weekly Today was another beautiful sea day - I can't believe how lucky we've been weather wise! I decided to take my first art class onboard. The class is a kind of "batik" lesson but a hybrid using glue. I found a great picture of two giraffes to trace, then applied the glue which acts like the wax. Tomorrow we paint! Anyone who knows how little crafty I have in me will know the result should be pretty funny!
​Tonight we had another cocktail party to honour passengers who've sailed a lot with Oceania. Our new friends Dr Bill and Kyla Braun and D Keith and Gill Jones both got new status level pins, platinum and diamond respectively.
The ship  shared some  more fun facts - on a weekly basis we consume 822 bottles of wine; 240 bottles of champagne; 347 bottles of spirits; 182 cases of soda and 2092 beer.
While hardly something they tell us, and nit a fun fact - we're now up to 5 people who died while onboard.

La Dique is the third most populated island in the Seychelles and the fourth largest by land. It has a population of 2800 people and 3 main beaches – each about 1-1.5 km apart and you can walk around the island in an hour.
Today is another tender port and as soon as we were able we headed to shore in search of a swimmable beach. Sadly I forgot my water shoes so the many beaches we passed, although gorgeous,  wouldn't work, too much dead coral close to shore. The island has very few cars, with folks using bicycles as their main mode of transportation. The island is surrounded by paved (interlocking brick) roads that follow the coast and provide access to the beaches, many hotels and beautiful villas.
The shoreline is rugged, famous for its large boulders and rocks and it's many coral reefs. It's also well known for its giant sea turtles. Six of us left the ship together but ended up separating as the "perfect" beach meant something different to each couple. In our search Adrian and I walked much of the island. Managing to see a large turtle and have a beer during our search. Finally we find a small private beach with water deep enough to come up to our neck so we could swim before turning into rocks and more difficult terrain. The sane was white coral and while not as fine a sand as yesterday it was beautiful all the same, Great as a natural pedicure!
​We walked a lot and so by the time we finished our swim we had just enough time to enjoy fish and chips for lunch at a seaside restaurant before catching the tender back to the ship.  Definitely returning to the Seychelles, expensive but paradise... more photos in the album.

​Mahe is the largest of the Seychelle Islands and contains the capital city of Victoria. The Seychelles are such a paradise of beaches and sea life we had to spend the day at the beach. Six of us took a cab to one of the best beaches, rented deck chairs and spent most of the day floating and swimming in the incredibly warm water. The sand on the beaches is perfect, lovely, fine grained and free of rocks, coral or really anything. The beach was clean, there was no surf, just a gentle wave here and there. Can’t think of a day at the beach I’ve enjoyed more, I spent several hours in the water. It was a bit cloudy which I think we were all thankful for – hot and humid. The beach had amenities, so we were close to food, beer and washrooms. We came back to the ship exhausted – but the good kind, after a great day with friends in a spectacular environment. Lots more photos in the album!

​Day 91 – Nosy be – Madagascar
Today we arrived in Nosy Be an island off the northwest coast of Madagascar. Again, we had to tender into shore and another short day 10 am – 4:30pm. We decided to try for another beach day and found a taxi who assured us the beach was 10 minutes away – almost an hour later we arrived. It was a very nice beach, incredibly warm water with a restaurant and place to sit. On the way there we encountered a local with a lemur – Madagascar is famous for its lemurs – so I had my picture taken with it. We enjoyed a beer and something to eat.

​Day 90 – Today we’re in the French Comoros, a group of islands in the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean. We anchored just off Mayotte on at the largest island Grande-Terre. We decided a long with a group of shipmates that today should be a beach day. We didn’t arrive until late morning and so we chose to wait and have lunch onboard. The ship always gives priority disembarkation to the folks going on their tours, so we had to wait anyway.
After lunch we took a tender into the port. Once there we discovered the best beaches were on Petite-Terre a smaller island nearby with ferry service every half hour.
French Comoros is considered part of the EU because they belong to France, so we had to go in search of Euros in order to get a ticket for the ferry – the ride was only .75 Euros return each but they only look Euro’s in cash.
Once that was sorted, we finally got on the ferry to Petite-Terre and from the dock we had another 15–20-minute walk to the beach. Fortunately, the beach had a restaurant/bar, bathrooms, chairs to sit in some shade and sea doo rentals as well. It was a popular beach and lots of young people were taking paddling lessons from the shore.
We spent a lovely afternoon, enjoying a beer and a swim- some folks rented sea doo’s but we chose not to. It was a short stop (11:30 am -5:30pm) and we wanted to get back in plenty of time.
​Halfway there - where has the time gone!!!

Another sea day, another wine tasting. This one old world wines. Today Adrian got in on the games and performed the open the champagne bottle with a sabre trick - got it on the first try!
Tonight we also attended a gathering for the Canadians onboard - quite a few of us I must say.

Beautiful sea day! Deep blue sea and a rainbow to boot!

Today we're in Maputo. The ship's shuttle was to the central market. A large crafts market with some lovely batik art. Lots of vendors selling the same stuff though. From here we did a bit of a walk about, seeing a local church and then having coffee at Polana Serena Hotel, a famous 5 star hotel https://www.serenahotels.com/polana
Very busy seaport area we passed many ships on our way out of the harbour.

Today we arrived in Richard's Bay. This is our last port in South Africa. Our final day was a tad underwhelming. We didn't do a ship tour so our only option was to take the shuttles provided to the mall. While it was a lovely mall, quite large, lots of brand name shopping and fast food restaurants - it was still a mall. The only remarkable thing were the arms stores. We saw several stores selling automatic weapons, what looked like machine guns to me, bullet proof vests and armaments as well as surveillance equipment. We were warned the area is dangerous and instructed not to use the ATM machines in the mall and not to hand over our credit cards if we used them but to manage the transaction ourselves.
So we made the best of it - got lots of steps in, inside out of the heat and we had a great cup of coffee at the Mug and Bean a local coffee chain.
​
​