Day 38: 20231031 Tuesday, October 31, 2023- Halloween at Sea

Day 38: 20231031 Tuesday, October 31, 2023- Halloween at Sea

Even though this is a sea day, we have remained within sight of land out our balcony, and have encountered freighters and other boat traffic.  We are going around the York Peninsula, and although it is generally described as flat, it looks plenty hilly or even mountainous in places.  There are many small islands that we are going past, and there are navigational buoys and fixed markers presumably mounted on reefs that are very numerous in this part of the Coral sea.  The old timey navigators had to be experts, vigilant and lucky to sail these waters without wrecking on the many reefs.  We could see several bush fires burning in the distance at various places around the York Peninsula. These are adding a lot of haze to the air.

Navigation marker with York Peninsula in background.

The ship’s staff were busy last night decorating the ship with Halloween decorations in the lounges.  There was a pumpkin carving demonstration which created some unusual pumpkins.  There seems to be very few orange pumpkins around here.  We learned that Halloween originated in Ireland and that the first Jack-O-Lanterns were carved from turnips and other root vegetables.  When pumpkins arrived from the New World (Americas) it didn’t take long to switch to the much easier to carve pumpkins.  

We slept in and had a quick bite to eat and coffee at the International cafe.  The baked goods on the Coral Princess are consistently good and fresh.  There was something definitely amiss with the Grand Princess’s baked goods. We then joined a couple from the UK for the morning general knowledge trivia.  We got beat by one point. Fortunately, we were only playing for silly Princess “Winner” medals, which we wouldn’t care to take home.   We have had one particular question on several trivia quizzes on both the Grand and Coral Princess since October that switches answers every time it comes up.  The question is what is the most popular drink in the world that isn’t alcoholic and isn’t water.  Half the times, the answer is coffee, while the other half the times, the answer is tea.  We figure all the Chinese can’t be wrong, and even if there are a bazillion Starbucks outlets around the world, people drink all sorts of teas at home, work and while relaxing world wide.  Google can’t seem to agree on one answer or the other.  We think they should just toss that question.

It is getting noticably warmer outside with temperatures in the mid 80’s.  It is generally sunny with patchy clouds. Despite our proximity to the Great Barrier Reef and the Australian land mass, there haven’t been a lot of birds or other wildlife around the ship.  I did spot an unusual sight that I’m not sure what it was, but it looked like some sort of mother ship towing a string of 5 sizable motor boats of about 24’ each behind it like a string of pearls.  There were also huge outriggers extending from either side of the mother ship with some sort of heavy lines dropping into the water.  These were possibly some sort of stabilizers, but I’m interested to learn more about this unusual set up.  

Mother ship and charges in tow for unknown purpose.

Our afternoon progressive Trivia went off OK.  We managed to maintain our lead, but just barely.  There is a team that is just 1.75 points behind us.  The other teams are 3+ points behind us.  We won today’s session and took home string bags.  

The cruise director’s staff and some of the dining room and bar staff have dressed up in costumes, as have some of the passengers, but Halloween has just recently been adopted by Australians and New Zealanders.  It’s not like in Japan where they are as much into Halloween decorations and parties as the US is.  

The Princess Theater had a hypnotist Bill Wheeler who had 20 people come up on stage and volunteer to be hypnotized.  It’s entertaining to see how susceptible people can be to the powers of suggestion and the process of hypnosis.  The mind is a strange and poorly understood thing. 

Bill Wheeler prepares his hypnosis volunteers.

Day 37: 20231030 Monday October 30, 2023- Cairns

As the sun rose, we spotted a few small islands out our balcony.  The ship didn’t actually arrive in Cairns (pronounced Caans) until 8am, but the waterfront and city certainly appeared more inviting and modern than the industrial area where the Brisbane cruise ship terminal is located.  Cairns has a well developed tourist oriented waterfront and the cruise ship terminal is in easy walking distance to it.  

Coral Princess at Cairns Cruise Ship Terminal

Banyon Treehouse

Coral Princess at Cairns Cruise Ship Terminal

There are rows of hotels and condominiums with restaurants, pubs, bars and shops on the ground floor creating a mall of sorts along the water front.  There is also a large public waterpark and many picnic areas along the board walk.  There is also a marina that is home to many of the large catamarans that do snorkeling and diving excursions to the Great Barrier Reef.  It is all very modern and clean.  

Crabs wrestling on the mudflats

Australian Ibis and mangroves

Cairns waterfront boardwalk

Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef sculpture

Cairns boardwalk

Our excursion took us 40 minutes north of Cairns along the coast to Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures.  This part of Australia isn’t particularly known for crocodiles, but what had started out as a roadside tea house, became a tourist destination after the proprietor acquired a crocodile that he showed to visitors in a pond he created behind the tea house.  Then as crocodile hunting became more popular, the population came under threat of depletion, so Australia allowed breeding and farming of crocodiles for meat and leather.  Hartley’s now has about 3500 crocodiles in their facility which includes a tourist zoo and commercial crocodile farm.  

Salt water crocodile

The drive took us past sugar cane fields, some of which were being harvested by unusually tractors which had their front axles removed and were grafted onto harvesters that cut and transfer the cane into train cars.  Prior to construction of an international airport which allowed an explosion of tourism business, sugar cane plantations were the backbone of the local economy. Now it is dwarfed by tourism.  

Sugar cane harvestor

A little further north, the road follows the coastline, which has several stretches of honey colored sandy beaches.  There was one short stretch of rocky beach where people have been habitually stacking stone into cairns so either ironically, or appropriately, these are cairns in Cairns.  

The bus also passed by a bush fire that appeared to have started on the shoulder and was spreading up the hillside.  We could feel the heat through the bus windows even as the bus sped past at 80kmph.  The guide wasn’t too alarmed because she believed there was some controlled burning going on to lessen the risk of bigger bush fires later into the fire season.  However, we certainly didn’t see any evidence of supervision or control.  

We weren’t really sure what to expect of this Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures but it turned out be be a nice excursion.  The zoo has a limited number of animals besides some really huge crocodiles, but they had some koalas on display and one was very active- even jumping from one branch to another in the demonstration area.  We got to pet the koala and found that koalas don’t have very soft or smooth fur.  But they are cute none the less.  People can pay $30 for a photograph where they get to hold the koala, and the koalas seem to put up with it.  

The zoo was much smaller than even the Featherdale Wildlife Park, but that was OK since we only had a couple of hours to visit.  It was possible to see all the animals in the 3 hours and also see the Koala demonstration, a snake demonstration, and take a boat ride through their crocodile lagoon.  The boat ride had the feeling of the Disney Jungle Boat ride, but without the animatronic hippos or monkeys.  They did try to coax a few crocodiles into feeding with chicken heads tied to the end of a pole.  There wasn’t a whole lot of action, but he did  manage to get a couple of crocodiles to snap at the chicken heads out of the water.  

Wombat

They did have wombats but it was hot enough that they were camped out inside a hollow log and dog house structure.  They had a variety of kangaroos and wallabies but no quokka.  We did learn a couple of new animal trivia facts. One is that it is the male cassowary that incubates the eggs and looks after the chicks.   

Cassowary 

Big red, life size mockup

We also learned that despite the nearly endless assortment of highly venomous snakes, jelly fishes, spiders and reptiles Australia has, the most deadly animal (besides man) is the horse, followed by the cow, dog and kangaroo.  

We also learned that snake bite survival in Australia is extremely high.  They figured out that most Australian venomous snakes have very small fangs that only puncture a few millimeters to inject the venom into the subcutaneous space.  This is where lymph carries the venom to lymph nodes and ducts before it can enter the blood.  So instead of cutting the skin and sucking out venom, the best first aid is to simply wrap the entire effected limb with elastic bandage to restrict the lymph, and then get to the nearest hospital. In most cases, they find the risk benefit ratio of administration of antivenom is marginal, so half the time, they end up just observing the victim’s response as they unwrap the limb and slowly introduce the venom. Only if serious reactions develop do they use antivenom.  Every hospital has the ability to rapid test for specific venoms, so there is no need to try to photograph or capture the snake.  

The temperature was in the lower to mid 80’s while we were there, so it was nice to get back into the air conditioned bus for the ride back to the ship.  Our one disappointment with the excursion is they didn’t include lunch.  There was a concession where you could by gator kebabs and other park foods but you were on your own for that.  They did give everyone a bottle of water, which helped with the heat.  

Passengers had the option to hop off the bus in downtown Cairns or go back to the ship directly.  Ben hopped out to stroll through the waterfront while Janet headed back to the ship and had a well appreciated tea time.  

After dinner, we skipped desserts to so a “Before They Were Famous” trivia.  We teamed up with another couple who were from Australia, and also named John and Linda, like our progressive trivia partners, but a different couple.  We won coasters on that.  

Next was a new comedian named Tahir.  A very unusual Turkish name.  That made up some of his material.  People always say “that’s an unusual name you don’t hear every day” but actually I do hear it every day because it’s my name.  He was good for a few laughs although both Janet and Ben took turns nodding off through parts of the act.  

Tahir, comedian

Tomorrow is a sea day as we cruise around the Cape York Peninsula, which is the largest wilderness in northern Australia.  It is mostly flat and about half is used for grazing cattle.  A lot of Cairns residents like to camp in the wilderness. Our guide joked that the Toyota HiLux is the official vehicle of Cairns.  We did see a lot of overlander rigs on the streets. 

Day 36: 20231029 Sunday October 29, 2023- Willis Island and the Coral Sea

Day 36: 20231029 Sunday October 29, 2023- Willis Island and the Coral Sea

To say we did scenic cruising of Willis Island would be a major exaggeration.  Willis island is a tiny island that rises at most 30’ out of the coral sea in the middle of nowhere.  There is a permanent meteorological station there manned by 4 people who must have drawn the short straw at the Australian weather service bureau.  When we went by was a special day because they were actually switching out crews, so the population was 8.  

The most noticeable change between cruising across the Pacific and Tasman Sea has been bird life.  Between the islands of the Pacific, there was virtually no bird activity aside from an extremely rare albatross (one spotted in over 20 days at sea) in the distance.  In the Tasman sea, we saw birds as we came into the coastal area around Sidney with mostly silver gulls as we got into the harbor.  Beginning early today, we began seeing various Boobys- Brown Boobys and Red-Footed Boobys.  They would circle over the bow of the ship hoping we would stir up some flying fish, and sure enough, although not a regular occurrence, I have seen a rare to occasional flying fish on the bow wake during my walks on the promenade deck in the morning.  As we approached Willis Island, the density of sea birds became fairly impressive with a mix of Booby’s and Shearwaters, with perhaps a few Petrels thrown in off the wave tops.  

Brown Booby

The ship slowed as we approached Willis Island and radio communications between Willis Island’s scientific officer and the bridge were piped over the ship’s bridge camera channel.  The scientific officer gave us a brief virtual tour of their little outpost.  The ship never got closer than about a half mile off shore so it didn’t really feel like “scenic cruising”.  

Willis Island

On our 60d Around South America cruise, the Island Princess circled Devil’s Island and even anchored in close enough for a tender to ferry vendors from the Island aboard the ship to sell some souvenirs on the Lido pool deck.  This was more like a narrated speed bump in the middle of the Coral Sea.  But it was a change of pace and a chance to snap a few bird photos.  

Red Footed Booby

Red Footed Booby mature plumage

Pair of Brown Boobys

Our trivia pursuits continue to eat up our spare time.  During our morning trivia, we got soundly beat.  During the afternoon progressive trivia, we probably blew our lead as we scored 4 points behind the top team on today’s session.  If they started less than 4 points below us, we’ve been knocked off the pedestal that we had occupied so briefly.  But in the evening Logo trivia, we did manage to win some Princess drink cozies emblazoned with Coral Princess 2023 World Cruise logos to go with our luggage tags. I guess we got to inherit their left over world cruise swag since the Coral Princess’s world cruise ended in Sydney just as we were boarding.  

The Princess Theater featured instrumentalist Darin Trainer.  We had missed his first show but as soon as he came on stage we recognized him as the piano man from the Grand Princess’s Crooners bar who had the place packed every night.  He put on a high energy and well performed Billy Joel and Elton John show which was thoroughly  enjoyable, although he did make the audience sing the last verse of one of his last songs.  The Coral Princess stage band/orchestra seems a bit more polished than the cast on the Grand Princess in that the instruments were better balanced and the piano, guitar and sax solos were all more innovative and well played, suggesting more mature and experienced musicians.  

Cuisine wise, Ben did have some real Vegemite on toast with breakfast, and if you butter the toast and then spread the Vegemite very thinly, it's actually quite tasty. 

 

Tomorrow we arrive at Cairns, which we have learned is pronounced Caans by the locals.  We guess it’s a lazy “r” like in New England only in a slightly different linguistic direction.  The temperatures have been rising as we go further north.  We are at about 16˚ S Latitude so we have crossed north of the Tropic of Capricorn (23˚ 26’ 10.3” S latitude).  

Funny the ship didn’t make a big deal about that like when we crossed the Equator.  It should be pretty warm ashore.  We are booked to see a crocodile show in Cairns, and will also hopefully get to see a bit of the town which is a 10 minute walk from the Trinity Wharf.  However, if it’s too hot and humid, we may retreat to the ship for tea and air conditioning like in Pago Pago.  

Day 35: 20231028 Saturday, October 28, 2023- At Sea- Coral Sea Brisbane to Willis Island

Day 35: 20231028 Saturday, October 28, 2023- At Sea- Coral Sea Brisbane to Willis Island

This was a pretty relaxed day at sea despite having moderate winds and a following sea.  We had breakfast in the buffet and then joined our trivia partners for the morning trivia session.  We got outscored by 3 points on that one, but that got us warmed up for the afternoon progressive trivia.  Ben walked the promenade deck but noticed the fitness center is usually nearly vacant on this leg of the cruise after 9am.  He is still having congestion and occasional fits of coughing so avoiding the gym for now.  Janet got in a swim and some pool time though.  It has been overcast and warmer as we head north, but still comfortable.  

We recruited a sixth player at the progressive trivia first session.  The Universe Lounge was pretty full, so participation in the progressive trivia is quite high.  The cruise staffer running the progressive trivia is Hungarian and has promised us one Hungarian trivia question in each quiz.  Today’s was What is the National Food of Hungary, and a bonus point if you know the Hungarian spelling.  The food was goulash, of course, but we didn’t know the Magyars spell it Gulyás.  We missed a couple, but also got a few lucky guesses in, and in the end we won the first progressive session and collected the little blue Princess notebooks as prizes.  Sharon had really been wanting those.  

This was the first Formal night of this cruise, but they didn’t have lobster on the menu for free today.  We had roasted tenderloin and prosciutto wrapped orange rough for entrees and the turtle cheesecake and hazelnut chocolate bar desserts.  

Mahi Mahi appetizer

Fruit and tapioca cocktail

Sliced Roast Tenderloin- tender and delicious

Prosciutto wrapped orange roughy. Novel and tasty

Hazelnut bar (former Chocolate Journey dessert)

Caramel Turtle cheese cake

We then headed to the Princess theater for the first production show of this cruise.  It is called Encore, and although we have seen this production on prior cruises, they change the program slightly by swapping out some numbers for new numbers with similar vibe and choreography.  This show features a guest soprano, who did a good job of hitting all the high notes and pulling off the Diva act on stage.  The production show vocalists are not quite as good as the cast on the Grand Princess.  One of the female leads doesn’t enunciate well, and both male leads were a hint of tone at times, although both were powerful enough singers.  The dancers didn’t have much to show off on this show, but look good and did their thing without a hitch.  The show pulls from broadway, popular opera and movies, so the music connects with a lot of the audience and is good entertainment.

Ben made a soup run to check out the chocolate fountain at the dessert bar.  They had various items you could dip into the chocolate fountain, which was milk chocolate like what they used to dip Costco ice cream bars into when they used to do that.  There were various small squares of cakes and pieces of bananas, melons and pineapple on a stick for dipping into the chocolate.  It’s novel, but it’s a good thing there wasn’t a crowd to deal with because it wouldn’t have been worth the experience if you had to fight with a crowd to do it.  As it was, when Ben was up there, there was nobody around the Chocolate fountain.  

Tomorrow we do scenic cruising around Willis Island in the afternoon.  Otherwise, it will be like another day at sea.  The temperature and humidity are increasing as we head back towards the tropical latitudes. We’re hoping the ship’s air conditioning will be better able to cope with it than the Grand Princess.