Darwin, Australia

Thursday, March 14, 2019

We’ve been promised that this will be our hottest and most humid day of the voyage. I’m ready. Bring it on!

Where am I?

So, what’s been happening?

Today I purchased a ticket for the hop-on hop-off bus in Darwin. This bus is a rolling tour of the city with various stops. If you see something that you want to explore along the way you just hop-off. Later, after you’ve satisfied your curiosity you just hop-on again and continue your tour.

My plan was to take the entire tour and then hop-off at a pub I had previously identified as an interesting one via the Untapped app. At the third stop I realized that we were a couple of blocks away from the pub I wanted to visit, so I hopped off.

I walked the two or so blocks to the pub (Six Tanks Brewing) along one of the main streets in what must be the tourist district. Within that very short walk, I found all of these tavern stalwarts:

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Ultimately, I found my way into Six Tanks Brew Pub. Not surprisingly, right up front and on display are six stainless steel fermentation tanks.

Now, a really unexpected part of my visit to this little downtown Darwin brewery was that they had no beer. At least, they had none of their own beers! All six tanks were labeled as “coming soon!” To me, that just seems like bad management. For example, little McFate brewery in North Scottsdale has but a handful of fermentation tanks, yet always has a full pallet of beers on tap.

In spite of this unsuspected exprise, there were four guest beers, plus Heineken. I had a pint each of the two pale ales offered and threw in an order of fish and chips to round out my experience. The fish they used was called barramundi, which I’d never tasted before. All in all, not bad, and refreshing on a very hot and humid Darwin day.

After having sated my every desire (ha!) I headed back to the bus stop to pick up the hop-on hop-off. While waiting, I started digging around in my pockets looking for my ticket. It was gone! I have no idea where I might have lost it and paying another $23 for a ride home was not in my playbook. Therefore, I decided to walk back to the ship.

The first thing I did as I started in the general direction of the ship (which I could not see, but I was pretty sure I knew where it was) was to detour slightly and take in the bicentennial park that runs right along the coast. It’s a very nice park, well laid out with meandering paths that provide beautiful views of the ocean and the harbor. Here are some of the photos I took along the way. (Click a photo for a larger view.)

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My walk would have been so much more enjoyable if it wasn’t for the heat and humidity. My friends in Phoenix understand monsoon-season conditions, and it was just like that here, only more so. I only bring this up again because I didn’t really know the shortest path back to the ship as I strolled around the town, and it took me a bit longer to find the ship than I expected. All the while, I was exercising in the heat when the humidity was so high that sweating did nothing to cool a person down.

In total, I walked about two miles to get back. Two miles doesn’t sound like much and in better weather conditions I’ve been know to walk more than three times that distance quite comfortably. However, today was a challenge. After walking around for about an hour in this (92ºF, 95% rh) I did finally find the ship and make it back to my stateroom. I was very happy to be back into the cool, air-conditioned room where something odd happened.

After something like 5 minutes back into the comfort of my cool stateroom, my body unleashed a torrent of sweat. I can only remember one other time in my life when this phenomenon occurred, and I’ll bet that Cindy Upson can remember it. Within another five minutes I was completely awash in sweat. My shirt, my underwear, even my denim Levi’s were sopping wet. It was as if I had just crawled out of the swimming pool after having been pushed into it as somebody’s idea of a joke.

And there were other physical symptoms of distress. My Apple Watch monitors my pulse. It is programmed to let me know if my resting heart rate exceeds some threshold amount. I had set that threshold at 100bpm. As I set on a chair in my room, my watch tapped me on the wrist and informed me that, over the previous several minutes, my heart rate had exceeded that threshold. Typically, if I receive that message, I can calm myself, breathe deeply for a minute or so, and my pulse will return to normal. Not this time. After taking a moment to “meditate” my pulse went down to around 90bpm (still too high!) for a moment, but then jumped back up to over 100. After three of these episodes, I decided to take some additional action.

I stripped myself out of my clothes and immediately jumped into a cold shower to try to bring my body temperature down. With the cool water beating down on my head, I started to feel some relief. After a while, it worked, and within about 30 minutes I was feeling much closer to normal.

And yet, the story continues. Within a couple of hours after that shower I developed an insatiable thirst! While sucking down water (so much that I almost felt nauseous) I realized that when I left the ship, I had taken no water with me. And, apparently, the two pints of beer I consumed weren’t much help, either.

Anyway, using the Joe Caracci recommended urine color measuring scale, I determined that I was somewhere between the bottom two colors indicating. Kinda scary, and really stupid. I’ll learn from this experience.

SO, anything else?

Well, yes. Kinda.

Later in the evening I had arranged for a rather special dinner in the Pinnacle Restaurant aboard ship. The Pinnacle is a high-end steak and seafood restaurant for which an additional charge applies. In this case I was welcoming a new friend to join me for dinner.

I’m a solo traveler and I like that just fine. However, humans are social animals and we do need to interact with each other on occasion, at least. On this occasion, I asked a charming fellow passenger to join me for dinner.

Barbara is somebody I met during my tour of the Temple of the Moon in Trujillo, Peru. During that tour we came across each other largely, I think, because we could both climb the 12,734 stairs from the visitors’ center to the entry point of the temple with less difficulty than some of the other visitors. (Ok, not 12,734 actual steps, but in my mind…) Barbara caught my attention at that point because she got to the top of all those steps as if we were walking on level ground. Most certainly, I was impressed. I swear Barbara is as physically fit as Stephanie Foster. (And, I might add, equally attractive!)

Since dinner in the Pinnacle is prix fixe without a set sequence of courses, we were free to order as many items as we desired. And so, we did. We knew all along that we would never be able to finish everything that we ordered, but it made no difference in the price and we were anxious to try a good many kitchen delights. So, the mega-feast began!

Since we were indulging in pork, beef and fish, we asked our sommelier to make a recommendation for a wine to accompany our feast. When the sommelier suggested a rosé I thought he was just copping out, at first. Still, we accepted his recommendation and he brought to our table one of the nicest rosé wines I’ve had in recent memory. It was delectably dry with such a nice light flavor that I could not detect any flavor conflicts between the wine and the many sauces and spices of the plates we ordered. You can see Barbara holding that shapely (and empty) bottle of rosé in the photo above.

We somehow managed to enjoy over three hours at dinner, sampling so many items from the menu.

I know that some of you are either hoping I’ll find the love of my life on this cruise, or are worried that I may die of terminal loneliness. I know that you’re wanting to ask me, “So, was it a date?” Let me say this: Barbara and I did have a very memorable meal together, and a lot of my pent up need for human interaction was released over our three (plus) hours of conversation. And, I do look forward to our next encounter, whenever that might be. I hope that answer is as ambiguous for you as I meant it to be.

Following dinner, I was still a bit wound up so I went for a stroll around the ship. From the very back of the ship, looking toward the bow, I saw this sight (see below) and though it was rather pretty. What does not show in the photo was there were several lightning storms sparking around the ship in as many directions. I stayed out there on that deck for about an hour just “living in the moment.” It’s amazing how fast an hour can pass when you’re not thinking about the time.

At some point, I realized I was very, very tired. It had been a long day full of new experiences. Physically, spiritually, and a bit emotionally, too, I was spent. At last, a wave of exhaustion was crashing over me so strongly that I could no longer resist the arms of morpheus.

Anything else interesting?

No. Wasn’t that enough? Jeez!

So, what’s coming up?

Two more days at sea as we head to the land of dragons. No, not the castle at Dragonstone, but rather the island of Komodo. Komodo is the home of the largest lizards on earth.

More about that later.