Port Douglas

This little resort town in hot and tropical Northern Queensland, Australia, is accessed via tender boats for ships like ours. A couple dozen crew were up early by 7am to try to catch the first tender. We were lucky and got one by 7:30, ashore before 8am. We didn't have big plans for the day, which made for a really nice feel to our time in port. We really got to take our time to properly explore the main street of town. First the walk into town, then a leisurely morning coffee at Origin Espresso and a bit of internet catch-up whilst there. I got my favorite, a soy "flat white", probably closest to our latte (have I blogged this before??). After our coffee we walked all the way through town to 4 Mile Beach at one end of town. We were suitably impressed by the numerous warning signs for jellyfish, sharks, and, yes, saltwater crocodiles. Yikes....we decided against swimmimg, even in the netted-off area allocated for that purpose. Instead we enjoyed a walk along the beach, and then up a few steps of a trail to a lookout point on the coast.

Back in town we did some leisure shopping at our whim, stopped for ice cream, did our essentials shopping at the grocery store, and having walked past every restaurant in town were able to chose the most affordable one, which had great food. While the others went into a few last souvenir stores, I ran ahead back to our morning coffee place to enjoy one last Australian flat white before leaving the country that afternoon. It was a wonderful day, spent with friends (Jane, Eddie and Dave), and was so relaxing.

The relaxation ended there, as once on board I had to run up to the outside deck for a sailaway dixieland set. We were in full sun in about 100 degree heat...suffice it to say we were sweaty miserable messes before we had even started playing. Luckily no one passed out, though several of us came close. The deck was virtually empty of guests, but for a few appreciated and encouraging ones sheltering in the few spots of shade. We survived....we were promised it would never happen again. Whew...reminded me of a bad day at drum corp. The nice thing was that we had the night off after that one set, so went out to dinner in the Lido.
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