HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  New Year's Eve was pretty quiet for us.  We had a relaxing sea day with lectures, a few games and lots of great food.  The ship was decorated with balloons and banners for the evening celebration.  Yakov Smirnoff did a very nice comedy show that was well attended.  We decided that even with our afternoon naps we would not make the midnight countdown so we went to bed about 11 pm.  We have an early tour in Zanzibar and the weather is supposed to be about 90 degrees and rainy, sounds like fun! (probably not).

Main atrium staircase decorated for New Year's

Packed theater for the show

Very entertaining show

Yesterday we were in Nosy Be, Madagascar.  Nosy Be means "Big Island" in the Malagasy language. The weather is very warm and humid, around 90 degrees, luckily there was a nice sea breeze.  There was another cruise ship here (a very old one) and there was only one spot on the pier so the tendering operation was very slow as we had to alternate with the tenders from the other ship to load and unload passengers.  We took the provided van to the market in the center of town and walked through the stalls where they sell everything from fruits and vegetables to live chickens, and mud crabs.  There were flies on everything, including the meat, not very appetizing.  The taxies are the three wheeled kind that zoom up and down the main street honking their horns for no apparent reason.  The local people mostly seem to just hang around and do nothing so we assume that the unemployment rate is pretty high.  They were not unfriendly, just sort of ignored us, but the children smiled and waved at us.  We only stayed about 30 minutes and caught the van  back to the pier so we could get back to the ship.  Back aboard we immediately took showers and had cold drinks and spent the rest of the afternoon just relaxing and watching a movie.  The video system on board is very nice with about 200 available programs and you can watch for a while, then save your movie to finish later.

The other cruise ship, we think was a German ship

The veggies look pretty good in the picture, but you can't see the flies that are on everything!

The traffic on the main street is mostly the three wheeled taxis and small old French made cars, .

Our ship looks pretty nice compared to the other one!

The tenders had to dodge all sorts of other vessels to get to the dock

We have had two very nice days at sea with mostly calm conditions.  We seem to have finally adjusted to the time zone change and have been getting a good nights sleep, finally!  We played some games (Tom won the croquet competition and Noel won the "Top Toss") we also placed in the trivia competition the last three days mostly due to acquiring some good team members!  We attended a cooking class  for some African dishes and a wine tasting.  The weather is quite warm and humid so we have been spending a lot of time indoors.  Today we will be in Nosy Be, Madagascar, but only for about four hours so we will probably just take the tender ashore and have a look around.

This is the Observation Lounge on deck 11 forward

The bartenders have all learned how Tom likes his martini

Shaken, not stirred

This is the main dining room, The Compass Rose

The day after Christmas we arrived almost two hours late into the port of Richards Bay.  The port had been closed on Christmas so they had a traffic jam to get all the ships into the docks and we did not have priority. We were glad we had cancelled our tour as our original time of departure was 7:15 am and they ended up more than 90 minutes late and they were going to have to shorten the tours. South Africa has become more tropical and less European as we have sailed north. South Africa has very good infrastructure and some vibrant ports along with some scenic mountains and hills.  We just stayed on the ship and relaxed.

December 27 we were in the port of Maputo, Mozambique.  This place was really a dump, garbage everywhere, derelict buildings, and we were told they have very high unemployment, lack of education, and very high crime rate.  We had cancelled our tour but took the provided shuttle that went to a large craft market.  This was about a 20 minute ride through the city and we think we saw about everything that would have been on our tour, including the pick-up truck with 8 soldiers or police in the back with automatic weapons!  One of there guys looked like he was about 12 years old.  We were told not to wear any jewelry or watches or carry a camera so I could not get a picture of the truck.  Most businesses also had guards at their doors. The craft market did not look all that interesting so we just came straight back to the ship without getting off the bus. During the evening we had a "block party" where you come out into the hallway and meet your neighbors while having cocktails and canapes.  One of our neighbors is the comedian Yakov Smirnov (sp?) who will be our New Year's Eve entertainment.  He was very friendly and personable.

City of Maputo from the top deck of ship

Hundreds of new cars on the shipping dock, we think these were being imported

This is the "La Veranda" restaurant where we usually eat breakfast and lunch.  It is a nice buffet with excellent food.  

The dessert selection at lunch

We spent Christmas Day touring the Tala Game Reserve near Durban, South Africa in 90 degree heat.  We had a 90 minute drive in truck type vehicle that seated about 14 people.  We saw six different types of antelope, Kudu, Nyala, Impala, Eland, Blessbuck, Waterbuck. We also saw giraffes, zebra, warthogs, wildebeests, white rhinos and hippos.  This reserve is about 3,000 acres with accomodations and they even hold weddings at the reserve.  We didn't arrive back at the ship until about 6:45, very hot and tired.  We passed on attending the evening entertainment and went to bed by 10 PM.

White Rhino

Male Impala

Male Giraffe

Nyala

Nests of Weaver birds

Weaver bird

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Yesterday we visited the city of East London, South Africa.  Medium sized city of about 80,000, the only river port city in SA.  The current unemployment rate here is 40% despite a new Mercedes assembly plant where they make all the "C" class vehicles. While there are some very nice housing areas, the blacks are still very much second class citizens.  The majority of the nicer houses have razor wire and or electic fencing. 

We did a short tour of the city and visited a very nice natural history museum.  This museum is notable for having the only surviving Dodo bird egg and the mounted speciman of a coelacanth.  The coelacanth was a prehistoric fish that has lived in the Indian Ocean for 400 million years and was thought to be extinct until it was redicovered in the East London Harbor in 1938.  This discovery was regarded internationally as the most significant zoological find of the century.  They also have human trace fossil footprints dated at 124,000 years old. 

The Christmas Eve celebration began with the Captain's welcome party.  After a very nice lobster dinner we had a special Christmas program put on by the entertainment staff that included carolling and several holiday related routines including acting out the 12 Days of Christmas, and the arrival of Santa Claus.  The evening ended with a large number of the crew getting on the stage and joining in the singing.  

Entrance to the natural history museum

The prehistoric coelacanth 

Reef Beach where the footprints were found

Dining with our favorite wait staff

The "Partridges in a Pear Tree"!!

Santa being naughty with the female lead singer

Members of the crew singing carols

We are finally starting to get a little more on the right time zone so we were able to take a short city highlights tour today.  Port Elizabeth is a large city that was settled in 1820 and is the center of the automotive industry for South Africa.  Nelson Mandela was from this area so many things are named for him.  The area is referred to as the "windy city" and they are not kidding!  We really had to  hang on to our hats and a couple of times we had the feeling that the wind was going to blow us over!  We had a relaxing evening with a cocktail party hosted by the Signature travel group and then a nice dinner by ourselves.  The ship is very festive with about 20 different Christmas trees, about 6 or so huge gingerbread houses that were decorated by the culinary staff and garland and bows on all the staircase railings.

Several hundred new cars awaiting shipment

Very expensive stadium that was built for the 2010 World Cup Soccer that now sits pretty much unused as rugby and cricket are more popular in South Africa.

Donkin visitor center at old light house.

This huge flag can be seen from anywhere in the city, and takes 12 men to fold.

Our ship was docked in the commercial port

Springboks that were right in town

One of the huge gingerbread houses

Looking down on the tree in the main atrium

This house was in the Compass Rose Restaurant

When we woke up this morning the ship had been transformed overnight into a Christmas wonderland. I am a bit behind on posting pictures and will try to catch up later today!  We arrived in Mossel Bay in the early afternoon and we did have a short tour scheduled but ended up deciding that naps were a good idea since we were so jet lagged.  Picture of Table Mountain in Cape Town from our suite on the ship

 Our first stop was in Mossel Bay

Mossel Bay is resort area and our ship attracted quite a few jet skis and small boats

Tom enjoying a movie in his cubicle home on the A380.

Here we are starting another long cruise, this one to several places that we have not been before and some we have visited in the past.  This cruise is 62 days starting from Cape Town, South Africa and ending in Beijing, China.
We left our winter home in Las Vegas with a rental car and drove to Southern California where we spent the night.  We dropped our rental at LAX and boarded our long flight to Dubai.  We were on a new Emirates Airlines AB380 in business class, a wonderful experience despite a 16 hour flight time!  We had an 8 hour layover (from 8pm to 4am) and spent our time in the huge Emirates business class lounge where they had a very nice selection of food and drinks and we were also able to take showers and change our clothes.  Our next flight was almost nine hours to reach Cape Town, South Africa.  We were taken to a hotel for one night, needless to say we did not feel up to sightseeing and just stayed in the hotel.  We boarded the Seven Seas Voyager on December 21 and were nicely surprised to immediately run into two couples that had been on our previous long cruise around South America on the Seven Seas Mariner in 2012.  We also recognized several crew members from this same cruise that are now on the Voyager crew.