En Route to Port Elizabeth, South Africa

After three very busy days in Cape Town, we were glad to have sea days to relax. It will take us a full day to get to our next port, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

It also gives us time to sit back and catch up with ourselves. Especially since John has come down with the cold half the ship seems to have. Our frigid visit to Table Mountain and sitting on open-deck tour buses with cold air blowing on us probably contributed to it. Or perhaps it was coming into contact with the passengers who boarded in Cape Town with a fresh set of germs. Whatever it was, he’s got it—bad cough and all.

The crew goes to great lengths to keep passengers healthy. Every area of the ship has a dispenser of Purrell hand sanitizer. To ensure passengers use it, an attendant stands at the entrance of all public areas and squirts some into your hand as you enter. There is even an attendant with Purrell standing at the gangway as you enter the ship. There’s no getting around it. No matter where you go you see passengers rubbing their hands together trying to get the stuff to dry.

Crewmembers also continually clean hand railings and furnishings that passengers come into contact with. And the restroom doors are left open so that passengers don’t have to use the door handles. Fortunately, the restrooms are designed so that you can’t see in as you pass.

I’ve doctored John with the just-in-case medicines I brought from home. Since they’ve left him feeling a bit woozy, I’ve decided to overlook the situation he got us into. We haven’t been able to figure out how to change the time on our new Fitbits, a gift from our daughters. So we’ve been adding the extra hours to the time shown on them to compute the local time. But the local time keeps changing. Based on his computation of the time, he came out onto the balcony where I had been sitting and said that we only had 20 minutes to get ready for dinner. We managed it and rushed into dining room embarrassed to be late. When we arrived at our table, we didn’t see our tablemates but total strangers sitting there. Seeing our confusion, our very kind waiter told us that we weren’t late—just two hours early for the second seating. John owes me big time for that one. At least the waiters got a laugh out of it.

With all the travel, time changes, and activity onboard, it’s amazing that we aren’t more befuddled than we are.

One bright note: We saw spouts blown by a number of whales. John was so pleased to finally be able to say for real, “There she blows.” You have to take life’s little pleasures wherever you can find them.

Next stop, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.