South Pacific Cruise

Lori and I returned to Port Moresby on Wednesday after our cruise to New Caledonia and Fiji. This vacation came about in a strange way. A few years ago my dad told me about a music documentary called "Searching For Sugarman". I don't want to give too much away, but the movie is fantastic and we became huge fans of an artist named Rodriguez. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. Anyway, we decided to go see Rodriguez in Sydney and Lori searched for cruises leaving from Sydney around the same time and she found one on the Voyager of the Seas.

The concert was really good and it was in a beautiful old theatre called The State Theatre. The acoustics were excellent and we had great seats.

The next day we did some shopping (something we do every time we leave Port Moresby) and went out for a really nice dinner. Finally, we boarded the ship for our 11-night voyage. They tie up the cruise ships in an ideal location right between the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

This was the largest ship we've ever cruised on with 4000 passengers and 1200 crew.

There is a lot to do on-board. I tried boogie boarding on the flow rider. It went well, but there was no way I was going to try stand-up surfing.

Lots of space around the pool.

This class of ship has a Royal Promenade inside. Kind of like walking through a shopping mall, only on a ship.

Even though the ship is massive, we found it crowded. We prefer smaller ships with a better ratio of crew to passengers. We did enjoy our shore excursions though. At our first stop in Fiji we took a trip out to a private island.

At the second stop in Fiji, we went on a river cruise that ended with us swimming in the pool of a waterfall. Pretty cool.

We didn't get a chance to explore New Caledonia very much due the weather. In fact, our snorkeling trip was cancelled because it was raining too hard. The seas were a lot rougher than we were expecting as well. I think we both expected it to be similar to a Caribbean cruise, but the ship was rocking and rolling and the air was cool some days. It's easy to forget that the Caribbean Sea is sheltered and we were in open ocean during this trip. All in all though, it was a pretty good trip and nice way to visit some other Pacific Islands.

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