Home, 12 February 2025

A very brief note just for completeness. We had a 6.15am flight this morning, so we were up at 4.45 to shower and check in. The flight was, fortunately, smooth and uneventful and we landed around 11am. 

Darwin, 11 February 2025

Disembarkation day. So we were up at 6am packing the final things before breakfast at 6.30am, as they wanted us out of the cabins as soon as possible. Then we read, and listened to a talk, in the lounge until we shuffled to the buses at 9am. They drove for a while and Sorong is clearly a good sized city.

We were taken to a hotel for the morning. At one point I went off to look for the local shops but I couldn't find anything and it was dirty, loud and hot so I gave up pretty quickly and went back to the shelter of the hotel lobby. So this was going to be one of those transit days, the days you have to write off when traveling as boring but necessary. 

In due course we had a pleasant buffet lunch, then were bussed the short distance to the airport to wait another couple of hours.

Frustratingly, the first leg took us north west to Manado because Sorong isn't an international airport. It was only an hour and a bit, then we had to get off and go through emigration, then wait to get back onto the same plane. 

Fortunately it was an uneventful flight and less than 3 hours to Darwin. 

Bird's Head Peninsula, 10 February 2025

A sea day as we head west from Manokwari to Spring along the north coast of the Peninsula. There is a continuous range of mountains just to the south of us. The weather and sea have remained pretty calm while we have read and packed. 

Before dinner there was a slide show and drinks. 

Roon, 7 February 2025

Overnight the ship moved within Cenderawasih Bay and this morning we were off the northwestern tip of Roon Island, which extends from the end of the Wandamen Peninsula.

Our routine now is pretty consistent. There will be two activities a day. Breakfast opens an hour and a quarter before the first activity. If you aren’t interested in the activity there are no alternatives and have to entertain yourself on the ship, where there is extremely slow internet speeds and no televisions. This is a bit of a sore point for Lynn, who wants to snorkel occasionally but not every day.

And as occurs more often than not, the morning activity was snorkeling and the afternoon’s was a village visit.

The snorkeling was just at the tip of the island nearby on a sloping coral wall. The visibility was great and the coral was very pretty. There is a Japanese Zero on the sea floor. This was a bit deeper than they’d suggested and it is pretty broken up so it’s hard to see the outline. I got a few photos, diving as deeply as I could.

The other limitation was that there were lots of small jellyfish in the water. After we got out they said these were harmless, and I thought they probably were at the time but it was a bit off-putting. This one was slightly more interesting – the rest looked like transparent plastic boxes and were very hard to capture in a photo.

Lunch was pleasant, sitting out on the back deck in a mild breeze. And at about 2pm we went ashore to the village of Yende. Like yesterday it is built in the narrow border between the mountain and the sea, and so most of the houses are on stilts. They sat out two or three buildings deep into the water with a rock wall to provide a path and shelter them from waves. We listened to the nice music and looked around the two churches.

Back to the ship to relax and read. We’ve each finished a great number of books in the last fortnight.