Wednesday, January 30th .....

The ship docked in Akaroa this morning and we had decided we would get off. Since the earthquake which devastated Christchurch, cruise lines have been diverting to Akaroa to avoid offending the sensibilities of the paying customers, many of who are Americans who are uncomfortable about meeting human misery face to face.

First, though, we go for the Horizon Court for breakfast. As I am heading for the cereals, a young man slides in front of me. He has a shopping bag with him and furtively starts to pack individual boxes of Sugar Frosties and Fruit Loops into the bag. As I watch, he stashes away a dozen or more boxes before he scurries away. Another passenger stands, mouth wide open in amazement. I raise an eyebrow to a steward who shrugs and says, that’s the second time this morning and the same yesterday. The woman with her mouth open (probably a retired school teacher) wonders why he is not ‘spoken to’.

Marilyn imagines he spends all day in his cabin and these are his supplies so he doesn’t have to come out for meals.

We were tendered into Akaroa which is always fun and what a pretty little town it is. Because many of the early settlers were French there is still a French flavor in some of the street names and the names of businesses. It didn’t take long to stroll around the few streets and we lined up to go back to the ship. We knew that if we had waited another hour or so, the queue would have been enormous and we wanted to miss that. The Sun Princess was also in port and our crew carefully checked our cruise cards to make sure that we didn’t get any ring-ins.

We arrived back in time for Afternoon Trivia, which we won. I’m amazed at how seriously some people take it. The Trivia Queen (whose real name is Sandra) got into an argument with the crew member running the show about which is the world’s largest snake. The answer was anaconda but Sandra insisted it was the Reticulated Python which she had seen on a nature program. Who cares?

Two good shows in the evening: Karen Beckett again with a different show and Dan Riley (again) who sang a terrific song to the tune of My Way.

What is a man, without a wife, to tell him how to live his life.

What is a king, without his queen, to tell him when the light turns green.

And ‘I did it HER WAY!’



The late quiz was about movie posters. The poster was shown with pertinent information blanked out and we had to guess what they were. 30 question and all our clever friends had abandoned us and all the posters were American and not always the same as the ones we remember from Australia. The winning team got 28 ½ and we got 11.