Thursday
So this is not for Elsie! Today we exercised in the morning, had a late breakfast and finished up with one of our favourite treats – a little chocolate muffin with cream.
I did some work and we pretty much vegged out during the day. We strayed from our regular eating pattern by having a thin (I’m trying to make it sound tiny) piece of pizza at just before 4pm. Now it’s gone 6pm here (we are 2 hours ahead of South Africa at the moment) and we are not going to the formal dinner. Instead we will wait and hour and saunter to the buffet a little later.
For the afternoon, we took a late walk around the deck. We stopped off at one of my favourite places which is quite high up next to the engine at the back of the ship.
It was here we practiced our dance steps, which is still confusing for me! View from this level…
We then hit the walking track, where we encountered the couple who Mike had sat next to in Hurgharda. At that time, the lady had told Mike there had already been 2 deaths on the ship. I wasn’t expecting to hear that. She went onto say there is a morgue on the ship and if someone dies, they are kept there until the next port. What a shocker to hear that a man had died during the first night of the cruise. It takes such a lot of organisation and planning to get from home, wherever home is, to Venice to get onto the ship that the idea of it being cut short on the very first night is too tragic to contemplate. The lady (I must get her name) said a second man had collapsed at the pool deck and wasn’t able to be revived. So this was told us in Hurgharda which was Friday last week. When we saw her today, I raised the topic, asking if she had found out the nationality of the man who had died the first night. She said she didn’t know but since last Friday there had been 3 more deaths, all ladies. It has been noticeable that there are a lot of very old people on board and I guess this is to be expected. It is sobering, but at least they spent their last days enjoying a cruise and making the most of what life they have. Death comes to all of us. Every day, I write we are only passing through, but death is not something that we like to dwell on. Heaven brings more positive thoughts.
Apparently, there is also a jail on board!
The other thing we heard was we are only arriving in Seychelles at 4pm on Saturday afternoon instead of the original 10am. This is due to the late departure from Jeddah and it means a bunch of the excursions have been cancelled. We hadn’t booked an excursion, planning instead to do a walk. We are overnight in Seychelles so will do the walk, hopefully on Sunday.
So that was the ship gossip for the day. Mike and I have pretty much been keeping to ourselves so we don’t get to hear too much news.
The other thing that happened today is I had a haircut.
There we are heading towards the equator with Seychelles beyond. The wind has dropped and it’s warm and humid.
Another good day at sea.
Psalm 95:5
The sea is His, for it was He who made it, And His hands formed the dry land.
The best is yet to come – we are only passing through.
Keep the smile going.
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂