Day 1

Wednesday January 3, 2024

Thanks for joining us on another world cruise. 

Today we flew out of Detroit at 10:05. Our neighbor, Courtney, was kind enough to drop us off. 

It does take some thought to prepare for being away from home for 4 months. Mail (post office only holds for 30 days now), bills, taxes, yard. What do we shut off? What do we turn down? What stays on?

These are really the easy items. The real challenge is planning what we will do at each stop. About a year of planning is what we spend on doing this. Each stop has a HAL or third party excursion already booked or other plans such as hiking or snorkeling already made.

What to bring? The tendency is to over pack. This is especially true with clothing. A good portion of the trip will be in the southern hemisphere where summer has just started. Most of the day on the ship is in T shirt and shorts. Dinner is different. Nice attire is expected. The laundry turnover is fast so one could really get by with minimal casual and formal clothing. The days in port can be different. I expect it to be rather cold when we get to Japan and China as winter will be close to ending. I think we are prepared because it was 31 degrees when we left Detroit and the attire we wore will work on the coldest days of the trip.

Medication? Good luck getting your insurance company to cover 4 months of medicine up front. 

Visas? Which countries require them. It is the responsibility of each passenger to obtain all Visas that are necessary. The Brazil Visa proved to be the most challenging. Brazil made the decision to require those from the USA, Canada and Australia to obtain a Visa. This new requirement goes into effect on January 11, 2024. We arrive on January 10 so a Visa is definitely required. We knew about this requirement sometime in June. An e-visa will be required and the website that  handle this will open on December 2. On December 2, I applied for both of our Visas. Four items were required. A copy of the passport picture page, a photo that is 2” x 2”, a bank statement that is current and showed a balance of at least $2000.00, and prove of transportation to and from Brazil. Each item had to be in the correct format, jpg for photo, pdf for the other items and less than 1 mb each. The photo had to have a neutral background with no shadows on the face. It took many tries at uploading. If the file was too big, it would not upload. There were also other reasons the files wouldn’t up load but the reasons remained a mystery. The website was extremely buggy. I had more luck uploading from my phone than I did my computer. After many, many hours, all files were uploaded for both of us. As I later learned, this was no reason to believe that all requirements were met. I received an email from the visa service that Brazil hired that they needed a bank statement uploaded. Unfortunately, there is no one to argue with. I uploaded the same bank statement and then tried to call the visa company. No one answers the phone. I sent an email and received an automated response. “Someone would get with me in no more than 48 hrs”. I’m still waiting for them to do that. I even went on X and sent notes to whomever monitors. Lots of responses. Nothing helpful. No need to worry. The website states that the visa turnaround time is 5 days. Five days came and went. Nothing. There a website to check on the status. “Under Review” is what was next to our names for almost all of December. HAL was still insisting that if a passenger does not have a Brazilian Visa, the passenger cannot board the ship. A Facebook group for the HAL World Cruise showed that many, many, others were in the same situation. Many began to cancel the cruise or Brazilian Shore excursions. Our Visas finally did arrive a week before we left. HAL then decided that they would let all board and those who do not have a Visa for Brazil must stay on the ship. It’s nice when governments get involved in these kinds of things. Everyone is always happier.

Most of the passengers on these longer trips are very cautious. Those that live in the northern states tend to leave for Ft. Lauderdale days before the cruise starts. They are petrified that the ship will leave without them if they are late. There is the chance of a snow storm or bad weather that may delay the flight but just the same we left the day of the trip. All aboard is 4:30 pm and we land at 1:20.

The airport is close to Port Everglades. Planes fly right over the port. As we expected, we were virtually alone at the HAL desk in the airport. The clerk called for a bus and we were on the bus to the Zuiderdam with one other couple. They were sailing on the Eurodam. The cruise ship terminal was empty and it only took a few minutes to check in.

When we arrived at our room, one bag that we had shipped on December 14 was waiting for us. Golf Clubs. 2 more bags arrived in a few hours. The 4th bag required a visit to security. Someone tried to smuggle in a garment steamer. This item is clearly not allowed and was taken for the duration of the cruise. Shame.

The sail away party was on the Lido deck at 4:30 pm. We met Joe and Ann from the Grand Africa Cruise and also Nancy and Stan from the 2019 World Cruise and the Grand Africa Cruise. Later we bumped into Richard from the Grand Africa Cruise. Richard is good at team trivia and we already made plans to join him in the Crow’s Nest on Thursday.

The ship didn’t leave at 4:30 as planned. Some of the HAL personnel said they were waiting for 2 truckloads of goods. Better be happy waiting than go hungry. 

The engines started about 7:30 and we started to leave the dock at 7:40. We started on our way south. The World Cruise 2024 has just begun!