Easo Beach, Lifou Island, New Caledonia: It would seem this is Holland America’s beach island of choice in the Western South Pacific. The DrsC are not beach enthusiasts and as such, will remain onboard.
Something I read, can’t remember where, cautioned against mosquito-borne illnesses and mentioned Dengue, Zika and Chikengunya. None of that sounds like any fun at all, more reasons to stay onboard. The tropics aren’t the healthiest places on the planet.
The cruise is starting to wind down, we just got the notice that tomorrow is the last day to put in laundry. I know the blog says I’m writing this on the 12th but in truth it is the 13th here, I’ve left the iPad on west coast daylight savings time which was what we were on when we embarked.
We disembark in Sydney on the 17th and board a flight to SF around midday. During which flight we will recross the date line and land on the same day at roughly the same time we took off after flying for 15 hours.
Datelines and time zone changes are amazing and weird. We had several 25 hour days as we crossed the Pacific going west, setting clocks back an hour each time. Going home we will experience all of those at one time and discombobulate our internal “clocks” a lot.
