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There are now 10 blooms!! What seems to be strange is that these two stems seems to be blooming in tandem… 3&3, 4&4 and now 5&5…. The weather has been really hot and humid and the orchids are thriving…

….towards Fiji… Very hot and humid with occasional drizzle… While we were zumbaing on pool side open deck amongst all this craziness, a rainbow appeared…. Too bad I did not bring a camera along….

… Hauntingly beautiful and mesmerizing… And later when the sun comes out this moon becomes the brightest moon we have seen during daylight and still pretty high up in the sky…while this was going on, our friend with cabin on the other side of ship reported seeing spectacular sunrise..

We are on the starboard side (right side) of the ship and heading south towards Fiji, (our next stop was Samoa but was changed to Fiji)… So we get to catch all the sunsets and “moonsets”…. Heres today’s sunset…

From the shows nature put on at sea to the shows people put on stage.. Tonight’s production show ” latin quarter” is mui bien 🙌🙌🙌

We got asked this question a lot ever since the first cruise 25 years ago… And I am surprised we still got asked couple of days ago…..we told the nice gentleman that we were married for 36 years already and he asked if we got married when we were 12?

I think people are just being nice and trying to make a conversation which I really appreciate 😁

We were surprised to see them at Kona’s farmers market yesterday and shocked to see them at the ships buffet… So happy…. It’s too exotic to a fellow passenger standing next to me at the fruit section and want me to describe the taste to her before she decide whether to try them or not… My description was probably bad (“mangosteen is kind of milky and nice and rambutans are like lychee but with hair 😆” ) that she forfeit trying….when I go back for second serving the mangosteens were gone… A passenger complains that someone commandeered the whole pot of mangosteens 😒

A big sun welcomes us this time…. 6 months ago when we arrived at the Big island, an eruption at the national park welcomes us 😆

Kona is not a port that can support docking of a big cruise ship so we will have to use tender boats (they use the lifeboats as tender boats)

The Port of Kona is so small that Everywhere we went , there’s our ship as the back drop

We love the little town of Kona… Less commercial, more Hawaiian vibe… Lush vegetations, exotic fruits in the farmers market, beautiful beaches set on black volcanic rocks… Non stop Blue turquoise strong waves…. Truly mesmerizing….

Finally….. Happy hour by the beach 🏖️

Our lunch was Thai cuisine….. Yes we had Asian themed food again for lunch in Hawaii…  After 6 days on the ship with western food, we craved soupy, Asian flavored dishes

That concludes our Kona stop 🤙

And the whales say goodbye too…

This is our 12th cruise, we thought we are seasoned cruises and later found out many on this world cruise are way more experienced…. Makes sense since it’s hard to attempt world cruise unless you already have quite a few and kind of used to ship life……but we heard there’s a passenger on board already completed 12 world cruises and this is the 13th…. 🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎😆

Almost every cruises we were on, there are multiple charismatic speakers that knew their subjects well and spoke with such enthusiasm that they have a cult like following onboard with packed venue…. This section of the cruise we have Fred Cink the astrology guy that takes us on a cruise through the galaxy (see example pics of his presentation)… And what an eye opening trip 🤩

On our prior cruises.. Theres Robert the Naturalist, Joe the Antarctica historian, Gary the route 66 expert..

By the end of the day P logged 33325 steps and R logged 25000 steps （more steps for P because he went out at night, see pics below ) … Hope we used up all the fat that we accumulated in the last 5 sea days… This is the second time in 6 months via cruise that we stopped in Honolulu… 1st time we joined an excursion tour group and were bused around the island… Did a little of everything including snorkeling… This second time around we were mainly on foot and more tuned in with the local scenery and understand the fabric of the culture…

Also we noticed birds here are not afraid of humans.. Heres a bird waiting patiently for a man to catch something…