June 7, 2024
Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain
Borrowed this map image from a fellow ship blogger - she is actually on a different island, Tenerife, but liked visual. Was glad I was assigned to one group that came to Gran Canaries as I have been to Tenerife before.
Today started with me visiting ship in dry dock and getting access to my luggage to swap out some of my warmer clothing for more beach friendly items. The VVR staff were great and was also able to drop off drugs that need refrigeration with the ship's medical staff. They had all our stored luggage in the coral lounge and even our boxes that were shipped via container back in March were in the room, if you needed items from there. Ship looks better and better every time i see it - lots of video and post show daily progress.
I met up with another passenger at the ship, Delia from Oregon, who is in my same group of 8 going to Las Palmas and we shared an uber to Airport and met up with rest of group. Flight left at 3:30pm and we got to Hotel Neptuno by 10pm. They provided us with a lite dinner and now I am settling in for a week hopefully filled with sunshine and relaxation.
Another great day exploring the South Pacific ! Today as soon as our ship docked in Honiara , and we were cleared by customs, I was off with 9 other residents, to get in 2 small speed boats and head out to Simon's Nature Reserve in the Solomon Islands . It was about an hour long ride across the Iron Bottom Sound but so worth it to experience this special place!
Fun fact - Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the World! It is estimated that there are at least 826 Papuan languages. Some are spoken by just a handful of people, while others by 100,000. (Thanks - Basia & Wikipedia for sharing this information).
Tully is a small sugar mill town about 2 hours south of Cairns and we traveled here with a group of about 20 other residents to go white water rafting in the Tully River at the Gorge in the National Park. It is the beginning of the wet season and the river was running at a high level, so the rapids were class 4 out of 5. We had some trepidation, but were excited for the adventure! OMG so much FUN!!