March 31st, 2024 (Easter Sunday)

This is our 4th day of 5 sea days. I have not posted everyday because there is not much to post. We currently have 386 on board so about 1/3rd capacity. Apparently 233 are off the boat to India and other places but will rejoin in a few days. The group to Taj Mahal have been posting pictures so it looks like it was a good trip and they had good weather but hot. It has also been hot and humid sailing across the Indian ocean and we have had several rain showers. Apparently there was a cyclone in the area that hit Madagascar and caused lots of damage and we are getting some residual from that.

This was the Living Room taken around 2pm and there are about 3 people in it. Usually you have folks reading, playing games and drinking at the bar.

The air temp outside has been 84 but very high humidity. I did get in the stern pool yesterday but it was not refreshing. The water temp is 88 degrees so not refreshing at all.

The pretty sunsets The storms from the balcony

We have enough on board to play Mah Jongg so we do that every morning and that takes up the whole morning. The afternoon is usually spent on the computer or reading and of course napping. The first 2 days were very calm and since then we have had some swells which I guess goes with the rainy weather.

Last night we had a special dinner in the dining room. They closed the 2 specialty restaurants and encouraged everyone to go to the dining room and most did. We are told 340 people of the 386 on board ate in the restaurant. They had a special menu with wine pairings and it was very well done. They had the guitar player walk around with the entertainment crew and they sang to us.

The menu and the wine pairings

Our favorite wine sommelier made sure our glasses were always full even when you said “no more”.

After dinner we had a nice easter present in our room.

Our Easter treat

On Easter Sunday they did not really do much special although there was ham in the world cafe for lunch and lots of decorations.

Chocolate bunnies were everywhere in the world cafe

We know bunnies produce at a rapid rate but it was crazy how many chocolate bunnies were on board. We were told to take whatever we wanted. We assume that the order was placed months ago and at the time they did not know what the actual number was going to be on board so with so few we have excess.

We have 1 more sea day before Mauritius and when most of the folks from India rejoin us. we had a tour scheduled in Mauritius that was going to a place called the seven colored earths of Chamarel and it is a colorful geological phenomenon where the different colored sands spontaneously settle in different layers and give the dunes surrealist, striped patterns. We got notification that the road to the dunes was closed and we would not be going there so we have changed our excursion to go to a beach and hopefully do some snorkeling. The coral reefs around Mauritius are supposed to be very good so we shall see.

After Mauritius we have another 3 days at sea sailing to the continent of Africa.