at Sea
We are on our way west towards the African Continent. The water is very calm and the weather is hot.
We plan to play 9 holes of golf on a course that we have played before in Zanzibar, our next stop. We are planning to have dinner in a restaurant called The Rock. It is on a large rock out in the ocean. I made reservations for four after we asked Nancy and Stan to join us. Today they decided to cancel because of fear of being in Zanzibar at night. Now it will just be the two of us. Golf is at the northern end of the island and the restaurant is on the western side. We are doing 9 holes at 10 am. Dinner reservation is for 6 pm. Zanzibar is a tender port and this will give us time to tender back to the ship and drop off our clubs.
The ship is taking care of the Visa for us. $100 each just to get off of the ship. This kind of unreasonable Visa is going to make ships by pass this stop. Ships bring a lot of people and a lot of badly needed money into this island.
We did a wine tasting today after lunch. There was quite a bit of mis-communication by the ship staff and only 7 folks showed up. We sat with the wine steward and two sommeliers’. It was fun and we sampled five wines. The wine steward, Jacques chose five very different wines. We were to comment on the “nose” of the first. It was a white Italian wine. “Lemon Pledge” is what I reported. “Wet dog” is what the sommelier Julias said.”Wet dog” is a descriptor that they actually use. Jacques explained how all of this information is stored in your brain and it brings to your consciousness the most reasonable information from a scent. I like the smell of lemon pledge a lot more than I like wet dog. The tasting went way past two. I skipped out early for a meeting about a trip from Maputo.
Out of 1200 passengers aboard, only 9 of us plus a ship guide are on this tour. There were no other spots left.
I am posting this for my own memory but you may enjoy looking at the itinerary. At the meeting there were some interesting questions. One of our flights is on a tiny Cessna aircraft. A woman said she had “Cessna fear”. She was an air traffic controller. I’m not sure why she made this statement. Maybe she thought the tour guide was going to change to a larger aircraft?
The meeting only lasted about 30 mins. I went back to the wine tasting and they were all getting hammered. Lots of wine. Few people.
We missed after lunch team trivia but did the after dinner lightning trivia. This was about nicknames for cities and/or countries. The land of Eagles? (Albania) Windy City? (too easy) Little Pakistan? (Bradford) Land of Golden Fiber? (Afghanistan) Mother of Presidents? (Virginia) City of Hills? (Rome) Dark Continent? (Africa) Horn of Africa? (Somalia) Land of Milk and Honey? (Lebanon) The Holy Land (Palestine)
Tough trivia. No first place for us.
We finished the evening with cards.…