Glorious Southern/Eastern Hemisphere

We have now been a day ahead of most of you. We are sailing toward New Zealand after our two stops in Fiji. Laukota was on our itinerary but we arrived a day early. Our magician after being asked what is the largest item he has made disappear stated, “two islands in Samoa” which always got a laugh since we sailed right past them both to land in Fiji a day early. We expected 6 hours of inspection as they checked ALL the passengers that embarked at Papeete. We were cleared 3 hours early but all the excursions happened in the afternoon regardless. Oh well…

Our first stop in Lautoka included yes a Mud bath and massage. Three buses…approximately 100 folks from the ship in this thermal area where the people live and share their lifestyle which is centered around the hot water. Some of us were instructed to get our massages first…awe too bad…how wonderful! Fifteen minutes of bliss listening to all the chatter around us and the fud fud fud of hands pummeling our bodies! Ever body type you can imagine – no way to be self conscious! They love their coconut oil. We were happy massage was first so the oils had time to soak in and rinse off. Michael’s swollen legs were massaged until the swelling was gone. A friend had a finger with arthritis she couldn’t bend. After the massage and mud treatment, well it still bends!

One thing that I thought strange on Fiji was the requirement that no one could wear a hat in villages. I understand the worship of hair (maybe their men don’t go bald!) and that you can never touch another persons hair. No knees on women could be shown and no shoulders but no requirement like that for men. There are equal amounts of Muslim and Christians so it couldn’t be one or the other exclusively. After being in the other Polynesian cultures it seemed odd to me. Then as you see below we were all in swim suits covered in mud! I guess that was okay since they made money that way!

All we can say is what a hoot – weird – strange – and we’d do it all again. After coating ourselves from a huge bucket of mud (and helping each other) – we stood around like dying birds flapping our arms to dry out. We were not black faced but if you look close, we looked more like Shrek because the mud as it dried had a green tint to it!

We had to wait our turn to climb down the slippery slope – read slipper stairs and huge slimy rocks and start washing the dried mud off in a huge pond of mud and yes it seemed somewhat redundant. We were up to our knees in this mud. When sufficiently rinsed we once again attempted to climb those rocks and stairs and mosey on over to this huge warm wonderful natural pool again with stairs and odd rocks at the bottom. If we scrunched down we could sort of float or waddle easier to the other set of stairs as we realized we didn’t want to ever get out. Our little sortie of folks had huge smiles on their faces and knew this excursion in its own right was simply delightful. The fact it was one of the free ones made it even better!!! Our bus made it back just in time and then we heard sirens and two other buses full of cruisers were rushing back. No need to hurry really as we just had to make it to the other side of the island by the next morning! We’d already cleared customs at Laukota so sailing into Suva was easy peasy.

I still love finding Laundry – view or no view…I now have encouraged others on the ship to notice it. I’m always hearing how someone has taken photos of laundry and thought of me as they did it! These shots were on our bus ride to the mud hole!

Our day at Suva was laid back and relaxed. There were a few tours that were added since this was a new port but we figured those who couldn’t tour because theirs were cancelled the day before might have the opportunity to do one in Suva. Michael stayed on the ship and Larkin and I walked the local market and water front.

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I’d put a new blog in but I think its better to add this here. We have a new itinerary. For those of you worried about us sailing into Asian waters, that has changed! We will now go around south Australia. Singapore has been cancelled so we could possibly stay out of harms way. Seventy five people were getting off in Singapore and now they can choose to leave in Sydney or Perth. We are very excited because we’ve been down the Gold Coast of Australia with the band but have never sailed the southern coast of Australia. Larkin will now get to see Tasmania as we are sailing into a port even Michael and I have not seen on the north side. We look forward to having the ability to purchase some great wines – have any to recommend???

We will have seven days at sea after Fremantle/Perth. So many are like NOOOOOOO! Michael, Larkin and I are like YIPPEE! We adore seas days! We end up in Columbo, Sri Lanka on the day we were due to arrive. Lets pray the Corona Virus is under control in the next month and a half! Happy 02/20/2020! Auckland, New Zealand here we come!