickets headed inside. Our first stop was to get prepared for the cloud room. We were given masks, goggles, shoe covers and long white gowns to wear. We then entered a room filled with sort of soap bubble couds. It was all a bit bizarre and surreal but we had a bit of fun in the seven minutes we were allowed to wander in the clouds.
The next exhibit was probably our favourite. Different floral scenes were projected onto the walls and floor of a large room. When we touched the walls, it changed the scene. Sometimes it made flowers appear in what had been rain, other times it made the petals blow off the flowers. It is very hard to describe but we spent quite a bit of time playing with the different effects.
In another room, if you placed your hand an inch or so below a sensor, it would pick up your heart beat and 3,000 lights would pulse in time. Again, very hard to describe but quite an incredible sensation.
There were a few other exhibits including a not particularly inspiring laser/water interaction, a mildly entertaining mirror maze and a few others. All in all it was a good way to kill time. We headed back to the luggage storage place, picked up our bags and headed to the airport.
With only a few minor challenges with check in, we all settled in for the long journey home. We were all on the same flights from Miami to Houston and then on to Auckland. From there we separated. I flew on to Queenstown and drove home to Wanaka. Roger stayed in Auckland, where he will get new knees in the next few weeks. Dave and Debbie caught a flight home to Adelaide.
Overall we had a very enjoyable holiday, despite a few glitches along the way. Debbie and Dave were fantastic travel companions and we enjoyed a lot of laughter along the way.
Thursday 22 January 2026 – At Sea: Roger
At around 0700 the captain came over the intercom: “We are very sorry but with 30 knot winds we have been unable to berth at Basseterre in St Kitts”. It looks like this bloody ship is using a very poor form of berth control!! This is the fourth port we have been unable to berth at. This is rather annoying as other ships seem to get in ok. We had planned a dune buggy adventure too so very disappointed to miss that. Never mind!
We met Debbie and Dave for breakfast in the Terrace cafe. Later we adjourned to our cabin for a game of cards, I think called ‘Up and down the river’, which Debbie won.
After lunch we headed to deck 16 for a game of baggo bean-bag toss, tossing soft bags onto a sloping steel ramp with a hole in it. Sylvia and Dave cleaned up on that one as the ship steamed very slowly to Guadeloupe.
We then had a round of golf on the 18-hole putting course. Dave won that one although Sylvia’s score was pretty close.
A visit to the Creperie mid afternoon was followed by some relaxation. Sylvia and I skipped dinner. Around 2100 we headed to the Allura Lounge (theatre) where the vocalist Yaniv Zarif performed a number of songs from Broadway.
Friday 23 January 2026 – Guadeloupe: Sylvia
We were up early this morning. After missing our port yesterday we expected to arrive at Pointe-a-Pitre on time or early, but sadly we were a little late. We had arranged to have breakfast in our suite so we could disembark shortly after docking at 7am, but it was just after 8 by the time we were cleared to leave. Guadeloupe looked like a great place from the ship, despite the threatening clouds. The lush mountains were shrouded in mist but the colourful buildings stood out nonetheless.
On disembarking we arranged a taxi to take us to the other side of Basse-Terre. Guadeloupe, which looks like one butterfly shaped island, is actually two, joined in the middle by a road bridge. Basse-Terre is the larger island with more rainforest. We had decided to head to a small place called Plage Caraïbes, where we had booked a ‘self-drive’ dinghy to explore part of one of Cousteau’s marine reserves. There is something about the drivers in these French territories. Sandrine, like our driver on São Tomé back in October, drove like she was in a massive hurry, despite the fact that we had arranged to pay her for the full day. The road wound its way up over the mountains and we couldn’t have got much closer to the car in front if we had tried. From the road we caught glimpses of the waterfalls this area is known for through the thick rainforest. It was obvious that this island does not lack for rain.
Just as we arrived at Plage Caraïbes I received a call from the boat rental company checking to see if we were still planning to come, given we had left the ship late. After a quick briefing we headed out, Dave taking charge of the wee, well-kitted-out boat. We had been provided with a map, showing a number of different places within the marine reserve where we could moor to a buoy and snorkel.
We headed first to the area of sea grass, known for turtles. It was about a 40-minute ride. The rain came down in buckets as we arrived but it stayed fairly warm and we were planning to get wet anyway so we didn’t mind. As we tied up to the buoy we could see many snorkelers in the water and it didn’t take us long to find turtles ourselves. They are incredibly graceful looking animals and seemed to ignore all the people around, which was nice.
From there we headed out to Pigeon Island. Dave had hired a small sea-bob and towed Debbie along with that for a while, then Roger had a go. The area around the island had plenty of fish and while most of the coral was dead, there was enough new stuff coming through to make it interesting. Many people had hired kayaks and paddled over to the area.
We then motored around to another buoy on the other side of the island. Debbie decided to stay on the boat expecting to be able to dry out and warm up while the rest of us snorkelled, but it rained the whole time we were there. The snorkelling there was lovely – at one point we came across a large school of bright blue fish, and in another spot red-bellied rock wrasse were munching on the algae on the coral.
Heading back towards our start point, the sun came out and we snorkelled in two more spots. In one we were surrounded by what seemed like thousands of small zebra fish. In the other there were more corals. It was warm and the water was calm and fairly clear, a dream Caribbean landscape.
Arriving back at our start point on time, just before 1pm, we caused ourselves and others a bit of hilarity as we jumped out of the boat and waded to shore. There was quite a drop-off just where the waves were crashing. I had already made it safely to shore but Roger fell over, nearly knocking Debbie and Dave over too and we were all in absolute hysterics. Eventually we all got to shore. It wasn’t until I was cleaning up later, when back on board Allura, that I realised that while Roger had managed to bring a bag full of sand back with him, he had lost half his snorkel.
After a quick rinse off and changing into dry clothes, we met our taxi driver for the return trip to Pointe-a-Pitre. This time we went by the coast road, stopping for a coffee or coke at the small town of Deshaies, where the TV series Death in Paradise was filmed.
Back on board we headed to the bakery/creperie and enjoyed a mid-afternoon snack. By this time we were all pretty hungry and ate way more than we probably needed.
Later in the evening we ate at Polo Grill, the specialty steak restaurant, all having steaks with various sides as our mains. After dessert, coffee and some entertaining banter we retired for a relaxing, early evening.
Saturday 24 January 2026 – Antigua: David
Roger, (probably by mistake), offered Dave or Debbie to write the blog for a day. Dave decided to give it a crack, so here we go…
At 705am I awoke to find us docked at St John city, the capital of Antigua. There were three other cruise ships also docked, a P&O Cruise ship with ~5,000 passengers, MSC Explora I with ~900 passengers and another small one with 100 or so. So that’s potentially almost 7,500 people offloading into the city of St John, population 25,000. We understood this more when later we were told that Antigua’s only industry is tourism – no exports. The main tourism is from November to April and there is very little at other times due to the hurricane season.
I’m getting ahead of myself – let’s start with some facts from Lawrence our tour guide for the day:
Antigua: pronounced phonetically Antega.
Language: English but also their own dialect broken or pidgin English – we say “over there” they say “ova da”.
Currency: East Caribbean dollar – $2.65 EC to $1 US.
The main (only) industry up until 1970 was sugar cane, then it became economically unviable and now is only tourism.
Population: around 105,000.
Size: roughly 22.5km wide by 19.3km long, roughly circular in shape with harbours. 285 square kms
Highest point: Boggy Peak at 402 metres. Its name was changed temporarily to Obama Peak when Barak Obama was president of USA.
Claim to fame: Sir Viv Richards came from Antigua, (famous West Indies cricket captain).
2nd claim to fame: Eric Clapton has a house on the island – (see photo – apparently he is a musician).
3rd claim to fame: Princess Margaret honeymooned here at Clarence House – (see photo, apparently she was Queen Elizabeth’s wild sister).
Petrol price: US$6.20 a US gallon. NZ$2.83 per litre.
Vehicle registrations: Number plates for vehicles start with letters as follows: R for rentals; TX for taxis; B for Bus; A for locals from Antigua; C for Commercial and G for Government.
This country is made up of two main islands Antigua and Barbuda, with one government. It gained full independence from Britain only in 1981.
Back to our day – We met Roger and Sylvia for breakfast in the Terrace cafe at 8am and then headed off to meet Lawrence at 9. We walked the wharf area, serenaded by a live band playing “We come from a land down under”. How did they know? 99% of our boat passengers are Americans. The plan was for Lawrence to give us a full guided tour of the island and a swim at one of the 365 beaches. You should have seen the look on some faces when the first thing he said to us was, “Did you read the fine print? This is a walking tour.” Oh dear we will need to drop these bags off. I am sure Sylvia wondered how she had made a mistake with the booking 😅😅. When he confessed to the joke, the fun tone was set for the day. Soon we were in a small bus/van with 4 others, (a group from Wales), to start our tour.
Firstly we headed out of St John past the old national cricket stadium where Brian Lara set a world record for highest score for a batter against England. The stadium has now been replaced by a new stadium called the Sir Vivian Richards cricket ground, funded by China, just on the outside of town. There is now a Chinese embassy here as well. We also travelled past the only prison on the island, built in 1735 with around 250 occupants. Apparently it is not called a prison just 1735 and everyone knows.
We were warned that we may see mongoose on the island as they are prolific. They were introduced to the island to kill off the snakes. That aspect was successful as the island is snake free but there is now an abundance of mongoose who like to snack on chickens.
We noticed that there are many unfinished homes on the island. Lawrence explained the two reasons for this: one is that people run out of money because everything has to be imported and it is so expensive, and the second is the people that own them that live in other parts of the world and only work on the houses when they come to the island on holiday.
Our first stop was within the national park on the top of a peninsular overlooking where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean sea. From here in one direction we looked out across to Willoughby Bay and also Eric Clapton’s small bach, (my humour). On the other side was English harbour and Falmouth harbour – I do wonder how it got that name? Perhaps many ships came to grief entering the harbour and bad words were spoken by various captains or perhaps it was Christopher Columbus when he found the island in 1493.
We stopped at another part of the National Park with amazing views back over the harbours.
From there we headed down into the harbour where it became obvious the rich come in their boats when visiting this area. We were taken to the area known as Nelson’s dockyards. This is where many British ships, warships mainly, were brought for repairs and the area was named after some British man, Horatio Nelson, who Roger says is quite famous in the UK to do with wars.
Lawrence dropped us off and we were told we were getting a guided tour around the dockyards with a group of others. We waited in a room at the entrance for the guide to arrive. This is not Sylvia and Roger’s thing so they decided they were going to guide themselves and started walking off into the facility. Nobody told the other 30 people waiting in the area with us what they were doing so they, like sheep, just started following Roger and Sylvia. Debbie and I just stood and watched thinking maybe they just wanted to guide themselves as well or were they just following blindly? Anyway Sylvia and Roger slipped obliviously from view, (not intentional I think), and the group had gotten 30 odd metres into the facility and stood looking like lost sheep. One of the guides from the facility couldn’t figure it out and said “ This has never happened before – my group has just gone.” There were only about 6 of us left. We suggested they were the group standing lost in the facility and he duly spoke to them and they all returned….except Roger and Sylvia who continued on in their merry way not to be seen again until sometime later. Debbie and I had quite a giggle to ourselves. As a postscript, the guided tour was pretty much a waste of time and after about 10-minutes we quietly slipped away and guided ourselves, which many others were also doing quite successfully.
The docklands area was very very busy and would be one of the main tourist attractions for Antigua, along with the beaches, particularly for day trippers like us. The area started being used as a dockyard in 1725 with many ships repaired there. It was abandoned by the British navy in 1889. Restoration of the area commenced around 1955 and the wharf and marina area is now well used by luxury launches and yachts, and the docklands buildings themselves have become a museum. From there we could see Clarence House on the hill above the harbour.
We carried on around the island through some rainforest, where we were told there are very few birds due to the 1990’s hurricanes which devastated the island and killed off a large amount of the bird life. After that we drove past West Indies fast bowler Andy Robert’s house and on to one of the famous Caribbean beaches for some food and a swim. It was a picture with lovely golden sand and turquoise clear water with a restaurant bar area opening onto the beach. The water looked so clear and inviting so no sooner had the food been consumed than I found myself in the water enjoying a cool off. There is next to no surf in any of the beaches we have been to. Yes, this is what a Caribbean holiday is all about.
Too soon the day was gone and we were back on the bus/van for our return to St John and the boat. I say van/bus because there is no way a full size bus could fit on those roads – they were narrow, rough and bumpy, with repairs on top of repairs and, as Lawrence said, people can and do just park anywhere either side of the road. I was quite surprised when Roger mentioned he had managed a quick 40 winks in the van.
The British influence here was clear as they drive on the left and use miles per hour, however the petrol is in American gallons not litres. All their fuel comes from Venezuela so it will be interesting to see that into the future. All electricity is generated by diesel generators. Come 5pm, we departed the port on our way to St Thomas. The water and the beaches on Antigua were wonderful and reminded me of our Pacific island beaches. A fun enjoyable day.
Saturday 17 January 2026 – At Sea: Roger
We woke early after a night of smooth sailing and went down to meet Debbie and Dave at the Grand Dining room for breakfast. Dave in particular enjoyed the large array of food with enthusiasm and we all tucked into a hearty breakfast. We sat and chatted for over an hour, catching up on Debbie and Dave’s new life in Adelaide, Australia, where they moved early last-year.
At that stage the ship was cruising along at ~19 knots, heading east along the coast of Cuba. We spent the rest of the day relaxing as the ship pushed its way smoothly through what was about a 3m swell. There was quite a strong wind blowing so the Captain had closed the walking deck, and we all visited the gym at various points before meeting in the Horizon Lounge for a rather decadent afternoon tea, with a choice of many treats and of course the normal raisin scones.
At 1830 we headed to Jaques restaurant for another fabulous meal, enjoying some of the many choices on the French inspired menu.
At 2115 we headed down to the Allura Lounge on deck five to watch the show which featured Yaniv Zarif, who apparently speaks something like 30 different languages. He put together a number of songs which encompassed many of the languages he spoke, including Russian Indonesian, Hebrew and French, just to name a few. The show over, we headed up for an early night although it was well past 2200 and the clocks were going forward an hour.
Sunday 18 January 2026 – At Sea: Roger
At 0830 we headed down to the Allura lounge, where Swazi, the fitness Director ran an immersion stretching class on the stage with digital screens around the stage displaying different passive scenery.
With this relaxed start to the day and the walking deck still closed, we had to use deck 14 and clocked up a few laps around the deck, which overlooks the pool. All the sun loungers were full of people just lying there, some reading books, some having their morning beer, but all soaking up the Caribbean sun and no doubt enjoying the relaxation.
The average age of people on this part of the cruise has increased quite a lot from the last leg with many more people on electric scooters, with Zimmer frames or in wheelchairs. The TV series ‘Waiting for God” comes to mind. It makes us all feel quite young.
In the afternoon some of us visited the gym and at 17:00 Sylvia and Debbie headed to the HIT class, which Sylvia really enjoys.
At 1800 we headed to Red Ginger, the Asian specialty restaurant. This also has a magnificent menu. We chatted while we dined on some amazing cuisine.
At 2100 we headed down to the grand lounge, where we watched a show on the history of Broadway. With its digital backdrops, a great variety of costumes, along with some impressive singing and dancing they took us through the evolution of Broadway from the early 1800s right through to the present day. The show over we headed to bed, ready for a day out in Puerto Rico, a US protectorate state, tomorrow.
Monday 19 January 2026 – San Juan, Puerto Rico: Sylvia
At 0800 Franzer, our butler, served the four of us breakfast in our suite. I am constantly amazed at how they manage to deliver the food exactly as ordered, piping hot and on time.
At about 0845 we wandered downstairs and disembarked at the pier in downtown San Juan. It is always nice to be in a port where you can walk straight off the ship and start your day’s activities immediately. I had prepared a self-guided walking tour and we strolled past many brightly coloured and well-preserved buildings to our first stop at Castillo San Cristobal.
Puerto Rico was sighted by Columbus during his second voyage in 1493. In 1508 Ponce de Leon started the first Spanish colony on the island. Puerto Rico was ideally situated and with its readily defended, deep bay was an excellent port. It was the first major island with water, shelter and supplies that sailing ships arrived at on their way to the Americas from Europe. The local Taino people were enslaved and although they revolted in 1511, never fully recovered.
Castillo San Cristobal was the second of two large forts built on the island. (More about the first one later). It was built over a period of 150 years and is the largest European fort in the Americas. It is an impressive fortress with many layers and a complex tunnel system that served not only as a way for troops to get around, but also as a means of defence. Explosives were laid inside alcoves in the walls and ceiling so they could be detonated if invaders were inside. The fort had some observation towers added during World War II, when it played a role in watching for German U-boats.
Three flags fly at the fort today, the US flag, the Puerto Rican flag and the Burgundy Cross, which was the flag flown during the Spanish period.
After exploring the fort, we headed back along the colourful, narrow streets, arriving at Chocobar Cortes, clearly a very popular cafe. The wait for a table proved to be worthwhile. We ordered an eclectic variety of food with Dave having a salmon wrap, Roger steak and eggs, Debbie a chocolate lava cake and me a fudge brownie. The portions were all huge and the food was delicious.
We continued our meandering, passing some of the original city walls and the Plaza de Armas, Puerto Rico’s historical main square, which is currently under renovation. Everywhere we walked through the city, the remnants of some sort of festival that had been held over the weekend were evident, with the pack down still in progress.
We stopped at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, one of the oldest buildings in both Puerto Rico and the Americas. It contains the tomb of Ponce de Leon.
We then wandered through the Plaza del Quinto Centenario, with its 40 foot totem statue, symbolising the indigenous people of the continent and built in 1992 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival.
Next we visited Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was the first fort built to protect the deep harbour from attack by sea. We watched a very informative video showing the development of the fortresses over many of years. The fort structures, Spanish army and local militia managed to defend against many would-be invaders. Sir Francis Drake made the first unsuccessful British attempt in 1595, followed by an equally unsuccessful Sir George Clifford in 1598. The Dutch attack in 1625 was also unsuccessful although they did raze the city. The British attacked again in 1797 but it wasn’t until during the Spanish-American war in 1898 that Puerto Rico became a US terrritory. Even then, it wasn’t because the island’s defences failed, but due to the peace treaty agreement from the war, which encompassed many Spanish territories.
We started heading back to the ship, wandering along the top edge of the city walls, then dropping down and walking along their outer edge. We caught a glimpse of the Colon, a statue erected in honour of Christopher Columbus before arriving back at the Allura. With temperatures in the low 30’s and a baking sun it was a relief to be back in air-conditioned comfort. We all enjoyed massages in the spa in the early evening and then had a quiet night, opting not to attend the violin virtuoso’s show.
Tuesday 20 January 2026 – Tortola, British Virgin Islands: Roger
When we woke around 0700 we were already docked at Roadtown on the island of Tortola, one of the main islands in the British Virgin Islands, or BVI.
Discovered by Columbus in 1493, it then became a Dutch settlement until 1872 when the British took control and started sugar cane plantations, worked by slave Africans. With the abolishment of slavery in 1834 the agricultural economy struggled, leading to increasing autonomy. It became a separate colony in 1960 and gained significant self government in 1967. A transformation into tourism has now turned it into quite a wealthy economy.
Interestingly the currency is the US dollar. The cars are left-hand drive but they also drive on the left-hand side of the road. Other parts of the Virgin Islands were owned by the Danish and many years ago were purchased by the United States becoming the USVI.
On leaving the ship, we wandered down the pier and through the security area into a small shopping area. At the end of this there was a bunch of taxis waiting. A very helpful gentleman asked us where we were going and arranged a taxi for us. Heading west in the taxi van, the lady driver, who was a little hard to understand, explained that earlier in the morning there had been a fire at the local bus company, wiping out 17 of their 20 buses. This is going to make it pretty hard over the next few days as there are a lot of tourist boats coming.
We drove along the coast road for about 30km, eventually coming to a little settlement called Fisherman‘s Cay. There the driver dropped us off, collecting US$120 for the return fare and promising to come back and pick us up at 1500.
As in Puerto Rico, there must be a surfeit of pastel-coloured paints here as many of the buildings along the coast, and particularly around this little fishing village, are all painted in bright colours, which can only be described in the photographs.
Heading down between some more colourful buildings, we found Captain Kylie alongside her 26 foot speedboat with a couple of 150 hp motors on the back. Captain Kylie was highly organised and after giving a safety briefing and pulling in the lines we headed west along the coast, passing a point with a few houses on that apparently is for sale at the moment for US$25 million. Rounding the point there was a bit of wind and the sea was a little choppy with spray often going over the boat. Heading east around the north of the island, we then headed north towards some smaller islands in the not too far distance.
Arriving at the island of Jost van Dyke, we tied up to a buoy about 70m from the shore, slipped on our snorkel gear and swim across to the rocks along the shore. After heading along the coast a little way and not seeing too much in the way of fish and coral, we headed back to the boat and moved to another spot. Debbie and I sat this one out while Dave, Sylvia and Kylie swam over to, and alongside, a little island just off where we were tied to a buoy. There still wasn’t too much activity here as the water was still quite choppy so we headed back around the coast to quite a busy bay. At the left side many boats were tied up in front of Soggy Dollar, very popular restaurant. We headed to the quieter right side of the bay, put on our snorkelling gear and swam over to a little man-made reef not far from the shore, which was stacked with many kinds of fish in various colours.
Back on the boat we sat back and enjoyed a snack while Kylie told us about her upbringing on a boat in the Caribbean. They started off with a 32 foot yacht and when her brother came along they bought a 1940’s 50+ foot yacht. Kylie completed her education in the US and several years ago came back to the Caribbean, where she met a kiwi guy called Sean whom she is now engaged to.
Around noon, we headed back around the coast to the next bay where Sydney‘s Peace and Love restaurant is located. A smiling young chap, Ronaldo, with thick dreadlocks and sunglasses, welcomed us and helped tie up the boat, then led us barefoot into the concrete floored restaurant. “No shoes, no shirt, no worries”. We ordered a meal being warned at the time it would take over 30-minutes to prepare. We sat and chatted, Dave and I sampling the local beer, which wasn’t too bad. Eventually our dishes turned up and we all enjoyed a nice lunch consisting of fish burgers, beef ribs, or barbecue chicken.
Lunch over, we made our way back to Fisherman‘s Cay. The sea was much calmer on the way back as we were sailing with the wind, which made for an easy journey. Some poor yachting have not fared so well. We saw one very much the worse for wear boat, surrounded by inflatable yellow bags, being towed in by a rescue boat.
Arriving at the wharf, we were greeted by Kylie‘s fiancé Sean. They are both planning to head to New Zealand sometime in the next 12-months or so – it will be good to see them again if they do call in. It had been a great trip with our skipper being super efficient as well as relaxed as she took us around. It was obvious she was born to be at sea.
Our taxi was waiting and we made the trip back to the boat. After a shower we headed to the creperie for a light but tasty snack.
The show tonight was called Flash Back where a variety of singers and dancers performed with great voices and lots of enthusiasm. The talented dancers gave a vigorous performance and the number of costume changes was staggering, often taking place in seconds.
Wednesday 21 January 2026 – Frederiksted, USVI: Sylvia
We had planned a fairly quiet day in Frederiksted, so had a slower start this morning, meeting Dave and Debbie in the Terrace Cafe for breakfast at 8:30am. A US navy frigate was berthed alongside us on the pier and we could see turtles swimming in the clear water around the boat from the deck. The sun was shining, the water sparkling and the beaches looked inviting.
St Croix, with a population of only ~41,000, is one of the quieter islands in the USVI and is only visited by cruise ships once a week. Only ~10,000 people live in the greater western region of the island and less than 1,000 in Frederiksted itself. We wandered down the pier and spent some time browsing at the stalls that the locals obviously set up when a cruise ship is in port. They were all commenting on how quiet it was and we made a few small purchases to help out.
Frederiksted itself is pretty run down but the old colonial buildings retain some charm, despite their dilapidated appearance. After wandering through the town we headed to the old fort.
The fort itself is small and fairly run down but it contained some really interesting exhibits outlining some of the history of the islands. The earliest traces of human habitation date back to about 2000 BC with the Taino people well settled in the area when Columbus arrived in 1493. In 1692 Denmark took possession of the uninhabited islands of St John and St Thomas. St Croix was owned at various times by the Spanish, English, Dutch, Knights of Malta and France. Denmark purchased the island from France in 1733. St Croix and the rest of the USVI were bought by the US in 1916. Interestingly they first tried to buy them for 3.5 million in 1900; they eventually ended up paying 25 million, with the islands becoming increasingly important with the advent of WWI.
Under the Danes, St Croix became one of the most productive sugar economies in the world with large sugar plantations driven largely by enslaved people. Some of the exhibits about the conditions the slaves were kept in were particularly moving. Fort Frederik was the site where the enslaved people demanded their freedom, under the leadership of John Gottlieb, better know as Buddhoe. He led a massive protest rally with about 40% of the island’s slaves joining and this resulted in the declaration, on 12 June 1848, of the emancipation of all unfree in the Danish West Indies.
After exploring the fort we headed back to the Allura to change into our togs and grab our snorkel gear. We then grabbed a shuttle for the short drive to Rainbow beach, where we secured sun umbrellas and loungers. The sea beckoned and Dave, Debbie and I enjoyed some swimming and snorkelling while Roger snored on shore. This was what I had pictured when I thought about a Caribbean holiday. The sand was white and the water turquoise and warm. The water was a bit cloudier than I had expected and the snorkelling wasn’t overly exciting but it didn’t really matter at all. After a couple of hours of lazing and swimming, we headed to Rhythms restaurant at the other end of the beach for lunch. Then it was time for another swim and some more relaxing before returning to the ship.
The creperie beckoned and we enjoyed our afternoon tea there rather than in the Horizon lounge, then spent some more time relaxing until the evening show. Yaniv Zarif was back on stage, this time with a show featuring some of our favourite songs from Broadway.
Monday 12 January 2026 – Montego Bay, Jamaica: Sylvia
We arrived at Montego Bay in Jamaica at about 7am. Shortly after that we received a phone call in the cabin asking me to go down to reception with my passport, as the immigration authorities had a few questions. I hurried down wondering what could be the problem. Apparently NZ had reported my old passport as lost or stolen. (It wasn’t but I had to replace it early because it was full. They knew this because I had had to scan every page of my passport and send it to them to prove it.) Luckily, once the authorities sighted my new passport and were happy with the explanation (and that I wasn’t trying to travel on a stolen one) we were free to go.
We headed ashore and met with Germaine, our driver for the day, from O’Neil tours. The security at the port was pretty tight. He needed to show ID twice as we were leaving the port and they wrote down all our details. I assume this is so they could track us down easily if we didn’t make it back in time.
Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica in October last year killing at least 54 people and wreaking havoc. The damage is still obvious everywhere. Many roofs are covered in tarps or show evidence of holes and there are broken trees and downed power lines all over the place. Germaine told us he lived in one of the lesser hit areas and was without power and water for over three weeks. The port only opened again quite recently.
We headed inland on a pretty narrow road that had obviously been very badly washed out in places. It was really sad to see the damage. In one place coconut palms lay flattened in great rows. The winds must have been incredibly strong – even the bamboo had been snapped in places.
After about 30-minutes we arrived at Lethe River. It was immediately obvious that this area had been particularly badly hit. It would once have been a beautiful river, surrounded by lush green jungle. Today it is bare in many places. What trees remain are broken and battered. We had organised a bamboo rafting experience. Germaine introduced us to our rafting guide, O’Neil. He told us that prior to the hurricane there were about 150 rafters operating in this spot and he used to get tours every day, or at worst every second day. We were his first tour since the hurricane. All the rafts were destroyed and have had to be rebuilt at a cost of about $900 each. Despite this, and the fact that he had lost his home and was staying with a friend, he was positive and enthusiastic and didn’t show one sign of self-pity or negativity.
He expertly guided the long bamboo raft with just a bamboo pole. He told us he had been doing this for about 45-years, starting when he was a kid and had ‘borrowed’ the rafts and explored the river. After only about 15-minutes he pulled over to the side of the river and proceeded to pull some flint stones off the river bank to show us. Then he grabbed some soft limestone – I think they call it marl. Here it is used as a natural sunscreen, to ease mosquito bites and for all sorts of other things. He used it to massage our feet and calves, leaving them chalky white.
He then turned the raft around and poled us back upstream. When we came to the faster moving water, he leapt off the raft and pulled us through. It looked like hard work but he made it seem easy. Arriving back at the start point, he washed the marl off our legs and we headed back to meet Germaine at the car. We were really glad we had been able to support the local economy even a little bit.
Germaine drove us back towards town. There were quite a few delays as we had to stop for trucks coming up the narrow road but we had plenty of time. We stopped briefly at a souvenir shop for a fridge magnet and to get some local currency for Roger. He also bought a box of cigars. Then we headed back to the ship, arriving just in time for a leisurely lunch in the Terrace Cafe.
I spent the afternoon relaxing on our balcony and then at 4pm headed back to the spa for a very indulgent hot mineral body boost – very relaxing it was too.
Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 January 2026 – At Sea: Sylvia
We were supposed to spend Tuesday at Georgetown in the Cayman Islands, where we had arranged a full day private charter to do some snorkelling and swimming. It looked like a fantastic place. We woke in the morning anchored off-shore and were all set to head off when the captain came over the loud-speaker again to say that it was too rough for the ship’s tenders and no local tenders were available. Once again we missed our port and were treated to another day at sea. Not too much later and he came over the loud speaker again to explain that due to a low pressure over Florida we would not be visiting Key West as planned on the 15th but would head instead to Nassau in the Bahamas. By now, I am determined not to look forward to anything more on this trip and just to take each day as it comes.
Nonetheless, we enjoyed two more relaxing days at sea. other than lots of walking around the deck, several gym classes and some more line dancing, we took it fairly easy. On Wednesday we skipped lunch and instead headed to the crêperie where I had a divine crepe with banana and salted caramel, with salted caramel ice cream to boot. Delicious to say the least.
That evening we ate at Red Ginger, the specialty Asian restaurant. They do the specialty restaurants very well with themed decor and excellent menus. We both started with Vietnamese pork spring rolls. I then had the avocado and lobster salad and Roger the miso soup. For a main I had the miso-glazed sea bass and Roger the seven-spice lamb rack. We both had the yuzu cheesecake to finish. Another fantastic meal.
Thursday 15 January 2026 – Nassau, The Bahamas: Roger
It was around 8am when we sailed into the cruise pier at Nassau, which is the capital of the Bahamas. The Bahamas consists of something like 700 islands, 400 inhabited and another 300 that are basically bits of rock sticking up just above sea level. The dock is situated between Paradise Island and Nassau city. From our balcony we could see a large barge delivering sand to Paradise Island, which was then taken by loader and truck to build or rebuild a beach on the other side. Like many of these places, what you see is not necessarily what it was. There were two other cruise ships docked when we approached and a fourth one arrived shortly after us.
Packing our rain ponchos, we headed off down the pier and were nearly at the exit when Sylvia received a call from the charter company we had booked for the day, advising that due to impending storms they had to cancel our day of snorkelling and swimming with turtles. We definitely haven’t had much luck with the weather. She took all our snorkelling gear back to the ship and then met me back at the town end. While she was away I had arranged a tour of the island with a local taxi driver named Paul.
We headed out of the port going east, passing the government and parliament buildings. The view of them was unfortunately blocked by the seating that had been erected for a recent festival. Our first stop was the Montague Bay Fort, built in the 16th century to help protect the island from pirates. They were pretty common in the area at the time.
Leaving the port and heading further along the coast, we stopped to visit some fishermen’s stalls. Paul showed us the many different types of fish that had been caught, all stacked neatly in ice boxes, ready to be purchased by the local restauranteers. On the tables were piles of conch shells. A couple of people were there extracting the conch from the shell by hacking a hole in the back with a little pick and then shoving a knife in to cut the conch free so it could be pulled out. They insisted we try some and on the spot chopped the parts that could be eaten up, added some onion, lemon and peppers and we were handed a plastic bag of ceviche. As this process was undertaken we were handed a conch penis to try, which Sylvia immediately balked at, but she enjoyed watching me eat it. Sylvia had a small taste of the ceviche, which I was left to finish, and rather tasty it was.
We continued east along the road with Paul pointing out many magnificent colonial era houses along the way. These had originally been built by the original British plantation owners. Many are still owned by the original families. We passed through many different housing areas, heading north for a while and then west towards the other end of the island, which is only 21 miles long and 7 miles wide.
Passing Lake Cunningham, we then headed north again and back along the coast. In this area there are dozens of apartments, many owned by US citizens. We drove into the BahaMar casino and resort, which is huge with magnificent grounds and a beautiful golf course, all superbly manicured.
As we got closer to the port there were dozens of boats around on the edge of a small island called Arawak Cay, which also houses many restaurants. We again drove past the parliament buildings, where there is a statue of Queen Victoria, who abolished slavery at the start of her reign in 1837. We then headed south to Mt Fitzwilliam where there is a fort and a grand set of stairs that were carved into the hill by hand over an 16 year period and opened in 1794. This is quite spectacular as they carved a huge canyon into the hill with the grand stairway leading up to the residence and the fort on top.
Paul, with his almost Jamaican “yeah Mon” accent, dropped us back at Prince George wharf (the cruise terminal) and we wandered the streets and looked through the Straw Market, with a lot of made in China rubbish, although there was also some locally made stuff there too. Next stop was Sénor Frogs, a Mexican Restaurant with a very loud DJ that liked the sound of his voice as he encouraged people into dancing and drinking shots. After enjoying a local beer and some nachos we wandered around the corner to the Nassau Pirate Museum.
The museum was not very big but was very informative and gave us a good rundown on the real Pirates of the Caribbean, who like any bad organisation had their own sets of rules, including how the prizes were to be divided, details of punishments for misbehaviour, which included being marooned on an island with a bottle of water and a few other essentials. Being gentlemen in their own way, any pirate that forced himself unwantedly onto a woman was executed. Lots of people left the navy to become pirates as the pay was better, the discipline less severe and they could drink heaps, have lots of fun and fight some pretty vicious battles, resulting in a short but merry life.
The pirate era continued for a couple of hundred years, until in the late 1700’s the British sent the navy to sort them out. Many were captured, tried and executed. Often their bodies were covered in tar and hung from a garrick at the harbour entrance to warn off other pirates. These bodies would often hang around for several months or even a year.
The pirates studied, we wandered back to the ship in time for afternoon tea in the Horizon Lounge while the strong quartet stroked away in the background.
Friday 16 January 2026 – Miami: Sylvia
A cold front hit Florida and we awoke this morning to beautiful sunny day but only 6 degrees, and with a chilly wind. It was certainly a shock to the system, but after putting the few warmish clothes we had with us on, and having a quick breakfast, we headed ashore, wondering how long the immigration process would take. The answer was about a minute. We showed our passports, the agent took a good look at our faces to ensure we matched, and we were waved through. The longer part was waiting in line for a taxi.
Debbie and Dave’s hotel was only about 10 minutes away and they were waiting for us outside as we drove up. Once our driver figured out the directions we headed off the for ~35-minute drive out of Miami to the meeting place for the Everglades Airboat tour we had booked. I was very glad I had made the last minute decision to throw my puffer jacket into my carry-on bag when leaving Auckland a few weeks ago.
We were met by Jay and Taylor and boarded the airboat, using a couple of old pallets as a landing. We zipped our jackets up (well all of us except Roger), pulled our hats on and donned the provided ear muffs, then set off, the powerful 600-horsepower corvette V8 motor skimming us over the reeds. The Florida Everglades National Park is a 1.5-million acre wetlands preserve, that makes up only a small proportion of all the wetlands in Florida. We only covered a tiny part but it gave us a great sense of the area nonetheless.
It wasn’t long before we came across our first alligator. With the weather being so cold, Jay explained that we would probably see a lot of them getting as much warmth from the sun as possible. The Everglades are really a massive, very slow moving river system. They are replenished by heavy rainfalls in the summer but dry out in the winter with only the deeper channels and holes that the alligators have created retaining water. This makes it very easy for the gators to find food as all the fish congregate in these small pools.
We saw numerous alligators, including one with a very small baby that was extremely well camouflaged in the reeds. There are many predators that eat these young; fish, birds, raccoons and other gators. Some of the alligators were quite large; the males grow to about 12-feet in length, with the state record being 14-foot. We also saw many egrets, great blue herons and woodstorks. There is obviously plenty of food available.
Wood Stork
We entered a small channel and several grackles landed on the boat and hung on well as we continued moving. They are obviously used to these tourist boats and often get fed. As we pulled up in one spot a purple gallinule waded over the water lilies alongside.
Grackles (The brown ones are the females and the large black ones is a male)
Male Grackle
Purple Gallinule
After an hour we headed back to our start point and caught an Uber back to the hotel to collect Debbie and Dave’s bags before heading back to the port. We headed back on board and waited while they went through their boarding process before joining them for lunch in the Waves Grill. I had a delicious french inspired burger with goat cheese and caramelised onions, Debbie had a Philly steak sandwich and Dave and Roger both had the surf & turf burger.
After lunch we showed Debbie and Dave around a few areas of the boat, then sat outside on our balcony, waiting for their room to be available. A small pod of dolphins swam about very close to the ship, with a young baby among them.
After we sailed away, Dave and Debbie joined us in our suite for a champagne toast before we all headed to the Allura Lounge to see the welcome aboard show, which introduced the entertainers we will see over the coming days.
Wednesday 7 January 2026 – Costa Maya: Roger
We were awake just after 0600, with breakfast being delivered by Franzer, our on the ball and very ready to help, butler. We left the ship around 0730 for the long walk down the pier to the small port town of Costa Maya. Originally a fishing village called Mahahual, with a population of around 100, in 2021 a wealthy family built the rather large jetty and called it Costa Maya. A walk through the pier’s tourist shopping centre, with its two pools, lots of sun loungers and many tourist shops, and we made it to the van parked by a miniature Mayan Temple.
We were given a wrist band and joined the other 10 people on the tour. Our guide, Joel, from a local village and and of Mayan heritage, stood at the front and gave us a rundown on the history of the area, including the 35-mile road that meets the Corozal-Cancun highway, built at the same time as the pier around 2001. Prior to that it was just a jungle track.
Reaching the highway we turned left, crossing the large railway that transports tourists around the Yucatan Peninsular, then heading south for a few miles, passing through a couple of local villages, before turning right on the road to Chacchoben (the place of the red corn).
Parking up, we wandered down a path, past what was once a platform for a house, eventually arriving at the first temple. This one was dedicated to the soldiers and is mostly restored. We were lucky to be the first group to arrive, our ship having docked early. Later on there will be about 4,000 people streaming through.
Mayan history in Mexico goes back to about 2000 years BC. This settlement, as far as it can be established, started around 400 BC. When the settlement was first established they built small temples. As the community grew larger, newer, bigger ones were built, often over the top of the existing ones. The structures we see today were built in the latter part of its occupation when thousands of people lived here. The priest held his ceremonies from a structure on top of the temple platform that is no longer standing.
A short walk from this temple is a large pad 100 x115 meters and about 12 meters high. This had two more temples on top, one dedicated to the Sun and the other to the Moon. Human sacrifices used to take place here every year to sort out the weather for the next cropping season, not sure that it worked that well though.
As the town grew, the houses near the centre were the expensive ones made of stone, and the outer houses were wood and thatch. The town centre also held a Pok-A-Tok court. This was a ritualistic sport played with a large rubber ball often ending in sacrifice.
This town survived until about 600AD, then for some reason ceased to exist. It wasn’t until the 1940s that a man decided to set up a farm here and discovered the ruins, although it is likely that the locals were aware of them. In the 1970s an archaeologist flew over the area and noticed the mounds in the flat, covered ground and decided to take a look. He, in conjunction with the farmer, reported the site to the Mexican authorities, who sanctioned it as a historical site, giving the farmer life time occupancy. In the 1990’s the site began being restored, as over several hundred years vegetation had grown over and disrupted the structures.
Like many of these sites I have been to in the past it has pretty much been rebuilt although there are still many more unrestored mounds visible within the trees. Interestingly back in the day the Mayans had their own version of cement, made from crushed limestone, which was baked in a furnace along with a few other additives.
Tour over, and no one having being sacraficed, we headed back to the main road then to the Holy Margarita cafe, which is situated on the edge of Lake Bacalar and has lots of sun loungers, where we enjoyed a taco lunch and a beer. Sylvia went for a short kayak, spotting a colourful iguana in a nearby tree.
Not our photo but it was so pretty Sylvia wanted to show what it looked like…
Arriving back at Costa Maya we were overwhelmed by the number of people in the pier area. All the sun beds were occupied around the pools, people roamed around with large drinks in hand and most looked like they had come from very lush paddocks. The reason for all the people became evident as we headed down the jetty, just as a squall came through. Parked on this rather long jetty were another four cruise ships, including the Carnival Jubilee, the world’s largest cruise ship, carrying over 6000 passengers. Including our small boat there were around 15,000 people in this tiny town, many not making it past the local bars.
Back on board we headed up to the Creperie to try one of their waffle and ice-cream dishes – far from my favourite dish, although Sylvia did enjoy it. Next was a very relaxing massage at the ships Spa.
In the evening we enjoyed dinner at the Polo Grill specialty steak restaurant. Sylvia enjoyed a NY Strip Steak with lobster mac & cheese, and me the scallops. Both of us finished the meal with apple pie and ice cream. Yum!
Thursday 8 January 2026 – Belize City: Sylvia
Clocks went back an hour overnight and it was great to have an extra hour of sleep as we have been struggling a bit with the jetlag. We anchored up off the coast of Belize City at about 7am. The water is pretty shallow so we were quite a long distance from shore. This is the first time I have been at anchor that the ship has used local boats for the tender process rather than lifeboats. A fairly large catamaran motored out, and the loading of the first tender finally started at about 8:30am. It took about 20 minutes to load ~200 people on board, then about 30 minutes to get to shore – a slow process overall.
As with most of the other ports we have visited, the pier was a hive of activity with many vendors and brightly coloured stalls. We walked straight through and met our guide and driver, AJ, just outside the pier area as arranged. With a population of ~90,000 Belize City is the largest city in this country of only ~500,000. It was originally the capital city but after it was severely damaged by hurricane Hattie in 1961, the capital was moved to Belmopan, about an hour’s drive inland. Belize City is about a foot below sea-level and it is criss-crossed by large canals for drainage. At one point the main road out of the city passed right through a cemetery.
We drove southwest for about an hour through mostly very flat, swampy, jungle land. As we got further from the city we started to see a few mountains in the distance. Tourism is the main income earner for Belize, followed by agriculture – sugar cane, citrus, bananas, corn and beans.
We arrived at Nohoch Che’en, an archaeological reserve in Belize that draws thousands of tourists a day for zip-lining and cave-tubing adventures. The country is about 60% limestone and has a lot of cave systems. We had booked a five-mile cave kayak excursion and after changing and getting helmeted and life-jacketed up, we headed off for an easy 25-minute walk, first crossing the Caves Branch river. The rainforest was beautiful with a number of different species of trees evident. We saw several armies of leaf-cutter ants marching across the forest floor carrying their leafy prizes. Their large nests were dotted about the forest. They take the cut leaves to their nests and a fungus grows on the leaves that provides food for the ants.
We arrived at the kayak start point and headed off upstream into the cave system. Bats flew about overhead and mozzies swarmed in the beams from our headlamps. We even saw a couple of cave spiders. This cave system floods regularly during the rainy season so there were not many large stalactites or stalagmites but we did see a few. Mostly the river was running very gently but there was one short stretch where we really had to fight the current. As Roger put it, we’d have a fair bit of work to do to make the Olympic team… I’d say we zig-zagged our way up river, finding it a little challenging to hold a straight line in the current, but it wasn’t arduous.
After going through a fairly small hole, we reached the end of the navigable cave and, after turning our lights off and sitting in the silent darkness for a few minutes, turned around for the gentle downstream return. We continued past the point we had entered at, which is where the cave tubers enter for their short ride. From there we encountered a few very gentle rapids as we made our way back to where we had crossed the river, passing several small groups of tubers, rafted together and making their way downstream as well.
Back at the gear point, we dismounted the kayak and, after returning our life jacket, helmet and paddle, and changing back into dry clothes, we enjoyed a very tasty lunch of rice and beans with chicken before heading back to Belize City. We boarded the tender catamaran and after about a 20-minute wait headed back to the Allura, arriving onboard just in time for afternoon tea.
Friday 9 January 2026 – Santo Tomas de Castillo, Guatemala: Roger
It was just after 0830 when we disembarked at the container port of Santo Thomas, not far from the town of Livingston at the bottom of the Rio Dulce, which I had visited 10 years ago with a couple of mates. Near the gate to the port we were met by our guide from Go with Gus, who, after greeting us, took us over to a nearby taxi, which we mounted and began our journey. It turned out that our guide had boated across from Livingston, where he runs a hotel for the guiding company.
As we made our way through the town, really more like an industrial area, there were hundreds of container trucks headed in both directions, this being one of Guatemala’s two ports. Puerto Barrios, the other, is only a couple of kilometres up the coast from this one. We were on the main road heading to Guatemala City, hence all the goods coming out of the country have to come through these two ports.
Guatemala is known for its export of bananas. In the 1950’s President Eisenhower and the CIA organised a revolution or coup here to overthrow the government, as they were trying to take some of the land back that was used for the American companies to grow bananas on. According to our guide much of the land that has been used to grow bananas in the past in the area we will pass through today, is now being planted in rubber trees, apparently to give the land a break from growing bananas. The rubber seedlings are imported from Brazil. Bananas remain a critical export for the country with Chiquita and Dole the main brands.
Heading southeast on the road to Guatemala City, we passed many small farms, some farming cattle and others growing crops like pineapples, along with many rubber plantations.
At the town of Entre Rios we turned right, heading southwest through more hills and small farms. Eventually the land flattened out and at one point we passed a huge pineapple farm with a large pineapple juice processing factory in the middle of it. It was interesting to see again that a lot of fence posts here are actually planted saplings that they staple the wires to. They eventually grow into small trees, which are kept trimmed at the top to stop them getting too big.
We reached the town of El Relleno, which 10 years ago we had stayed at before boating down the river to Livingston. We crossed what the guide told us was Guatemala’s longest bridge, before eventually arriving at the entrance to San Felipe castle. Here we dismounted and walked down a long driveway to the castle or fort, which is situated at the bottom of lake El Golfete. This is the narrow point where the lake feeds into the river. The first tower of the castle was built as a fort in 1595. The rest of the building was erected in 1661. It has been destroyed by fire and rebuilt a couple of times since. The prime role of the fort was to stop pirate boats entering the lake or leaving the lake, as on the shores some distance up the lake the Spanish had a large storage facility where they held supplies and items of value that were to be shipped back to Spain. To sort the pirate ships out they had a chain which lay across the channel and as a pirate ship came along it was tightened to slow the ship before engaging it with the cannons on the fort. We couldn’t really establish how well that worked but there are two or three holes in the fort where cannonballs from ships have appraently gone straight through the 400 mm thick stonewall.
The fort was run by a priest, who was in charge of the soldiers and also acted as judge and jury in handing out sentences to pirates and other people in the district that had been naughty. For those sentenced to execution he also carried that out as well: quite a flexible priest. We were lead down to a dungeon where they used to hold those that weren’t being executed, who lived in their own excrement and apparently most of them died from disease while chained up in the little alcoves that would get flooded when it rained.
Next we took a short stroll along the grounds of the fort and hopped in a small boat and started heading down the river. We took a detour up a waterway where there were a number of large houses, many with large boat houses next door, housing what are pretty flash looking launches. There was even an Australian-named hotel/restaurant on this waterway. We also spotted turtles, a number of different birds and some nice flowers before heading back to the main river.
After passing under the bridge we pulled up at a restaurant. I ordered the local specialty, which consisted of a large bowl of a soup type mixture containing large shrimps and plantain, with a large crab floating on top. Next to that was a fish and some rice. I enjoyed a couple of local beers but was unable to finish this large dish. Sylvia had a dish consisting of a lot of shrimps and a few other delicacies. Lunch over, we were met by the taxi driver, who took us back to the boat along the same route.
We were back on the boat in time to enjoy the 1530 afternoon tea, serenaded by the string quartet. After this, Sylvia headed off to a massage, where I think they wrapped her in mud and flax or something like that, apparently good for aches and pains. I stood on our balcony and watched as the ship was backed away from the wharf and did a 180° turn, watched by a couple of ‘just in case’ tugs, before heading out to sea.
Saturday 10 January 2026 – Roatan, Honduras – At Sea: Sylvia
We leapt out of bed at 6:30am and were showered and ready to disembark for our day in Roatan by 7am, when an announcement came over the loud speakers. Unfortunately, because of high winds, our stop in Roatan would not happen. The ship went into the harbour and made a couple of attempts to berth but the wind was too strong and coming from side on, which would have caused damage to the wharf, the ship, or both, had the two connected at speed. There are no tugs available at this port so the Captain made the decision to abandon the attempt at docking and we headed back out to sea for the slow journey to Jamaica, giving us an extra sea day.
Other than walking the decks and doing a few gym classes, we took the opportunity to rest and catch up on a few things. Roger attended an AI class in the afternoon and even had a go at getting AI to write some of his blog but decided it didn’t sound enough like him so gave it up pretty quickly.
Sunday 11 January 2026 – At Sea: Roger
After attending the immersive yoga class (apparently the pictures on the big screen at the back of the stage made it immersive) with Sylvia, I headed to the entrance to Jacques restaurant on deck five where the “Below Decks” ship tour started. After a roll-call for those that had put their name down (and paid the money of course), we headed forward for a tour of the theatre back stage, where the two people who hadn’t put their clocks forward caught up with us. We had a look at the lighting control room and the dressing rooms. All the costumes are stored here and it was explained to us how sometimes the players have to have up to five changes of clothes, which are laid out in various places at the back of the stage. Two people help them slip into their new garment in as little as 10-seconds.
Heading back along deck five, we went to Jacques, the french specialty restaurant. Here we were introduced to the ship’s head chef, who conducted our tour. He heads up the 141 crew that work in the ship’s galleys. Jacques has its own galley, separated into two parts, one for the preparation of hot food and the other for the preparation of cold food such as salads, etc. Breads and desserts come through from the main galley, which is situated just behind the restaurant.
The main galley was our next stop. This is huge with a separate bakery area, which has 17 bakers manning the 24-hours of production. Here they produce everything from breadsticks through to the tasty croissants and baguettes that are all prepared fresh for each meal sitting. They consume around 3,000 eggs, 150kg of sugar and I forgot the amount of flour, which is imported from France of course, and used everyday in the preparation of the products coming out of the bakery.
Next we moved across to the other side of the galley where, in one section, all the hot food such as steaks etcetera are prepared and sent to a number of restaurants on the ship, apart from Jacques and one of the other specialty restaurants. Here we received a demonstration of how the orders are passed on when they come out on the printer. Basically the head chef yells out to one of the many chefs “ribeye steak, medium rare.” He responds with “yes sir’ and races off to prepare it.
The computerised ship’s menu, which comes from head office, even has a photo of how the meal is to be presented before it is sent to the passenger. Each day the head chef gets the chefs together and they prepare each meal that is on the menu for the day. They lay it out on the table and sample it to make sure everything is up to standard before the cooking process starts. Their attention to the detail is quite impressive.
Even more impressive is the cleaning of the place. I looked hard but I couldn’t find one bit of dirt or fat even in any of the mini gaps in the ceiling tiles or around the edge of the cooking units. There is a cleaning team that comes in after each cooking session and has a big cleanup to make sure the standard is maintained. Believe me it’s immaculate.
We had a look at the area where desserts are prepared before heading back to the galley entrance.
We then headed down a narrow stairway onto deck four, where a wide passageway, which they call I-95, runs the full length of the ship. In this part of the ship is the storage area with large doorways on each side for goods to come into the ship. Before any products are stored they are taken off wooden pallets and placed onto steel pallets for storage on the ship. This ensures no insects or pests get on board. We were met by the smiling crew who look after this area all in navy blue overalls.
We first entered the fruit storage room, which is in 3 sections, one for normal fruit, one for berries and the other for nuts. The cool rooms are kept at 5°C and the freezer at -18°C. These are where meat and other frozen foods are kept, the poultry and pork being kept separately from beef and lamb. Once again these areas were spotless. Gorica, the food and beverage manager explained that there are some much bigger storerooms but they are sealed behind watertight doors while the ship is at sea. We also entered the liquor store where large stocks of wine and spirits are kept. Gorica explained that it was fuller than usual because we weren’t drinking enough.
We headed along the I-95 and into the control room, which looks a bit like a smaller version of the control room in the nuclear power station we visited in France a couple years ago. The engineer explained that there are thousands of sensors on this boat and they all come back to this control room. He continued to say that things are a lot different than when he first started as an engineer 30-odd years ago. If there was a problem with an engine back then, you just did your best to keep it going until you got back to port. Nowadays if one sensor goes out on an engine, you have to shut it down because it simply won’t go. That’s technology for you. Luckily the ship has four engines, which drive the generators, which power the ship. At any one time only a maximum of three are required to run the ship and just now there are two running. Every 15,000 hours the engines require an overhaul. This happens while the ship is still operating as engineers come aboard, shut down the engine that requires an overhaul, and do the job as the ship carries on with its cruise. There are 55 engineers on board.
The four generators running off the motors generate 50,000 horsepower each, giving the boat a maximum speed of 23 knots. The ship can produce up to 400,000 litres of water every day through an osmosis system. She manages all her waste water so it’s treated to the point that it can be discharged to the sea anywhere in the world. Allura runs on what is called clean diesel, like you would put in your car, and runs so efficiently that you never see black smoke coming from the funnels like you do other ships. She uses roughly 100 tons of fuel per day and carries 2,200 tons in her bunker. As the fuel is of high-quality it can be refilled at any port. She has the ability to run with what’s called cold iron, which refers back to the old days of steamships when they shut the boilers down making the iron cold. Now many ports do not have the electricity supplies to allow the ship to be fed from the port, including Miami, which has up to 12 cruise ships in at a time, all having to run their generators rather than using shoreside electricity.
From there we carried on along I-95 to a lift, which took us up to deck 11. We continued along the corridor and through a door into the bridge, where we were greeted by the first officer. He welcomed us all to the bridge with a handshake and soon the captain turned up. Captain Pavle gave us a rundown on how things work while at sea. They always have four crew on the bridge, two officers and two look-outs, one lookout being on each side. The captain’s cabin is just behind the bridge and he said that if he’s needed, even if he’s in bed, he can be there in about 20 seconds. All the ship’s controls are now fully automated. There is no necessity to communicate with the engine room by phones or bells as all the systems are electronically connected to the bridge. While at sea the ship is normally on autopilot and if they see an obstacle such as another ship that they have to avoid this can be done by moving a tiny joystick to change the ship’s course as necessary. At the front and the centre of the bridge there is also a little control unit where one of the officers sits when entering ports or doing tight manoeuvres. He steers the ship, with instructions from the Captain, with a steering control similar to what you would see on an aeroplane nowadays.
There is something like 30,000 km of cables on the ship which keep everything going with signals coming from sensors all over the ship and signals being sent as necessary to various parts of the ship. This includes putting out the stabilisers and making the engines go faster or slower, along with turning the rudders to steer the ship. The Allura still has propellers and to stop it will take about a mile when running at a cruising speed at sea. The ship has large ballast tanks and in bad weather sea water is pumped into these to keep the ship stable. Along with the stabilisers this means there is very little roll from side to side on board but you still do get the up-and-down movements from the waves, although we haven’t struck any of those yet.
We headed back to the elevator and down to deck three to see the laundry. Here they have a number of huge washing machines with three chambers to keep them in balance as they hold something like 400 pounds of washing each. There are a number of large dyers that take 200 pounds of washing each. The other part of the laundry is the ironing and folding department. There’s a big machine that irons and folds the tablecloths, but a lot of the clothing is still ironed by hand. 24 people work in this department and it runs 24 hours a day.
The tour ended at the entrance to Red Ginger restaurant where we drank champagne and ate canapés while the beverage manager and assistant answered any questions we had.
I found the tour very interesting and everything was really well presented. I highly recommend it to anybody else that gets the opportunity. It was noon when the tour finished so I headed back to our suite, picked up Sylvia and headed to the Terrace cafe for lunch. After lunch Sylvia had another go at line dancing and then we had a pretty chill afternoon.
We enjoyed another delicious meal tonight, this time at Toscana, the specialty Italian restaurant aboard. I had scampi as an entree, followed by the pasta special of the day, with salmon and finished off with an apricot crisp, smothered in some sort of delicious cream. Sylvia had the tomato and mozzarella entree, followed by soup, then scallopini limone and finishing with pannacotta. We both ate way too much but it was scrumptious.
