DAY 11 Jan 23 - Sea Day Pacific Ocean

After the rigours of yesterday we are pleased to now have a sea day to just rest and relax. Last night was a formal one (our second!!) and I wore my white dinner jacket and a black shirt instead of the usual white dress one. I decided against wearing a bow tie and just had the shirt open at the collar.

Maria looked majestic, nay regal, in yet another of her formal attire outfits. She bravely hobbled along on not so high heals because of her earlier mishap on the jungle trail. However after her cocktails and dinner wine (taken for medicinal purposes only) she did eventually managed to put the pain behind her!!

Why HAL decided to have a formal night on a port day and not today, a sea day, is beyond me and many others too.

It was free wine with dinner last night as our table had the company of one of the officers from the Engineering Department, Mark Crowe. A very nice young Irishman who was good company. Maureen, our wine waitress, certainly kept the free wine flowing and everyone (even those who normally don't imbibe the grape juice) made sure they drank their generous share! I did in fact whisper to Maureen when she filled my glass for the third time that I thought she was trying to get me drunk! She claimed to be just looking after me!

Food continues to be of the highest order and is quite varied with a wide choice available from the dinner menu. It is a five course affair with something available for everyone. In addition to the ever changing daily evening menus there are 'ship' stables like sirloin steak, grilled salmon, Caesar salad, delicious French onion soup, pasta (and others that don't immediately come to mind), that are always available to order.

Prior to the wine with dinner we had, as is our routine now, spent an hour or longer in the Crow's Nest bar having pre-dinner cocktails. The Filipino bar staff there are all excellent and especially barman Gil (pronounced Hill) who certainly pours a good measure of Scotch on the Rocks. Amazingly he once shared a cabin on the ms Ryndam (another HAL ship) with barman Ed who we also met on the World Cruise and with whom we have retained contact. What a very small world it is. Here in the picture is bar waitress Lalaine and bar-man Gil in the Crow's Nest Bar.

A plentiful plate of hot and cold appetisers plus of course the obligatory assortment of nuts are always on offer with our pre-dinner drinks and if not careful one may just find they have lost their appetite by the time they reach the dinning room. Buddy, the piano player entertains us on the ivories during this sojourn and he has a great repertoire of music.

One of the young female Filipino bar waitresses, Lalaine, is always very attentive and coincidentally knows Madonna (another Filipino waitress we met and adopted on our 2007 World Cruise) who she recently met while on a HAL training session at their hotel school in the Philippines. She had also worked with her in a previous life on P and O ships. Again, what a small world. We could certainly tell her a few things about the 2007 cruise and how we were looked after by the singer's name sake! But that's for another day!!

After dinner our table mates went off to the show lounge for the evenings entertainment while we remained at our table for a chat with the head waiter who normally comes round each evening to check-up with us ensuring everything is to our satisfaction. He is a very pleasant young man from Indonesia. We have only made the night time shows on two occasions so far and by all accounts have missed some excellent entertainment.

The combination of a long day and plenty of wine meant that I was more than ready for bed when we returned to the cabin at about 10.30. Maria read less than usual before she too put her head down for the night.

I must have slept in as it was 6.50 before I was up on deck with my coffee in hand. Flat calm seas were the order of the day as we headed south toward the equator.

It was slightly overcast but still very pleasant. I brought Maria down some breakfast around 7.30 which she ate on the balcony as is her way now. 'Wow how I look after her', as one of yesterday's tour companions said to me this morning as she saw me heading down the stairs with Maria's breakfast in hand!

I too then sat on the balcony a while nursing the result of a slightly heavier night than usual, or was it because of all the strenuous walking yesterday? Maybe it was just a combination of the two!!

Talking about yesterday's tour, I'm reproducing here the picture of myself and the Indian Tribal Chief, when I presented him with pens, pencils and writing materials that Maria had purchased, for use at school by the children of his village. Although he was not the actual 'Mayor', this was perhaps the nearest I could get to finding such a person in the heart of the Panama rain forest.

As is the tradition at sea on cruise ships, there was a King Neptune Ceremony at 2.00 pm today to celebrate the crossing of the equator. This was held shortly after I had brought down to Maria a massive plate of king size prawns (shrimp) and some crab legs. She quickly consumed the whole lot and even asked for a second helping!.

The early afternoon Neptune party was held round the Lido Pool when some guests and crew members were initiated by King Neptune, Chief of the Water Deities,(shown in the picture with his Queen) and appro-priately 'dunked' in all kinds of horrible yuk and made to kiss the three day old smelly fish. As it happens we won't actually pass the equator until 1.00 am tomorrow morning!

Meanwhile it was just a day for taking the sun on the balcony and having a little nap in between reading a good book. It really doesn't get much better than this.