Nov 5 - Margaret River

 Nov 5 - Margaret River 

 

After the delay leaving Albany and a bit of a rocky night we woke up still sailing along towards Margaret River.  This was a tender port so we had that added step to get to our tour of Geographe Bay.

While waiting for our group to be called for the tour, the captain announced that the port had to be cancelled!  They had decided that it would not be safe for the tenders on the 2.5 mi trip to shore due to the high winds.  While disappointing, I am probably feeling a bit thankful that we weren’t going to be bobbing around out there in a water shuttle!

This turned out to be a perfect excuse for a nap!!!  LOL.  

Of course we will have our tour refunded, and we weren’t back in our cabin very long when Sumeth delivered a note telling us how sorry they were that the day was cancelled but we could spend that refund onboard - on jewelry, the Spa, perfume etc!  All things we don’t need ( or want!). Oh boy!

Tonight is our last dinner with the Australian couple who live in Perth as they will disembark tomorrow and go home.  We have really enjoyed their company each night.  

Tonight’s show is a repeat by a previous performer, Mikey Voltano.  We’ll probably want to get out of our cabin for a while!  

This cruise has been interesting with so many ports disembarking and embarking passengers; we’ve never seen this before!  People got on/off in Hawaii, Tahiti and Auckland. At the end of the first cruise in Sydney most of the passengers left and a new group got on - mostly Australians.

We immediately noticed that most of the Asians who had embarked in San Francisco when we did, had disappeared.  The demographic is noticeably different - hardly any ‘young’ people, mostly older white Australians!   Now we are definitely a gray haired set, many with walking aids!!!  This morning at breakfast in the small area where we were seated there were about 20 people - 4 with walkers and one in a wheelchair! That’s 20%!!!!!  I was reminded of reading an article about it being cheaper to live on a ship than to be in a retirement home!  It felt like we were in the nursing home!

We’re lucky to be able to travel the world with or without walking aids!  Hopefully we’ll be able to dock in Freemantle tomorrow and enjoy our private tour with the Cruise Critic group!

Watch for tomorrow’s update!

M & D