December 1, 2024
What I am Thankful for this Thanksgiving !
I have a very blessed life, and I thank God every day for the treasured gifts of a great family, wonderful friends and this year the blessing of the Odyssey in my life. Below is a great group that adopted me and have also been so generous and inviting to Cathy & Rod while visiting. On Thanksgiving morning, we woke to these great rainbow shots of our Ship coming into the port of St Maartin's! Don't need a sign better than that to say I am in the right place for me, right now! Hope you are all able to count your blessings today!
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!!