Day 95: At Sea in the Atlantic Ocean

Wednesday April 10th, 2013

Finally we have left the Indian Ocean and we are now in the South Atlantic Ocean - which means we are headed for home on this last stretch of this tremendous journey. Tomorrow we have our last African continent port of call - Walvis Bay, Namibia. I have to say that Africa has been our favourite this year.

Today it was back to spin class and an hour of personal training. I can honestly say I can feel a difference in my strength, and that is extremely encouraging. No more huffing and puffing up stairs and steep climbs, and after my work out I feel a high from the 2 hours of working out - which must be those endorphins they say we crave so much, and are what we become addicted to. I hope that I can find the way to continue my program once I am home.

I also spent the entire rest of the day blogging about Cape Town - and I missed our new excellent speaker who is an Ambassador with unbelievable credentials speaking about Africa. Barry went and said I missed an outstanding presentation.

Mal and Max have settled in to ship routine like they never left, and we are really enjoying their company. The evening entertainment was a 3 person African band which actually has 6 members usually. The leader is very popular in South Africa and his two mates hail from Nigeria. They played the saxophone and 3 other instruments that we had never heard about or seen. One is a Zimbabwe hand piano, which is a tiny instrument that has been played for over 400 years and we are told all African homes have one. It is a sweet instrument. Secondly the leader played a harp like instrument made of a big gourd like shell and fishing line that has been used for 800 years or more. It also had a beautiful sound. All the music was very peaceful and jazz-like and we were so fortunate to hear some traditional songs, like one that he says was typical of what would have been played in the Townships during apartheid, and which people prefer to listen to today.

We fell into bed, lulled to a quiet readiness by the music and the rough swells, which proved to be not as fearsome in the night as we had been told might arise.