11th February 2011 – Port Douglas

First of all we must start today's blog with an apology. We were on shore in Port Douglas with every intention of getting on-line and bringing our blog up to date; however, we were unable to do so and at time of typing this, it will be 3 more days before we can try again. Please bear with us, hopefully the blogs we do post will make the delays worthwhile and possibly towards the end of the cruise we may be able to post more regularly.

As the ship is too big to dock at Port Douglas we have to tender ashore and in order to make sure we were on an early tender we were up a little earlier than usual. Our breakfast companions this morning were all Aussies. One couple were taking the opportunity to visit their son who lives just an hour away; as they live 1000 miles away (yes, I know it sounds a lot, but distances here are seriously huge) they were really looking forward to catching up with the family. After we teased them about England winning The Ashes the conversation turned to where we had visited and when I mentioned we had not been to Broome or the Kimberleys they all agreed that we really should visit this area (so Avril & Les, when are we doing the trip?!)

The English language is certainly interesting. Whilst waiting for our tender ticket number to be called we sat with Faye, who is one of our evening dining companions. She must be our age and quite happily informed us that prior to embarking on the ship she had bought some new thongs. Stephan snorted and I laughed and then explained to her the difference between thongs in the UK and here in Australia. At this point we were joined by another of our dining companions who, although British, now lives in Alicante, Spain and when I told her that Faye had bought herself some thongs she also burst out laughing.

Port Douglas is in the far northern part of Queensland and offers one of the richest pockets of biodiversity on the globe. There is the Great Barrier Reef, the dense, primeval rainforest of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and the Atherton Tableland which is a lush inland plateau with lakes, waterfalls and forest. We had decided to simply explore Port Douglas itself and found it to be a lovely town whose main shopping street is littered with designer label boutiques and cafes. We walked as far as 4 Mile Beach which normally boasts white sands but, although the area was spared the worst of Cyclone Yasi, its effects were evident with seaweed on the beach. You could also see where some trees had been uprooted. It is a small enough town that we were able to cover much of it in an easy stroll. We looked in an estate agent's window and apartments in a prime position were selling for £800,000 and more. They looked very nice, but for that price they would have to! It was hot but the humidity was awful – over 90%.

We returned to the ship just as the weather started to turn, so the tender was really bouncing and watching tenders return from the safety of the ship we could see how much they were really going up and down. At some point after we returned there was a short, sharp rainfall, but as we were inside we missed it.

Tonight is Friday and so we decided to go to the evening service. Unfortunately, unlike on our previous cruise when it had been in a large side room, this was held in one of the nightclubs which was being decorated with balloons for tonights 'rock and roll' evening. Even worse was the fact that the bar was open and doing business and the television was on and showing some American sport, all whilst the organisers were setting up candles, wine and challah. The final nail in the coffin was a muttered 'is this a reform service' and even if it was, it bore no relation to anything Stephan had seen. I don't think we will go again.

Just a comment; whilst watching the tenders disgorging their passengers I had a text message from Facebook(!) saying I (Rosalyn) had one friend request – so if it's from someone reading this blog, please understand that I will reply when we return home!

After dinner the 6 of us went to the Explorers Lounge where this evening's entertainment was comedy vocalist Morgan Kent who 'does' Rod Stewart songs. I didn't think he was too bad, Stephan thought he was terrible and Faye fell asleep!! He finished his act about 11.30 so we decided to stick our noses outside before going to bed. Surprisingly it was quite warm, but there was quite a lot of spray.

We now have 2 days at sea before our next port of call which is Darwin. We understand that the weather there is a little thundery, but in some ways this is to be expected as this time of the year is known as the 'Wet Season' in this part of Australia. Anyway, we will see what Monday brings and hopefully we will be able to bring you our postings.