Cruising the southern Indian Ocean

Mark and I took a cab from our hotel to the cruise check-in point at the Port Louis harbour. Our ship was the Norwegian Dawn, built in 2002 and refurbished in 2021, and with a maximum capacity of 2290. We surrendered our luggage because we couldn’t take it onboard but I did bring along my backpack, laptop and Scrabble bag. It was a speedy process and we had to leave our passports, yet we got them back before we arrived in South Africa.

Our stateroom was 9720, thus on the ninth deck and near the stern on the portside. We had a balcony, where I enjoyed reading as I watched the ocean pass by. We dropped off our things, filled the fridge (which we had trouble finding because the door of it looked like that of the safe so ignored it) and explored the ship. Our luggage was delivered to the door of our cabin later that evening.

We were supposed to start the cruise on March 1, but because tropical cyclone Garance forced the closure of the Mauritius airport for two days, the cruise was postponed one day in order to allow passengers to arrive from overseas. We could have dinner and sleep in our cabins that first night but we weren’t going to depart until March 2. Mark wanted to explore Port Louis the next day while I chose to dig into a new book on our balcony and use the gym. That was the only time I used the gym when I didn’t feel the gentle rocking of the ship beneath me. It helps to have firm footing when doing dumbbell and barbell curls.

Mark took this shot of the Norwegian Dawn during his walk in Port Louis on the morning before we departed

Mark in our cabin, shortly before we left port on March 2

Bon voyage, with Port Louis in the background. Such an interesting assortment of mountain peaks.

Cruising down the Mozambique Channel

I enjoyed the sea days, namely days when we didn’t have a port of call. The ship had countless activities for these days and Mark and I participated in four days of Sea Day Trivia. We didn’t do too well with only the two of us as a team, however I cleaned up by winning the Speed Trivia contest. In this game, four coloured buzzers were placed in a square with the player standing in the centre. Blue and yellow were in front and red and green were behind you. Over 45 seconds a series of questions was flashed on a screen, with four possible answers, each assigned to a colour. Players had to press the buzzer which had the correct answer assigned to it. It may seem easy, but there were multiple questions during each player’s round that had a colour as an answer. And not just any colour, but specifically blue, yellow, red or green. And to trip the players up, the correct colour answer was assigned to a different colour buzzer, thus a question such as “What colour was the brick road in The Wizard of Oz?” would have yellow as the correct answer, but yellow might be assigned to the red buzzer. You had to think correct answer, not colour of the buzzer, and hit the appropriate buzzer regardless of what colour it was. Once you got a question wrong, you were disqualified. Several players tripped up by pressing the wrong colour buzzer. After 45 seconds one player managed to accumulate 717 points by getting all the questions correct and I ranked second with 713 points. I don’t really understand how the point totals were assessed as we both had no incorrect answers after 45 seconds. Maybe the leader was able to answer one more question than I did? (And if so, he earned only four more points for doing so?) The top four scores were brought back onstage for an elimination round that didn’t involve trivia. We were each assigned a colour and a tower of five blocks. A series of dots spun around a wheel which was divided into thin coloured wedges and we had to press our buzzer when we thought that our assigned dot landed on another person’s coloured wedge. If a dot landed on your coloured wedge you lost a block. It was a combination of Press Your Luck with Wheel of Fortune. Once your five blocks were gone you were eliminated. Some players’ reflexes ended up pressing their buzzer on their own colour, so they inadvertently worked towards eliminating themselves during that round. I surprised myself by sticking around till the end with one other guy–the one who had attained 717 points in the trivia round. For the final round, however, we were told to face the audience with our backs to the screen. We had to press our buzzers without knowing whose colour we were going to land on. With a tower restored to five blocks, it was pure luck that I won this round–and handily. My opponent knocked himself out and I still had four blocks left. For winning the Speed Trivia contest I was awarded a deck of Norwegian Cruise Line playing cards and a NCL insulated mug.

We looked around the ship’s store and were aghast at the prices, that is, the items for sale that actually had prices attached to them. I had brought plenty of AA rechargeable batteries and a charger with me, yet we were curious how much a pack of two AA batteries was going for. The clerk said it was $8 US. While captive on a ship and nowhere else to find batteries, you pay that price. And passengers might be very reluctant to decline to purchase them if they already had an onboard account and thus weren’t dealing with any money or credit cards. I believe they’d be more inclined to pay those steep prices if all they had to do was charge it to their cabin. The money spent seems less real that way. That explained why so many items in the ship’s general store area had no prices attached to them at all.

For our meals Mark and I chose to eat at the Garden Café every time. For breakfast, lunch and dinner we always ate there. Although we could have eaten at any number of other restaurants that were complimentary, we liked the buffets because there was no waiting involved and you could eat as much as you wanted. In a sit-down restaurant, of course, you have to wait to be served. We talked about this, perhaps sampling the variety of restaurants onboard, knowing that we could easily walk into any of the other restaurants yet we came back to the buffet every time. Neither of us likes to wait for our food. We had heard from other cruisers that the portions were smaller in the restaurants. With so much delicious food at the Garden Café I definitely had my fill each meal, however the scale in the ship’s gym as well as the scale at my local Y both confirm that I didn’t gain any weight during the trip.

I usually ate breakfasts with scrambled eggs, pork or turkey sausage (I preferred the latter), crispy bacon, grapefruit slices and yogurt. I often took hard-boiled eggs back to our room to eat during our excursions when we were in port. I had to admit that after so many mornings of rich food I had to go back to my usual–cold cereal–on two mornings. Dinners always had some kind of delicious pasta (served with clams, or artichokes, or mushrooms and capers). I loved the tilapia and whitefish, and for vegetables I had multiple servings of garlic green beans and roasted cauliflower. Some nights they had steamed mussels in the shell, and cold and hot shrimp. I usually do not eat dessert but the simplest of dishes pleased me: Jell-O. I haven’t eaten that stuff in years, yet had a Jell-O dessert every night. I also liked the chocolate ice cream which you could top with gummi bears. Those gummis were so delicious I even filled a bowl with them (with no ice cream). So must have other passengers, as I had to ask a food attendant to refill the gummis on a number of occasions.

Each day a program of the ship’s events was placed by our cabin door and that included a queer meet-and-greet at the Cellars lounge at 9 p.m. We went almost every night and chatted with (only) men. One of the couples we met was Arthur (middle) and Tim (right) in the photo below. They have been together for 49 years. The picture below was taken on the top of Table Mountain. We ran into them after we all disembarked in Cape Town on March 12:

I liked to lie in the sun on a deck chair yet the pool area was so crowded. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t find an available place to lie down as there was plenty of room and lounge chairs. I just didn’t like being around so many people. I lay in the sun amongst the crowd on only one afternoon yet found a secluded place by the bow later, where hardly anyone chose to sunbathe.

In the evenings we saw some shows in the Stardust Theater. We saw an illusionist/magician (Joseph Réohm) one night, a comedian, an acrobatics show plus a variety show combining illusion, dance and acrobatics.

We played Scrabble every night but on two occasions brought our board to the Garden Café long after dinner had ended. There was more room on the tables, versus the small square table in our cabin. We also had drinks like juice and coffee available in the café. Our Mauritian hotel mate Larry joined us on two nights to watch us play.

The ship had a sizable library, which was quite impressive in both the size of the room as well as the collection on offer. Passengers had to sign out books, which came due at the end of the cruise. Books in other languages were available too. One part of the collection was reference, which contained only language dictionaries and travel guides. These books were for destinations visited by the Norwegian Dawn and it made sense to keep the guides in the library for all passengers to use.

I enjoyed the ship and what it had to offer, and was genuinely sad to have to leave. We spent eleven nights on the Norwegian Dawn and liked the size of the ship. Neither Mark nor I is a fan of gigantic cruise ships and the two thousand capacity wasn’t too big for us. We had one port of call in Madagascar and three in South Africa before Cape Town, and I will write about each of these stops next.