April 6, 2024

Last night got very rough and we were bounced around quite a bit. We were headed to Richard’s Bay South Africa and around 6am this morning the pilot came aboard via helicopter which is a first for us.

Someone else took this photo and posted it on Facebook. We did not hear the helicopter.

We could see on cruise mapper that we were headed into Richard’s Bay and we could feel the wind and saw the rain. After about an hour we noticed on cruise mapper that we were headed away from port and back out to open sea. A little after 8am the captain came on the speaker and said that the weather was bad and that he and the pilot had consulted and agreed that it was not safe for the Neptune to try and dock in Richard’s Bay and the pilot had left the boat the same way he came on, via helicopter. We were told more instructions would come later.

View from our balcony this am

Kathy and I got out of the room around 8:30 and went to the Living Room (1st floor of the ship) and it was a madhouse. Some people upset but most just in a holding pattern with all their back packs loaded for the day waiting for further instructions. Again watching the app cruise mapper we could tell that we had started heading south and we had picked up speed. Since the Living Room was so noisy and congested we went into the Italian restaurant where I play Mah Jongg in the am and read. Soon the regular Mah Jongg folks started coming down so Kathy left and we played Mah Jongg awaiting further info. As you can imagine lots and lots of speculation but the most popular one was that we were headed to Durban to at least try and get off the folks that had planned on overnight safaris both through Viking and independently.

The other thing thing about Mah Jongg this am was the number of people we have never seen before who showed up today. We must have had at least 3 people who wanted to watch the game, 1 who wanted to learn and 1 more who plays regularly but has not been once in 106 days. She said she has been playing bridge and does not want to play bridge anymore she wants to play Mah Jongg. Not sure why today and it may have been because there was no morning lecture or bridge this am but it was definitely weird and altered our numbers.

Kathy went to the spa and got her hair cut and by noon we were all convinced that Durban was our destination. What we could also see was that there was a cruise ship docked ion Durban and we did not know how many ships Durban could hold.

At noon the captain made his usual sea day announcement and confirmed what we all thought but the other cruise ship, MSC, was an issue and would not be leaving until 3pm so we will dock around 4pm and get off and fly to Johannesburg at 8pm. So most of our safari itinerary remains the same just a much shortened time in Johannesburg. We know Viking scrambled to get a plan in place and they are even offering a 3 hour bus tour once all the safari folks get off to those interested.

Fingers crossed as to the rest of the adventure going well but wanted to update the blog as to the change of plans.