Five days at sea!

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The Rime of the Ancient Marine

Tuesday – Saturday, February 5 – 9, 2019

OK, well, things are not that desperate as there is still plenty to drink (at least that was true the last time I checked the onboard bars, and I do that frequently.) Still, five full days at sea is a long time to go without being on land.

Where am I?

Here are some maps to show the ship’s progress from Arica, Chile, to Easter Island, Chile. (Did you know that Easter Island is a dependency of Chile? 2200 miles off shore, Chile owns an island!

So, what do we do to keep ourselves occupied for several consecutive days at sea? Well, I think our choices kinda fall into two categories.

Onboard Entertainment

The crew of the ship do a pretty good job of providing us with a very diverse list of entertainment avenues. For example, here is a list of activities for just a single day. NOTE: This is a multi-page PDF document.

Some of the activities on that list are regularly recurring events. Others are unique events and still others recur, but not regularly. One must get up and read the calendar of events each morning to find out what kinds of interesting things (to them) are happening on any given day.

And, I can tell you, you can easily tie up your entire day with guest lectures about places we have visited or are about to visit, cooking classes, trivia contests, comedians, musicians, and maybe even a Las Vegas-style stage show. And what about a spa day?

On the other hand, when I start to feel like I’m panting due to the pace of the onboard entertainment, I start to consider the second category of entertainment:

Self Entertainment

No, not that kind of self entertainment! Shame on you!

There are plenty of things that I like to do that are more solitary and allow me to relax, focus internally, and simply enjoy being either in the current place and time, or to project myself into places and times that exist only in fantasy.

For example, today (Friday) started off a little bit cloudy. When it is overcast, I like to curl up in my stateroom with a good book, or re-watch episodes of Game of Thrones. I did that this morning until the room service breakfast I ordered last night arrived. After breakfast I cleaned up and went for a 30-minute walk around deck 3, the Lower Promenade deck. The teakwood deck is beautiful and has a soft feel underfoot. It’s a pleasure to walk on.

After that, I found a very comfortable chaise lounge with a nice view of the sea and listened to my audiobook as I watched a passing storm.

After a bit, I drifted into a nice nap. I must have slept for about an hour when I woke up panicking that I had not made any attempt all day to reach out to you, gentle reader, to advise you of all of the life-changing activities I had been up to today. Using all of the energy sparked by my sudden realization that I had left you out of my day, I proceeded to start writing these words that you are now reading!

I worked on the blog for a couple of hours. Much of that time was not spent enjoying waves of creativity washing over me, but rather trying to upload the images that more accurately deliver my experiences better than I could ever do with my written expressions. Damn! The Internet connection at this point is absolutely terrible!

Ultimately, I had to cease fighting with uploads and proceed to my first social interaction of the day, Evening Trivia! The trivia contest goes through 15+ questions almost every day. My team of six people has yet to win, but we’ve been very, very close several times.

And, we didn’t win tonight, either.

At the end of the trivia game while I’m headed back to my stateroom to freshen up, I’m struck by the vision of the ocean around me and I’m agog! Look at the color of the sea! We’re getting near the middle of the Pacific Ocean at this point, and it takes my breath away! I’m kinda surprised. All this time I’ve been waiting to run into an island of plastic the size of Texas, yet I’ve seen no evidence of it, yet.

So, this is life at sea. I’m as busy as I want to be, but with all the time in the world to kick back and relax.

My next post may be a couple of days from now after I have the opportunity to complete my tour of Easter Island. This is one of the stops on this cruise that really excites me. So, I’ll be back when I have something exciting to share.

What is it?

Hooray! Every single guess about the identity of this little guy was absolutely correct. He’s a frog!

Let’s move on to the next one. Can you identify this little animal? Bet you can! Post your replies on this page or just send me a message.

That’s all for now. Back in a couple of days!