My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Day 1
We had two runs that went to the islands around Australia. I was told by other sea farers that they were the Aussie Caribbean. I was IPM in Port Vila. A couple of days before, my favorite Irish Captain told me to get the day off– he and a bunch of people were renting dirt bikes and they were going to ride to a cool restaurant on the other side of the island. I begged and bartered, but this was the coolest port on the run, and everyone who had the day off already had plans or wouldn’t be on the ship the next time we came around. Finally I managed to get someone to cover my safety duties, and I would do the morning activities. I found the Captain so I could share my good news, but it turned out that there were no bikes available– he hadn’t planned ahead! Matt and I tried to meet up with him for lunch anyway, but we just missed him!
So Matt and I headed out for an adventure of our own. We waded through the maze of trinkets being sold (which is how I learned we were in Vanuatu, a new country for me) and flicked away the taxi and tour offers every couple of feet until we found the water taxis!
We paid $5 AUS to take us on the short journey to a nearby resort.
It was warm and cloudy at the resort. We got the Wifi password and found some lunch along with a big table of everyone who had had the whole day off. They were not on their first island cocktails. It started raining and they all jumped in the pool and scurried off. Matt and I found another pool to hang out next to and wait out the storm before we water taxi’d it back to the ship.
Day 2
Now this was a day I actually planned for. That last time we were in Port Vila, Lauren had the whole day off. She had gotten together with a group of people (the ones we saw at the resort) and they had gone to a place called the Blue Lagoon, which she said was magical. Lauren had just gone on vacation at the start of this cruise (this means she went home. My first contract I was so confused by the word vacation, since usually I lived at home and went on vacation. Now I lived on vacation and went home for vacation from the vacation), and Randi (from Canada) had replaced Micah a couple of months before. I usually went to dinner at 6pm before my 7pm trivia. I’d seen Lauren there a couple of times, but I’d had a hard time recruiting people for a standing family dinner this contract. Thus far, I’d gotten a lot of reading done during that hour, which I did enjoy. When Randi joined, we all started going to dinner at 6 more often than not, as she had done on her previous ship. Before I knew it, we found the guys from the bridge (who weren’t working the 4-8 shift) at our table, and it was back– one of my favorite things– family dinner at the family table! Everyone was welcome at the family table, and we would pull up chairs to make room even when it seemed like no one else could fit. I loved hanging out with people from other departments as well as my friends on my team. Anyway, the point is, that the family table (at least part of it) was going on an adventure in Port Vila.
Randi and I managed to get the day off and did as much research as we could about this blue lagoon. We would have to take a taxi. That was all we could figure out. Erich from the Art Department was in. We decided that he would do the taxi negotiating. Matt (from New Zealand) and Mirko (from Italy), our friends from the bridge who NEVER got off the ship in port were able to get some time off for this one. We waited until the bridge guys finished their drill and then we all managed to meet up at the gangway. The bridge boys were hardly recognizable out of their uniforms! Once again we wound our way through the stalls of souvenirs to the man in charge of the taxis. Erich engaged them in a bidding war. We got a price per person slightly less than what Lauren had told us. In the van on the way there, we listed to some local music on the radio until Erich pumped up his blue tooth speaker. After about 40 minutes Matt casually mentioned that he’d almost gotten fired that morning. We couldn’t believe he hadn’t started off with that! Finally our driver pulled into the woods. We walked a little further and ran into paradise.
We swam across the lagoon to a little hut that sold drinks and snacks. I paid with the local money that had been left in my cabin.
The production cast was also there– this was their last cruise.
There was a rope swing:
I tried it. It was terrifying. Everyone was encouraging me that if I could jump out of a plane, I could swing on a rope. I thought the rope swing was scarier. I did it once. It wasn’t graceful. I became the photographer– I had put my phone in it’s lifeproof case in a watertight bag. I was the only one willing to go swimming with the phone. I couldn’t really see through the plastic, so I hoped I was taking pictures of what I was pointing at. There was another tree to climb with a rope across it that people could climb and fall in the water from there. Some members of the cast were doing some pretty acrobatic things. Matt and Erich climbed the tree to the rope. They were up there a really long time– apparently it seemed a lot higher once you were there. I was treading water holding the camera waiting for them to jump FOREVER!
We swam and lingered until we were ready for our next adventure in paradise– now it was time for waterfalls.
Our driver parked the van in the shade and sent us on our way. The nature walk in the shade was beautiful at every turn.
Then we got to the waterfalls.
There were tubes for us to float on. Soon the production cast showed up, and we all took turns jumping off a cliff into the water.
Our last stop was the resort I had gone to with Matt the first time. We were sitting by the pool waiting for our food sipping tropical cocktails, when Randi showed me this picture:
Where is that?! She had just taken it. She had looked in a direction that I wasn’t paying attention to. It was surreal. After all the times I’ve scrolled through facebook looking at pictures of gorgeous places, I was actually there. The Wifi that we had been looking forward to barely worked. I would have to live through the next 3 sea days without any podcasts. Randi would have to live without the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
As the sun set we counted our blessings. It had been an incredible day. Fun, adventure, Friends, in exotic places on the other side of the world, taxi drivers that you weren’t sure you could trust, jumping off of things from high places into turquoise water… Erich was tired of his job and had been trying to get off the ship for months. Today, he said, was a day that kind of made him want to stay. For so many days in a row we work long hours interacting with various personalities and constantly adapting to change. Suddenly you realize that you’ve made a group of friends and you spend most of your time laughing with each other. You can’t believe how much you treasure these people that you’ve only known for such a short time. When you haven’t found your people it’s the loneliest, hardest job in the world (well maybe not the hardest– I’ve never cleaned a bathroom on the ship), but when you do find them, you don’t want to be anywhere else.
This was one of those peak days that make all the hard ones worth it. Little did we know, it was the last one– though I don’t think we could have enjoyed it any more if we had known. Three days later we would return to Melbourne. Randi and I were IPM. Randi’s cousin came from Thailand for a cruise. She had to change her flight three times to avoid stopping in a country on the no boarding list. You’d think we would see that as a sign that everything was about to change, but we didn’t. Three days after that, the pandemic was declared and step by step we tumbled down the stairs of the world shutting down as the new rules got closer and closer to us on the other side of the world. The next time I would set foot on land would be to go home two weeks later.