Cold Weather? No Problem!

 

Your friendly GlobeTrotters, Lisa and Jim, have decided to get out of town before the bad weather finally makes its appearance here in Kansas City. Since our last trip was suddenly aborted by my untimely accident, and wherein our 90 day "trip of a lifetime" turned into the morphine fed cruise from hell, and now that I am pretty much healed, we have decided to travel to the islands at the western end of the Pacific! If you will, this is our treat for everything we have gone through since I broke my shoulder, and we had to come home prematurely.

The western Pacific islands are described as" some of the most idyllic on Earth, teeming with lush, tropical edens with a dazzling diversity of landscapes." We will be visiting Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Places such as New Caledonia, Vanuatu, The Solomons, Papua New Guinea, and Paulu. In fact, if I listed our actual ports of call, then if you are like me, with the exception  of Auckland, New Zealand and Guadalcanal, you probably will have never before heard of any of them.

Our trip begins with a long flight to Auckland, New Zealand. First we will fly to Los Angeles where our travel agent and her husband have very kindly offered to greet us and make sure we get to where it is we need to go, but not before sharing a lunch together. Then late at night, we board a flight on Air New Zealand, and as if by magic some 13 hours later, we arrive into Auckland two days later at 8 in the morning (remember we cross the International Date Line, and so lose a day). From there we will spend the night and then the following day board our new home for 30 days, the Silver Discoverer. For those of you who have followed our previous travels, you might not remember the Discoverer, and for good reason. It is new to the SilverSea Fleet, and thus, it will be our first time on-board. Like our favorite ship, the Silver Explorer, this too is an expedition vessel. That means it can go to some exotic places where we must use the inflatable zodiacs to go ashore, and, like the Explorer, it carries only 120 passengers or so.

As I have done in the past, I will try, to not only keep up with my blogs on what is happening, but also to post pictures as we go along. Hopefully, unlike our last cruise, we will have an internet connection.

We expect to return home late on March 11th, the same day we depart the ship at Koror, Paulu; travelling east, we lose a day. The journey home will be fairly difficult. Leaving the ship around 7am, we will then spend a day in a hotel room preparing for our 4am flight to Toyko. There we have an 8 hour layover before boarding an 11 hour red-eye into Los Angeles; we eventually travel to Kansas City arriving no doubt "bone tired."

So, we hope that everyone enjoys the cold weather while we lounge in the warm (hot, hot!) South Pacific. We are fortunate, indeed.

Jim