Wednesday December 17 . At sea
A non-eventful day at sea. A talk by Stella at 9 am on the Lent traditions of the Filipinos.
We sat up on deck seven before a briefing by Dawn, then we all waited for 15 minutes for Dawn to turn up for her briefing session with hardly an apology. The briefing was followed by a presentation of Coral future cruises by Sam which I did not find very interesting.
After lunch there was a 30 minute video from Yogi on the Kimberley. Then back up to reading on deck seven until cocktail hour when we went to deck six and had a sailor's delight and chatted to an Australian couple. Dinner was again noisy and difficult to hear conversations. And then I decided against a 90 minute film as being too long using the binoculars.
Thursday December 18. Marinduque.
An early morning explorer ride to the island of Marinduque. This was a dry landing but somewhat hazardous as there was no way actually for the Explorer to tie up to and the sea level was considerably lower than the platform to which we had to climb. There was a lovely dance sequence for 10 minutes after a severe rain shower that left the dancers pretty drenched. There was also a double rainbow over the Coral Geographer. After this, we proceeded to drive clockwise around the island in several mini buses. We had a very good seat in the front of it. We stopped at a catholic church where there was a tradition of making masks for the lent period. These masks were made of wood to represent centurions in the death of Christ.
From here we returned to Boac where there was a 16th century picture at the church. From here we walked down to the town square where there were a dozen or two ancient Spanish houses. We received a coconut drink here and also some coconut snacks before venturing into the museum which was quite interesting. Then we wandered around the town streets where there were plenty of people employed to keep us on the straight and narrow. All the Filipinos we met here, and on our previous visits to islands, were super super friendly and so grateful to us for visiting their island.
When we got back to the ship we learnt that Maggie had fallen during our time on shore and have been taken to hospital with a broken wrist, but that she will be rejoining the ship later on in the afternoon. The ship repositioned to Natangco Island over lunch and at 2:30 pm we went out for a cruise round this with Sam, while others were snorkeling off the other Explorer. During the course of the afternoon I got the two suitcases just about packed and finished these after dinner. At 5 pm there was a captains farewell drink plus a very well documented video of our 16 nights aboard the geographer: a much better product than anything ever produced by Silversea. Then dinner outside as usual followed by a short speech from Aaron and on what the procedure was to be in the morning.
To get a larger photo, click on a thumbnail below
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