{"id":277,"date":"2021-09-27T22:06:12","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T04:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/?p=277"},"modified":"2021-10-07T12:06:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T18:06:08","slug":"the-best-cruise-ive-ever-taken-so-far-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/2021\/09\/27\/the-best-cruise-ive-ever-taken-so-far-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Cruise I’ve Ever Taken (So Far), Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2015 I had the good fortune of sailing on a 30 day cruise out of Cape Town, South Africa. Now, I don’t have unlimited resources to afford a 30 day cruise, but it was the result of a perk of working in the travel industry. If you check back to my 2015 archives, you’ll see that I promised to share a port by port posting of our adventures. That never happened, I was just too wrapped up in my adventures. So I hope this makes up for my failure back then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Princess Cruises offers every agent who completes their training a free cruise (pretty sweet!). Most agents don’t have the luxury of taking that much time away, but at the time, hubby and I were able to do just that. Because we upgraded from an interior cabin to a mini-suite; we did actually pay something for the cruise, but it was a great deal!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won’t bore you by giving you a detailed breakdown of everything that happened on the cruise, but I’ll chat about some of the highlights. Despite my promise of brevity, I was partially through creating this post, and I can see that I’m going to want to ramble on, so I’ve decided to do this in several installments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have never been to Cape Town (and even if you have been), it’s a lovely city to visit. It’s right on the coast, so there’s beaches! There are a lot of wonderful restaurants; check out Fork Restaurant & Tapas Bar <\/a> and many great sites to see. Hubby and I spent a few days in Cape Town before setting out on our cruise. Trust me you’ll find lots to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The View of Cape Town from atop Table Mountain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I know I’m jumping ahead here, but fast forward to Walvis Bay, Namibia on day 4 of our cruise. It’s a bit overwhelming as you step off the cruise ship to find hoards of people trying to offer you a ride. Don’t be deterred by that – it’s not a big deal. Hubby and I didn’t really have a plan there, so we decided to just walk into town and get inspired. We checked out a local grocery store. That’s what we do, ’cause we’re in the grocery biz. Then, not sure what to do next, we chatted with a taxi driver and asked for his advice. He suggested that we tour the area with him and he would take us to the sand dunes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a wonderful and cost effective tour! The highlight was definitely the sand dunes. Our taxi driver, Daniel, waited for over an hour for us, while we each rented a quad and rode them up and down the sand dunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our bikes for the dune ride in Namibia (don’t be fooled by this picture. There are some serious dunes here)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The next highlight would be Sao Tome & Principe. It’s a little island off the coast of Africa. It’s not your typical tourist trap and is somewhat impoverished. That aside, we had a great visit there. It’s another port at which we hadn’t worked out a detailed plan. We decided to walk into town and visit the local beach. It was hot! It won’t surprise you to learn that we started our day by walking to the local grocery store. It was a long trek in the heat (but we made it!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At this point, I need to share something that we do whenever we visit a new country. We collect the local currency (the lower denominations at least) as a keepsake. It was that quest that became particularly memorable in Sao Tome. We started our quest at the grocery store; checking with the cashier to see if we could exchange some of our US dollars for their local currency. For reasons that escape us now, we weren’t able to get any currency at the grocery store. But the store’s delivery driver took us into the center of town; saving us from having to make the long trek back in the heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was there that we met a gentleman who became our guide and interpreter for the next hour or so. We met him in an outdoor market. He had a box filled with over the counter prescription medicine that he was selling. We heard that he spoke English so we peppered him with questions; while waving our money that we wanted to convert at him; in order to help with the explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our guide (I don’t know his name) took us to a store that sold flour and rice to see whether we could exchange our money there. No luck. He took us to an ATM … no luck. Finally, he took us to a bank where we had success! The Sao Tome denominations are fun; with the highest denomination that we received being a 100,000 note (roughly equivalent to $6 Canadian Dollars).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As if that wasn’t enough, he introduced us to a local taxi driver who took us to a nearby beach where we bobbed around in the ocean for awhile. It was a wonderful experience and the people were lovely and helpful!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our Helpful Guide in the foreground. Our taxi driver in the background<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stay tuned … I’ll share the next installment in a future blog; we’ll see whether I can reign in the the rambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2015 I had the good fortune of sailing on a 30 day cruise out of Cape Town, South Africa. … Continue reading The Best Cruise I’ve Ever Taken (So Far), Part I<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/africa-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leannoconnor.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}