After leaving Samoa, our last foreign port, we spent four days at sea. We continue to marvel at all the things the crew has planned to keep the guests entertained. Despite nearing the end of the trip, we have yet to find a day that isn’t jam-packed with events, lectures, and fun surprises. Our first day at sea, the 21st, the captain announced that we were in the doldrums. We had been commenting on the flat calm of the ocean, and that explained it! However, within two days, things would change drastically!
On Sunday the 22nd as we crossed the Equator, the cruise director Bruce announced that the captain had noticed a little blip on the radar that would require attention. My first reaction was, “Oh, great, a storm at sea!” No, not a storm, but the approach of King Neptune! We were all invited to attend court as King Neptune brought to judgment several poor unfortunate souls who had not paid homage to his royal highness. Cruise director Bruce acted as judge as King Neptune and his mermaid queen processed in to hold court, with the ship’s captain and first officers acting as jury. Soon the bailiff approached, leading the chained-up accused, about 25 crew members who had never crossed the Equator before. (We were told that on the way down, King Neptune was busy on another ship so was unable to hold court at that time.) Three or four at a time were brought to judgment and their crimes read (everything from erasing all the captain’s charts to asking bus drivers to find every pothole in the road). After being forced to “kiss the fish” (quite literally), the accused were slimed with horrible gook and covered with corn flakes before receiving their sentences. The lucky ones were the ones who received the thumbs-down. They could jump into the pool and have the slime washed off immediately. The poor souls, including some third and fourth officers, shore excursion staff, and the lead singer and one of the dancers, who received the thumbs-up were forced to sit in the sun and bake in that awful gook until the ceremony was over! It was all good fun, though, and everyone had a wonderful time! Although it was our fourth time crossing the Equator (twice on the Peru trip and twice on this trip), we had never witnessed the King Neptune Court.
The following day, the ship began to roll and pitch – some of the roughest waters we’d experienced on the entire trip! We’d have welcomed the doldrums of two days previously, as people grabbed for railings, elevators clanked and shuddered with every motion, and we’d feel tremendous bumps of waves. That same day there was a Chef's Grand Show Buffet in the La Fontaine Dining Room, designed to showcase the culinary and artistic talents of the chef and his crew. We decided not to eat there because we knew it would include a lot more rich food than we could handle, but we did go down for the display and photo ops. The displays were incredible, with pastries shaped like alligators, spiders, butterflies, to name a few. Other displays included a QWERTY typewriter cake complete with keys, a cart made of pineapple wheels, tropical paradise made of watermelon (pictured above), a penguin, a turkey, and more chocolate sculptures than I can name! Once again we came away very impressed at the detail that went into the preparation for this event.
On our last sea day before Hawaii, the ship continued its constant motion, and we commented that we’d laughed a few days before about being in the doldrums. We noticed fewer people in the dining rooms and shows and wondered if they had taken to their rooms due to all the motion. Gladly, I’ve had absolutely no problem with motion sickness, even without taking Dramamine or wearing a patch!
That evening we were treated to a Murder Mystery Dinner at the Pinnacle Grill. We arrived in the Hudson Room (usually used for small group games, etc.) for our pre-dinner socialization time and were greeted by Nate Nurdley, the reunion chair, and his able committee. We were encouraged to fill out our name tags with our names and our graduation years (either real or invented). I wasn’t very original, but I talked with another “classmate”, who graduated the same year I did; she agreed with me that we both very much liked the year we graduated and weren’t ashamed to claim it! After proceeding to the dining room and being seated, the room suddenly went dark, and we heard a “shot”. We were informed that Nate had met his demise when he went into the kitchen to check on the caterers’ progress. During the dinner, one of the committee members, who was a “policeman” conducted interrogations of all the other committee members. Each played their roles very ably, really hamming it up, particularly the aggrieved widow, Harriet Hamalot Nurdley, the policeman Mario Testosteroni, librarian Agnes Crabapple, eternal alumna Venus Mantrap, perpetual cheerleader Fluffy Carlington, and consummate jock Jacques Strappé, an exchange student from Montreal, Quebec.
We did get quite a kick out of their antics, particularly having gotten to know most of them in various capacities during the course of the cruise. We were allowed to vote on the culprit, and our table opted for Fluffy Carlington because she had played sort of a back-seat role. However, Mario’s investigations indicated that the murder had been performed by the widow, Harriet Hamalot Nurdley. The script had been written by cruise director Bruce (who played Nate – I’d guessed beforehand that he’d be murdered so he could carry on with his other evening “duties”). All the reunion attendees agreed that we’d had a wonderful time at the reunion despite the untimely and unfortunate “murder”, and we had some great laughs!
We haven’t posted a folder with pictures because most of them will mean much more to us than to people who weren’t there.
Barb
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