The long awaited day of the announcement, but our new itinerary was announced and we’re going to more of Africa! Really exciting day, and the ship is abuzz with conversations and excitement (and a few grumpus’s). Spent most of the day updating itineraries, cancelling tours and booking new ones.
Let’s look at the day in gif format.
The Announcement.
It’s been a long, fascinating couple weeks of people watching as they first announced the re-route due to the conflict in the middle east, people were so focused on us.
A quick thought…
I’d be remiss not to first take a second to pause and just reflect once again on humans.
My heart, prayers and thoughts go out to all the people over in that part of the world who are going through unimaginable (for me) things right now. It never escapes me how much privilege I’ve had from growing up in the states and even having multiple jobs and being able to come on this cruise to see the world. People forget that there’s a ton of conflict happening all over the world right now, and are only concerned about how our itinerary will be impacted.
If you’re reading this, I’d encourage you to take a second and pray for people all over the world that are experiencing those conflicts right now (or send positive thoughts, energy, vibes, whatever your thing is…).
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Itinerary Announcement
I was still sleeping (of course) when they piped the announcement into our staterooms (I guess they didn’t want anyone to miss it?). We are officially going with Option 1 and doing the Immersive Africa option, with more stops in Africa. From what I hear, there was a big cheer in the centrum when they announced the winning option.
I tried going back to sleep, cause there’s no real rush for me…it’s a cruising day, and my sleep is more important to me, but almost immediately my phone, watch and computer started dinging with all the notifications from everyone trying to be “first” to post the news on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. (honestly, as much griping and complaining that there is on the cruise amongst a certain segment of the population here about TikTok, I find more of the annoying stuff on Facebook with people trying to post first, police other people’s thoughts and generally offering unsolicited opinions….but also nothing new, it’s been that way for awhile).
Since I was being bombarded, I begrudgingly got up and wandered out of the cabin to start getting stuff done.
This is how I imagine people were with the news.
The Itinerary
Really nice that they are letting people invite friends and family onto the segment, and it’s not TOO bad in terms of $$. Also they confirmed that we could indeed get reimbursed $250 for the Yellow Fever Vaccine since we had already gotten it prior to the cruise. They definitely didn’t HAVE to do any of that.
The Naysayers
There’s a very small (but very vocal) segment of the population aboard that are not super happy with Option 1. You can usually tell by the looks on their face, but today was particularly hilarious. You could pick them out of a crowd.
There’s also been a fair amount of “election denying” saying the vote is rigged, etc. Yikes. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised with a big portion of the cruise from the USA, and the state of the world that we live in for much more important votes…
But really, at the end of the day (and all the other days onboard), I’m one to not let the grumpus’s bring me down (as much as possible).
Rest of the Day
Walked out for a bit, and found that we were just moseying along at a really calm pace over super calm waters. It was almost reminiscent of Antarctica (but much deeper blue here), got my coffee and enjoyed the views for a sec.
Spent the rest of the day planning. As long as I can remember, I’ve loved algorithms, puzzles and trying to figure stuff out. I remember in high school when they introduced us to combinatorics and the Traveling Salesman Problem and how much I enjoyed trying to solve it.
Probably also inspired my interest in college and grad school in heuristic algorithms to solve those combinatoric problems (check out the Stable Marriage Algorithm or any of the nature inspired ones – Ants, Bees, Musicians, Water Drops)…ok I’ll go sit in my nerd corner now.
This is actually really fun for me to look at all the possibilities with the new itinerary and see what is available and flex it all out.
It took most of the day, but I ended up with 23 cancelled tours, which was fun to see all that money come back. Then turned around and looked up the 16 new ports and did research on all the different places and things to do around there. Ended up booking 12 new tours including 7 safaris and 10 national parks. All subject to change and cancellation as we get new information and new tour options of course.
Food
On one of our tours in French Polynesia, some of the other guests mentioned that you can get grilled cheese from the dining room (it’s on the kids menu), so of course I had to get one. They cut off the crusts as well (dying…).
Vibe Check
5 parts joy
Feedback
Leave a comment or question if you have any thoughts! Anything you want to know about as we go around the world? Any things you want to share as feedback, or any images that particularly spoke to you. I’ll try to read all of them as time permits!
Matti 
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