Day Seventeen: At Sea in the South Pacific

Dear All,

We are once more at sea, which makes for pretty difficult going on the blogging front. But I must persevere.

You all know that Doug wears golf caps, but what you may not know is that golf caps are a major conversation starter with other guys. At least once a day, some random guy comes up to him and says, “Titleist, hey? Do you play?” This invariably leads to a conversation of where they play, how much they play and when they last played. On this trip, Doug’s golf caps have been responsible for introducing us to people from Pawleys Island, Mt. Pleasant, Charleston and Greenville, South Carolina.

I have tried to get a fix on the architecture in New Zealand and Australia, but it seems there is no one specific style. Aside from some Victorian houses of the early settlers (like the sea captain’s house we saw yesterday) and the Art Deco of the later settlers, most of the houses are quite contemporary looking—think modern art gallery or drive through bank—with great stretches of large pane-less windows that don’t seem to have drapery or shades of any sort. It almost seems like a Mid Century Modern style, but both older and newer houses are built in this manner. Sometimes I get the feeling it’s still about 1958 here. See examples:

New Zealand and Australia have a rather large lumber industry. Unlike ports of call on say a Caribbean cruise, all of the ports we have visited are working ports, usually with large stacks of containers and logs all about. Our tour guides usually say the logs are being shipped to China and then go on to assure us that since trees grow so quickly to maturity here (20-25 years), there are no worries about stripping the land of trees. But somehow I am always leery when everyone keeps assuring me that something is so.

Tonight they are having a big to do with a BBQ and then “Dancing Under the Stars” with a live band on the main pool deck. The pool can either be an indoor pool or an outdoor pool, depending on the weather, due to a giant skylight roof that slides back and forth on tracks. Every event involves moving scads of chairs and tables, setting up the band and sound system, setting up food attractively in various places, etc. And then they have to move everything back! It seems a master feat to have a party for 900 people every couple of days, but they do it.